It has been another busy summer. Lots of amusement park and fairgrounds going has occurred, but like all things, it comes to an end. Summer is over and fall is approaching with great speed, and with the calendar shifting into September, we’ve traditionally left the US. Twice that meant Scandinavia, once that entailed a visit to the South Pacific. This year, again, the Pacific is named as a destination…sorta. Loews Royal Pacific at Universal Orlando has housed us twice previously. Once again, it would be our home for a short time, this just a weekend trip thanks to an AMEX promotion earlier in the year where we scored a weekend stay for $240. After having not visited between 2007 and 2010, this is our third visit to Universal Orlando since January of 2011. Obviously, we’re pretty happy with the product they’re serving.
(before I get into discussing Universal; we stayed for the umpteenth time at the Westin DTW, this time taking them up on the offer of upgrading to a suite for $50. The room was enormous and located on floor 7. I got out of work early thanks to the the MSU/Boise St. game, which meant we had time to enjoy the massive bathroom with jacuzzi tub, the comfy bed, the televisions in the living room and bedroom, and order room service for dinner. One downside is that it had a connecting door to the people next to us that sound traveled through easily on.. We’d have been asleep earlier if not for their loud viewing of the MSU football game.)
Since our last visit, the most significant change in terms of rides have been the addition of HD projectors on Spiderman, the opening of Despicable Me, and the closing and razing of Jaws. Spidey looks better than ever with the new goggles and video, and it probably still ranks as my all time favorite dark ride attraction in any park. Meanwhile, the new Despicable Me attraction trumps the previous Jimmy Neutron ride with a much more substantial pre-show, really gorgeous looking CGI and a bigger screen for the ride, and the entertaining as hell “Minion Dance Party” at exit. Universal has really outdone themselves here, in my opinion.
The parks are currently undergoing a pretty substantial transformation, both in terms of operations and new builds. Oft closed restaurants like Green Eggs And Ham have finally opened for regular business rather than just operating during holiday periods. The Mythos menu that was so briefly dumbed down has returned to what it was of years past. There are still areas that are used sparingly/not at all which seem to be good candidates for something to happen – the old Island Skipper Tours locations or the Toon Lagoon Theater, for instance.
Right now Universal is clearly more concerned with building giant E-ticket level attractions. The rush on the mysterious site expected to be Transformers was evident to us given that cranes were in action throughout the entire Labor Day weekend. Over at both IOA and Universal, lots of earth has been moved in preparation for the new Harry Potter areas, and there was even steel going up for the frame of some sot of building. This kind of monster expansion at Universal (and at Sea World, where the gigantic Antarctica is being built) contrasts greatly with the somewhat anemic Fantasyland expansion that is taking an astonishingly long period of time out in Reedy Creek. That isn’t to say that Little Mermaid probably won’t be good or that Disney’s knockoff of Butterbeer won’t be tasty, but there’s nothing going there that excites me. Antarctica excites me. Transformers (crappy IP as I think it is) excites me. A Gringott’s coaster excites me. Magical Dining Experience filled with screaming children? Not terribly exciting. Disney World may always be playing from the lead in terms of attendance, but creatively they’re clearly being outflanked in every way.
Speaking of dining experiences, that’s one of our favorite things about Universal. It is very much unlike Disney World’s dining, which for any sizable trip becomes a morass of advanced planning and meal credit calculus. Instead we simply show up to restaurants and get tables, then eat very good food. This was a trip for gorging on the good stuff; we ate sit down meals more often than counter service. On the grounds of the Royal Pacific, we had meals at Jake’s American Bar And Grill our first day, which serves good though somewhat unexciting continental cuisine. Dessert there was actually very good, as they had some of the most mammoth cake pops we’ve seen. It isn’t necessarily amazing in and of itself, but it is certainly good quality.
Elsewhere in the resort is the more exciting Tchoup Chop. It’s a Emeril Lagasse restaurant that fits in well with the overarching theme of the hotel/resort by offering his interpretations of southeast asian inspired dishes. Both of our meals were exceptionally good. My wife enjoyed the vegetarian entree and a salad while I had the escargot followed by the yellow fin tuna. Dessert there is always a treat – I have finally reached the point where I feel satisfied about the Banana Creme Pie at the Emeril’s restaurants and can branch out. My wife’s had the guava/creme cheese dumplings and I admit being a little jealous of them.
We found ourselves at more new to us restaurants in the parks themselves. Over in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, we made a stop in at Three Broomsticks for breakfast. My wife Porridge breakfast was a little plain. Some brown sugar would have been nice, but perhaps it isn’t Harry Potter canon? I went the adventurous route and ordered the traditional english breakfast. I considered it somewhat of an apology to the British for not having eaten more during my time at a B&B in Skegness out of shookness to other cultures. The items seem strange to an American palate for breakfast, so I can see why people wouldn’t be rushing to get black pudding (aka blood sausage) unless they had a passport from within the Commonwealth, but the items put in there are pretty darn good. Compared to the usual sweet breakfast I’d be eating I was happy to have such a change of pace.
Not far away at Universal Studios proper, we enjoyed dinner at Lombard’s in anticipation of seeing the new Universal night show, “Universal Cinematic Spectacular”. Much like was the case with the World of Color dinner package at California Adventure, you eat off the menu, you enjoy a large number of desserts, and then watch the show from a specially cordoned off area. That is where the similarities end.
First, the meal. As far as comparing the meal we had at Ariel’s Grotto, I keep in mind that the package has since been moved to Wine Country Trattoria and is no longer seafood oriented. I will admit that the cippino I had at Disney was better than the snapper I ate at Universal. Then again, you can’t order the cippino anymore and I can order the snapper (which was delicious), so maybe that is in favor of Universal. As best I could tell, my wife was about equal on enjoying her pasta dish as from either, and that we could order an individual appetizer for each of us rather than simply command the existence of a veggie plate/antipasti tower was kinda nice, TBH. I got to enjoy shrimp cocktail for myself, and since I like shrimp, that’s a win in my book.
Second; the restaurants. Ariel’s Grotto was elaborately themed inside, probably because it is intended to be a character dining experience first and foremost. To that end, it is a bit tacky compared to Lombard’s. Lombard’s has an impressive bronze fountain and glass block floor in the entry way, a large aquarium in the main dining room, lots of really cool nautical touches throughout, and basically just looks cool. Ariel’s Grotto was designed for kids and kids at heart. Lombard’s looks like a place adults would eat, probably because it is.
Next – dessert. Well, let’s tie this into location for the show as well. I might as well, because the two are so intimately intertwined at Universal. With the World of Color dinner package, an enormous dessert presentation is brought to the table, regardless of the size of the table. It is very good. Following that, you are handed a ticket which allows you entry to the World of Color dining area out in the masses at the waterfront. For the show, you stand in a crowd of people who exist in a maze of ropes and barriers. Universal does this completely differently. Lombard’s is on the waterfront where the night show takes place, so you simply walk onto the deck after eating (or present your ticket from purchase of the dinner package). There you find a dessert buffet of all you can eat sweets in a vast variety of kinds, all of which are delicious, as well as coffee and tea to enjoy as well. You proceed to find a table or take one of the Adirondack chairs facing the screens/fountains, and watch in unhurried, relaxed, uncrowded fashion. Meredith indicated that this was a bit like the Fantasmic dessert grouping of yore in how it operated, and since she raves about that to this day, that’s high praise.
The shows themselves are similar in nature; Disney and Universal have combed over their IPs for clips from movies to project onto water with dancing fountains and pyro accompanying. Sitting in a chair, not having baby carriages pushed into my legs or needing to try and shift my body around to see over or around people to see the show probably helped me to appreciate Universal’s show more to some degree. I feel as though that admission is fake and intended to lessen the blow that ardent WOC fans will feel by me saying I liked the Universal one more, but I said it anyways with the expectation that this sentence will not be read. But anyways, the Universal show is, IMO, better. If I’m going to watch video collage, and I have to compare to who hits me more emotionally effective bad ass villian, Scar and Jafar will not get the same emotional response as Hannibal Lector. Maybe when Scar’s rising to king of the Serengeti was a good thing? Perhaps he reduced spending among lions and ended years of cronyism.
Ultimately Disney’s laser light spectacular is based almost entirely around children’s movies and while the good ones tackle important themes, they are simple themes because they are for kids. Universal generally employed clips from movies for adults that I actually watch with characters I care much more about because being in adult movies, they are often more fleshed out. If anything, it came across less as a promotional victory lap than World of Color did. I will admit that the scale of World of Color seems greater, which means it acts as a demo of the technology on a greater scale than Universal’s show, which actually seemed to follow more of a narrative. Add in all you can eat dessert and a chair, and I’m a big fan.
For what we had discussed in advance, we spent little time in Citywalk. Aside from our last meal at Universal (a visit to Pastamore, which itself is pretty good and easily the equal to or superior of Disney’s Mama Melrose’s, for instance), we just never found ourselves spending time there. Other people did – there was a live DJ on Saturday night and people were going ham dancing to the hottest dubstep songs that sound like robots fucking on the charts. I really wanted to go hit up the new mini golf locations, but that’s probably going to wait until we return to Orlando in December. Either it was too busy or we were too hot. Oh, and the cigar shop. That too.
The Royal Pacific itself isn’t really showing much of its age yet. The room we had wasn’t much different from any other that we’ve had. The toilet seemed to have some sort of seal issue with a slow leak, and I had to have the staff come and snake the shower while we were at the parks due to a slow drain, but they came and did it no questions asked and took care of our issue. The beds are very comfy and with the big windows and interior corridors, it feels like a real hotel/resort and not a glorified motel. There’s still really good bathroom amenities,and there’s still a full mini bar in the room that one can choose to pillage, along with a coffee maker (K-Cups!). That all matters to me. I’ve probably said it a hundred times but it still rings true.
The hotel pool may not have a faux-sandy bottom like Yacht and Beach Club at Disney World, but it does have full bar service, wait staff (hungry? get the nachos), cold towels, available cabanas, several hot tubs, umbrellas, and a shit load fewer children. You can even go to other hotel pools if you so desire, like Hard Rock’s with its underwater sound system. Basically, we still love the resorts there.
Another thing we encountered in the park was the AMEX Lounge in Universal. It isn’t a giant space, but it is air conditioned, quiet, filled with reading material and comfy chairs/sofas, and has free water and snacks. This is a little thing but little things can matter a lot. Its too bad IOA can’t have something similar.
Some other thoughts about various rides we went on:
-Rip Ride Rockit: Build a largely linear ride where the coaster’s pacing is broken up by block brakes and people will hate it and complain. Build a compact coaster where the coaster’s pacing is broken up by block brakes and people will demand sainthood for its designer. At this stage of the game Rip Ride Rockit is actually more reliable than the Edmonton Mindbender or Thriller, and is also more reliable than Dreier Looping was at Flamingoland. And it is lapbar only, unlike any of those rides. Just saying. Oh, and now that Universal operates it and Despicable Me an hour prior to opening, you can crank out ride after ride on it. We had probably two solo rides in the front seat thanks to that.
-Simpsons: I don’t know how or why, but this ride keeps getting better and better to me. I could probably spend all day looking at the queue line or watching the loops of characters in the loading areas before even going on the ride itself. I do need to get a Bort nametag.
-Men In Black: One day, people will care enough about lightgun dark rides that there will be a schism. Someone will point out that what Toy Story Mania (while fun) can basically be replicated in the home with a office chair, an XBox 360, and a 3D plasma TV because it is nothing but a bunch of video screens, while Men In Black had a shit load of money spend on it for actual animatronics and big stuff that moves. And people will FITE FITE FITE on the intarwebz about “magic” instead of recognizing that amusement rides are nothing but very complex machines intended to get people to go somewhere and buy highly marked up popcorn. I am paraphrasing here from what someone else (Bill Bussone on rec.roller-coaster) once said but I’m sure he won’t mind.
-Bluto’s Bilge Rat Barges: Somehow this has become one of our top 5 rides at the resort. Its been my favorite raft ride for awhile now. I can’t stop smiling when I’m on it. The theming is ridiculous, the amount of wetness involved is simply over the top, on and on and on.
-Hulk: Does everyone just talk about this ride not being a crazy intense B&M coaster because of the post mid-block section? It is pretty much nonstop g-loading from the time it exits the launched lift to the time you hit the flat spin.
The only major gripe we have about Universal is that ultimately we have to return to our fairly mundane lives and fly home. Taking a town car from the hotel lessened the blow a little, but you still end up with a long drive back to the airport, which is always crazy and has a security line that makes me want to punch people who fly once every three years because it is Orlando. And the flight home always sucks and is full and has tons of people with oversized carry ons and screaming infants that I want to smother with pillows because it is Orlando. I tend to think that no park gets me relaxed and in a vacation mode as quickly as Universal though, and it makes all the transit and BS involved to get there and back worth it, even on a trip this short.
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