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A week into our big American adventure and we think we know what we're doing and where to go. This morning we woke to good weather which is a damn fine relief after yesterday's big storm. It didn't ruin anything but it definitely wasn't something we wanted to experience again especially on our day two of Universal Studios. Slept in, we noticing our age I think now. 9am starts in parks are for stressed parents and crying over excited toddlers. We are over excited adults, completely different. Anyway we eased ourselves out of bed, got a bit a brekkie and headed for the bus at half 11, a respectable hour to start ones adventures!
This time we decided to not push ourselves so we went back to Islands of Adventure to get a proper look at everything besides Harry Potter World. This side of the park seemed more age appropriate for us, the other side was Cat in a Hat and cartoony stuff with not too many height requirement rides, that's aka kids can get on this its gonna be a long queue. We strolled past the big Hulk ride, been there done that and through Spider-Man and all the super hero stuff. We wanted to get in line for Jurassic Park rapid ride. On this thing you get wet, it's a kinda river Rapids thing, you get into a big round rapid in a water. The weight balance was definitely not in my favour. It was only when we buckled in and looked around at each other that the group realised that on one side sat a mother and a group of young girls, on the other side was Joey and two fully grown men, oh and me in the middle of heavy side. I don't need a lesson in physics to know when this rapid goes over the water the heavy will be getting the brunt of water. I was pretty much taking every drop backwards! Heart attack aside we had a nervous giggles and enjoyed the ride. The Jurassic music played, we were swept through the big Jurassic doors and in among robotic dinosaurs that came out of the water or off the trees and grass to scare the bejesus out of me. Very serene until velociraptors got lose and we swept through the river faster with drops (that I couldn't see coming). We didn't get too wet thankfully but that didn't matter because today we prepared ourselves! We brought a change of clothes! Woo! Yesterday we noticed a few water rides and decided we should do them all in a day session then change into dry clothes, cause we is smart. So after Jurassic we got into a line for Toon Lagoon, this was the stupidest queue in the history of waiting for things. It was deceptive though since the line disappears into the building (you can't see the end!). Definitely waited over an hour for this and while it was fun it was a bit too wet for my liking. I get that it's very hot and humidity would dry me off but walking round with damp knickers is the worst no matter what. We got off that ride, checked everything in the bags and our change of clothes weren't wet we went and changed thank god.
We walked back through Jurassic park. That was line was long enough that were now at lunch time and we have officially excepted the price of park food. Starving ourselves or trying to live off expensive Mickey Mouse ice creams just made us easily disgruntled so we went into a Jurassic themed restaurant. It's like a canteen affair but the food was good. Beautiful water fall at the window as well.
Back to Harry Potter world and we sucked it up and got in line for Hogwarts castle, that line would never be short so we excepted that and went in. This line was waaaaaay different. Walking into Hogwarts was so strange. I've walked through it in my imagination while reading the books and it felt so surreal to actually touch the walls and see the minute detail. The line moved constantly and we moved through rooms of the castle. We were in Dumbledore's office with the pensive and all the sleeping paintings. Dumbledore himself was a hologram (very convincing) up beside Fawkes the pheonix. He spoke to us we moved through onto the stairs where paintings spoke to each other gossiping and moving into eachother's frames. From the stairs we walked into Defence against the Dark Arts classroom. The giant dragon skeleton hung above us and we could see all the books, quills, candles among the desks. Harry, Ron and hermone stood by the professors door telling us about some trouble we could help them with and we moved out to the Gryffindor common room. The Fat lady painting let us in and I was pretty starstruck by now. Close to the actually ride it seemed to be the same style as Gringotts, a moving rollarcoaster/simulator. We locked into the seats which held us from the waist up leaving our legs free. The 3d was frightening, I screamed, we were flying on a broomstick playing quid ditch when those damn dementors attacked. It's ok Harry guided us our but not without a few straight drops and big swoops. It was intensely real.
Thrilled from that we skipped out, got our bags from the lockers and walked out. There was sun and the girls from the other wizarding school Beaubatons were doing a dance on a side stage. We thought as there was such a small queue we got on the dragon ride again, why not? No kids since the height restrictions stopped them we got front of the ride and loved it. But then we was a little tired after that the next section was different and we saw a show starting in one of their big sheltered theatres. It was Sinbad which ended up being very acrobatic panto-ish but we enjoyed the rest and the sparks and mock combat on stage.
We started heading back by then back through everything and to the superhero street near the entrance. We got in line for Spider-Man which seemed reeeeeeally popular and I can see why. The ride was rollarcoaster/simulator and was really intense with the 3d like the other Harry Potter ones. It took a little break as we were on it which was a tad unnerving but that didn't ruin it. We loved how while in line we walked through the Bugle newspaper office with all the phones ringing and TVs reporting an attack by all of Spider-Man's enemies. I do believe they had stolen the Statue of Liberty, dastardly.
We had a little walk through the shops now as the rain started up. We bought a few things as we didn't plan coming back to Islands of Adventure but time was creeping closer and a repeat of yesterday's soaking escape to our shuttle bus looked likely to repeat itself. No siree, not this time! We got those plastic ponchos you always see Chinese tourists in at home. Well we needed them more then they did! It's not funny the SECOND time getting caught in a rain storm. We got to our shuttle in a good state, not nearly as bad as the day before, we survived this time.
Screw rain we got back to our hotel and went to BJ's at the corner and it was worth it. Damn fine food in BJ's.
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