One of the side effects of sending Daughter to a different school district than the one I work in is that our Spring Breaks rarely align. Mine comes at the end of third quarter while hs is tied to Easter. This year, a ten-week quarter and a March Easter conspired to give us, along with pretty much every student and teacher from kindergarten through graduate school, the same week off. So how about heading to Orlando for amusement parks and a cruise? Nothing says nice, relaxing family vacation like being sweaty ass to sweaty elbow with half the population of Earth.
In a random bit of serendipity, I was reading two books while there: Killers of a Certain Age, which starts out on an exploding cruise ship, and FantasticLand, about a Florida amusement park that turns into Lord of the Flies after being shut off from the world in a hurricane. Fortunately, my ship didn’t explode nor did we resort to cannibalism at Disney World, although with the amount of salt they put in their popcorn, they’re clearly hiding something.
This post will stick to the land stuff, while part two will cover the cruise.
We spent most of Friday flying east, arriving late at night using the logic of “our bodies will still be on West Coast time.” That logic always falters when the the alarm goes off the following morning on East Cost time.
On Saturday, we did two Universal parks, primarily so we could ride the Hogswarts Express between the two. On Sunday, we hit the Disney circuit, hopping between Animal Kingdom and Epcot. We skipped Magic Kingdom because it’s about 90% the same as Disneyland, which we’ve all been to countless times. As sacriligeous as it seems to fly 3000 miles and not go to Magic Kingdom, flying 3000 miles to go to a park that we can visit in an hour seems even worse.
Universal
The two Universal parks, which could really be one park but then they couldn’t charge extra for a park hopper, is an odd collection of old and new.
I might love the Simpsons as much as the next Gen Xer, but a land devoted to a show that hasn’t been hip for thirty years seems an odd choice. Fortunately for them, Jurassic Park has been either rebooted or sequelled (Kinda hard to tell where the Chris Pratt movies fit in the canon) or else two of their lands straight outta 1991. What, we couldn’t get a McGyver ride?
None of those are as bad as their Toon Land, though, which is based on newspaper comics. What 21st century kid doesn’t love following the exploits of Blondie, Heathcliff, and Marmaduke? A Popeye ride! Great! And yeah, sorry kid, I can’t even begin to explain to you who Dudley Doo-Right is.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for Harry Potter and one block of Minions, Daughter might not have had a clue about any character in the entire park.
Oh, except for Marvel.
How weird is it that a property that sold to Disney twenty years ago is still grandfathered into one of their competitor parks? I remember going to Universal Orlando once before the MCU took off and Marvel Land seemed as desolate as Marmaduke Land. Now it’s buzzing and Universal has got to be begging Disney to right that MCU ship soon. Or maybe coax Disney into making a new Popeye shared universe.
We started our day in Marvel Land, making our first ride of the day the Hulk Coaster, where we became aware of a very stringent riding policy. They don’t let you take anything on the ride. No keys, no cell phone. Nothing. You have to go through a metal detector!
While I understand the premise (there was a ride at Magic Mountain where I spent the whole ride freaking out that my phone was going to fall out of my pocket and couldn’t enjoy the ride), there’s got to be a limit, right? I mean, they let me keep my glasses on, and while I’m no physicist, I have to imagine that any ride forcing my keys out of my front pocket would long ago have thrown off my glasses.
There are “free” lockers nearby for you to put your everything in. You need your ticket to open it, and our tickets were on our phones. So how the hell am I supposed to reopen said locker? The attendant gave me a piece of paper the size of a business card with a QR code that opens a locker. Somehow that paper stayed in my pocket, whereas my wallet… wouldn’t?
The Hulk ride was great though. It’s an old-school coaster. Unfortunately, many of the rides at Universal were “cutting edge.” Which pretty much just means 4-d.
What is a 4-d ride? Not to belittle Universal any further, but think Star Tours. You’re in a stationary contraption that shimmies and shakes in order to appear to follow something happening on a screen in front of you.
Universal also likes to add occasional water sprays for emphasis. The most disgusting version of this was on the Kong ride, where the water spray simulated guts and viscera from monsters exploding via machine gun fire. Refreshing!
I understand the draw of these rides. They take up substantially less real estate than a traditional roller coaster. If all the Universal Rides took up the same amount of room as, say, their Hulk Coaster or Rock-It Coaster, they would have to expand the park.
I remember when Star Tours was new. It was groundbreaking. I couldn’t figure out how the hell they made it feel like we were gong to light speed, to say nothing of timing all the little jerks and jostles with the scene playing out “through the windshield.”
That was 1989.These days, I know that they’re just tipping the container back to simulate acceleration and forward to simulate braking.
Instead of the contained unit like Star Tours, most of the Universal rides have us in individual buggies jiggling in coordination with an Imax screen. The space in between creates a strange disconnect, as if the motion on the screen and the motion of our ride are separate entities.
It triggers Wife’s motion sickness something fierce. The only way she could ride the main Harry Potter ride was by closing her eyes the whole time. She didn’t even attempt the new Harry Potter “Escape from Gringotts” ride. We opted for the Simpsons ride instead, only to find it the same damn 4-d.
Speaking of Escape from Gringotts, I didn’t expect it to be so dang spoilery. Daughter finally started getting into Harry Potter books last year. We’re making her read the books before seeing the movies. She’s finished the first two and started number three on this vacation. While a few of the other rides might have some mild spoilers, it’s not like knowing there’s a World Cup of Quidditch will somehow make book four any less enjoyable.
I kinda assumed there was an unwritten rule that rides take a generalized approach to their characters. For instance, the Guardians of the Galaxy ride at Epcot Center takes place after the first movie, because it goes in depth about the planet they saved in it, but Groot is full-sized. Either they didn’t know he was going to age slowly over the next five movies or else they figured, hey it’s a fucking ride. It should be enjoyable even for the people who haven’t consumed every goddamn ounce of intellectual property.
But as you’re standing in line for Escape from Gringotts (so it’s not even a quick thing that can be overlooked), there are a number of Daily Prophet newspapers with headlines like “Dumbledore Dies,” “Severus Snape New Hogwarts Headmaster,” and “Harry Potter: Public Enemy #1.” And, of course, now Daughter wants to know WHEN Dumbledore dies and HOW IS IT POSSIBLE they’d give it to Snape and all I can say is, “You’ve got five more books to get through and they ain’t getting any shorter.”
Can’t wait until Disneyland opens the “Iron Man is Dead” ride.
I don’t mean to harsh on Universal. In all reality, despite my minor quibbles about the Harry Potter rides, the lands themselves are phenomenal. Fully immersive in a way that even the new Star Wars land at Disneyland, which opened afterward, fails to match. We spent hours there and didn’t even feel like we’d experienced it all. The butterbeers, the wands, almost every shop from both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley presented the same way they were in the books and movies. While Daughter and I were in line for the Gringotts ride (because it was 4-d), Wife excitedly texted us that she’d found Knockturn Alley, the “dark wizard” portion of Diagon Alley.
It was a fun day. I grinned from ear to ear the entirety of the Hagrid’s Motorbike ride. Instant acceleration, both forward and backward!
Okay, fine, one more quibble. Our last ride of the day was the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, a ride with a soundtrack. Each person picks their own personal song that blares in their ears throughout the ride. You start with five or six genres and, at least when I rode it a decade ago, that genre would lead to six choices of songs. I think last time I picked an Aerosmith song.
This time, each genre only had one choice. Daughter picked pop/disco in the hopes of a Taylor Swift option, but was instead saddled with “Waterloo,” by ABBA. It’s fine. She loves that song.
My only choice in the rock/classic rock genre was, similarly, a song I love, so no harm, no foul. It was “Welcome to the Black Parade,” by My Chemical Romance. I’m sure anybody older than me might not enjoy a song from 2006 being the only option in a classic rock genre, but it’s a kick-ass, balls-to-the-wall song that anybody should be fine riding a fast roller coaster to.
Or at least the middle portion is. If you haven’t heard the song, it has a little bit of that “Bohemian Rhapsody” vibe, where it starts out a little ethereal, dramatic, and then progressively gets faster and louder. If I were to pick a random spot in the song to coincide with a fucking roller coaster, it would be right around the 1:50 spot, and about two minutes later, when the ride would be ending, there’s an instrumental key change that could transition us back into the station.
Unfortunately, they started the song at the beginning, so it was JUST getting to that rocker part at 1:45 as we were pulling back into the station. It’s like “rocking out” to “There’s a lady who knows all that glitters is gold” only to dial down your excitement level right as they’re getting to “And as we wind on down the road.”
Seriously, people, it might be hard to sync up thirty songs to a roller coaster, but if you’ve only got five, figure out how to make the soundtrack match the action.
But you know what? Universal offers to put rum in your Icee. So, in my book, they can do no wrong.
Animal Kingdom
We started our Disney day at Animal Kingdom. And while I’m not the first person to take this photo, if the photographer’s gonna put his umbrella there, I simply can’t be a grown-up.
How was the actual park? It was fine. Maybe I’m a little spoiled because the San Diego Wild Animal Park (or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days) kinda sets the standard for these open-air zoos, but Animal Kingdom is definitely worth checking out.
The major draw of the animal portion of the park was the Africa Safari. Defeinitely some cool animals there. Lions and rhinos and giraffes, oh my! Got to see some gorilla kids climbing all over their very exhausted mother. Who says they’re not related to us?
One of the coolest exhibits was a glass looking both above and below the water of a hippo exhibit. Dude was just laying there while a shit-ton of fish swam around him, including up his nose and into his ears. Gotta be some good grub forming on an animal that sits there for hours at a time. He was so stationary that people around me thought he wasn’t real, that somehow amongst acres and acres of live animals,Disney just decided to put a statue of a hippo for the fish to swarm around.
Not saying Disney wouldn’t stoop to this level if required, but considering there was no unicorn exhibit, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt that this hippo wasn’t the same one from the Jungle Cruise.
Then again, they did have a dinosaur land. Fortunately, it was mostly a kids area made to look like a fossil dig. No velociraptors. How Disney would that be? If Universal is going to keep their Marvel land, wait’ll they see how we steal their Jurassic Park mojo.
The Asia area didn’t have a bus safari, but did have a walking one. The highlight was probably the tigers.
No, you know what was the highlight of both Asia and Africa? Aviaries. Not only did they contain colorful birds, but damn, them birds was active! All swoopin’ and cawin’ the whole dang time. Not sure why I regressed to second grade vocabulary there, but I don’t know much about birds, so you’ll just have to accept, “Dang, dey got lotta dem bright, purdy burdies.”
Unlike Africa, where the animals were the main draw, Asia contained rides. Unfortunately, we limited ourselves to one hour-long line in the hopes of utilizing our park hopper. So we skipped the water rapids ride and opted for the Everest Expedition. We originally laughed at the description, “Rush through the Himalayan mountains on a speeding train while avoiding the clutches of the mythic Abominable Snowman,” because if you replace train with bobsled, it’s pretty much the exact same description as the Matterhorn.
Except it was substantially more fun than Matterhorn. Faster, less predictable, not as bumpy. At one point, you’re going backward. Hagrid’s Motorbikes at Universal did the same thing, as did Guardians of the Galaxy in Epcot. Seems that’s the “it” things in rides these days, but as far as I know, no California parks have followed suit.
We also never made it to the Pandora because, well, if dinosaurs don’t belong in a modern “Animal Kingdom,” then for sure the make-believe blue things found in Avatar don’t belong. Seriously, who the hell decided that a park that’s based on science and nature should have a land devoted to fiction? I go to the zoo to see real raccoons, not Rocket Raccoon.
I know Disney’s got to mark its territory like a dog in heat, but sheesh, dudes, do you have to be so obvious about it? It’s not like you would confuse Norway with a Frozen land or any… I’m sorry, what do they have at Epcot? I wasn’t aware Arondale was a member of the United Nations. How’d they do in the last Olympics?
Then again, if the line for the Avatar ride was ever less than 100 minutes, I would’ve put all my opposition to Avatar Land aside.
Although if I had known what the next couple hours would contain, I would’ve just stood in the damn line… Not that my upcoming pergatory was Disney’s fault.
We left Animal Kingdom around 3:30, which was later than planned, but should have still given us a solid five hours at Epcot.
Unfortunately, we lost the damn car.
Daughter was convinced we had parked in two sections away from the park gate. I thought we were three away. Wife believed, naturally, that we were parked somewhere in the middle.
We were all wrong.
But that didn’t stop us from looking for, I shit you not, more than an hour. We went up rows. We went down rows. We went IN BETWEEN rows, because it had a bumper sticker (weird for a rental car) that we’d been using to distinguish it from the bazillion other silver mini-SUVs, but Animal Planet had double spots where the first car pulls all the way up and the next car pulls in behind them, so the bumper sticker would likely be blocked by whatever car was behind us.
I swear we must have checked every damn car in the parking lot. Multiple times. Obvioulsy we didn’t, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few cars I checked ten times or more.
You know how when you first can’t find your car, your first, absurd thought is “Oh my God, it’s stolen!” and then you calm yourself down and realize, it ain’t stolen, it’s just a row or two away. Well, we went through that process initially but, after twenty minutes or so, I was back to thinking maybe it WAS stolen. But who the hell would steal a rental Chevy Trax with 20k miles on it from a Disney parking lot?
Y’know, even though we rented it from Hertz, there was a previous rental paper in it from Dollar. Maybe one of them put an APB out on a missing car that we comehow triggered coming onto a Disney property with cameras everywhere. It wouldn’t be the first time Hertz accidentally got their cusomters arrested, right?
Although doesn’t pretty much EVERY rental car in Orlando make its way to a Disney parking lot? It’s clear I just need to walk up and down the rows again. I know it’s a Chevy, but did it have the Chevy symbol on the front, too? Ooo, Ooo, I think I see it. No, that’s just the same damn Kia I’ve already been fooled by multiple times.
I must’ve cycled through that progression a minimum of five times. We split up and looked in different directions. We come back together in that “in between” section. I kept hitting the open and close and alarm buttons on the key fob. Nothing. The damn thing was just not in this dimension.
While Wife and I are mainly incredulous, Daughter is having an existential crisis. There is no car. There has never been a car. There never will be a car and we will have to hitchhike back to our hotel. Or cut out the middle man and Uber straight to jail.
After she starts bawling, we finally cut our losses and take the shuttle to Epcot. Animal Kingdom closed at 6:00, so if we waited until, say, 8:00 and took the shuttle back, there should be a lot fewer cars for our nondescript rental to hide.
Epcot
Yeah, I can’t really give you a great rundown of Epcot. We planned on getting there by 3:00, but instead it was close to 6:00.
I was also low-key stressed the whole time. Not really worried, but going through a “What is reality” fugue state. It was going to be 9:00 when I got back to Animal Kingdom and was getting windy and I didn’t have anything warm to wear and who the hell knew how long I was going to be wandering around in the mostly empty parking lot and if it turned out Hertz or Dollar or some random criminal had removed the car from the premises, then I was going to be hanging out in the parking lot till midnight. And we skipped lunch at Animal Kingdom assuming we’d do the World Showcase at Epcot, but now it was too late to do that and I was getting friggin’ hungry and the Animal Planet parking lot might or might not have the car, but it definitely didn’t have a Chick-fil-a.
But, hey kid, Spaceship Earth! It appears to have last been updated in 2005.
Which is twenty years fresher than the Fignment ride.
We did manage to utilize our 7:00 am virtual queue for the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, which is totally different than the Guardians of the Galaxy ride in California. The latter was formerly a Twilight Zone ride (built forty years after Twilight Zone was a thing) tha drops you up and down. The Florida one is like Space Mountain except the indivudal cars detach from each other and spin independently. While it was hilariously fun, it was right up to the limits of my dizziness. Good thing I rode it this time, cause I don’t know if it’ll still be fun for me in another five years.
They also blare a loud song as you’re going through the ride. We got “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” but allegedly you can also get songs like “September” or “Disco Inferno.”
And unlike Universal, the songs actually go along with the ride.
After two days of non-stop amusement parks, we were ready to get on a boat. Check back next week for my review of the cruise.
The Car
Oh, you’re probably curious about the car. Yeah, it was where we left it.
I left Wife and Daughter at Epcot shortly after 8:00- to take the shuttle back. They don’t run as often once the destinateion park is closed. If Family hadn’t heard back from me by the time Epcot closed at 9:00, they were going to shuttle to Magic Kingdom, which was open until 11:00.
The parking lot was probably less than ten percent full and, more importantly, the remaining cars were spread out. I started walking from the park’s gate instead of taking the parking tram, because we had walked to the park in the morning, and, when I was walking back to meet them at the Epcot shuttle, about halfway there, I had that, “Wait a second, this part of the parking lot looks familiar” thought.
Yeah, instead of being in between tram stops one and two, it was actually before the first tram stop. Daughter was more right than me, but all three of us were way off.
I drove to Epcot, made damn sure I remembered where I parked this time, and then went to meet them in the park. Except I had left my tickets with them. Fine, it was almost 9:00, so they would be coming out any second. After they stopped at the Starbucks. And the gift shop. And the pin traders.
Thankfully, nobody was in the mood to attempt Magic Kingdom.
The Writing Wombat 