Saturday, March 25, 2006

Universal Orlando - 03/18/06

On March 18th I took a trip to Orlando, FL to meet up with my sister and nephew and spend a few days at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure.

My vacation began at 7:05 am on a Greyhound bus in Miami. Not my favorite way to start a vacation but on this trip it wasn't so bad. The worst part was the 20.00 cab ride from the bus station to the hotel. Ouch!

I arrived in Orlando at the Rodeway Inn International at around 1:00 pm and since Vera and Steven were still quite a few hours away I decided to head on over to Universal to pick up my season pass and get my picture taken. It actually turned out to be a good thing that I did since it took almost 2 hours just to get the pass and picture done. It was extremely busy at the park that day because Universal is celebrating Mardi Gras every Saturday in February, March and April.

By 3:00 I was ready to start having fun. I got in line for The Incredible Hulk Coaster and after about 30 minutes they started announcing "technical difficulties". After about 15 minutes of hearing that announcement I decided to head over to The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride. I've got 4 days to catch up with the Hulk, so I'm in no hurry...

This was my first time at a theme park alone so I had forgotten that Universal and Islands had single rider lines with much shorter wait times. I realized it only after I had been in the Spider-Man line for 30 minutes. Oh well... next time I'll know. So immediately after finishing the first ride I skipped on through the single rider line and 5 minutes later I was riding again. MUCH better than waiting 45 minutes the first time... trust me, no matter how fun a ride is... nothing is fun enough to wait 45 minutes for.

So I spent a couple hours at Islands then went over to Universal for a while. I had dinner at The Monster Cafe and hit some more rides. Men In Black is always fun, and The Revenge of the Mummy is really cool. The park closed at 8:00 that night so I started heading for the taxi area around 7:30 and was back at the hotel pretty quick. I relaxed for a bit while I waited for Vera and Steven to show up. They arrived at around 10:30 and soon we got to bed so we could get an early start on Sunday.

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