My universal resort experience (long post)
Just got back from 5 nights at Universal's Endless Summer, Surfside. Here are my thoughts/opinions:
Some background, it was just me partner and I. We're both less than 40 years old and have no children, so generally we skipped water rides and kids attractions.
Day 1: Islands of Adventure Overall feeling -- kickass park that could use some updates. This is the park to go to for thrill rides. We started the day with early entry and, like everyone else, made our way over to Hogsmeade. Hagrids already had a 90 minute wait time. We had English breakfast (next time I would do the American breakfast), with pumpkin juice (sooooo good) and butter beer (disappointing to me), then went to explore. We decided to see the Ollivander wand selection and thought that it was neat. Then we got our wands.
We then waited for forbidden journey, for about 45 minutes. (This was the first experience with frustrating lockers, so I'm going to sidebar for a second. Your best bet is to make sure you have a bag that can fit into a space that is roughly 6"x12" and to get a locker ticket from an attendant if you used a virtual ticket. Use the ticket to open the locker and get all your stuff inside then use that same ticket to get your stuff back. You can keep using that same ticket throughout the day. There are no free large lockers, the cost $2 for the ride, then $3 every 30 minutes for a max of $20. Frustrating for me was that my bag only barely fit into the locker so every time there was a bit of loading and unloading into multiple lockers.) Waiting wasn't a problem because there is so much to see and it really helps guide you into the premise of the ride. The ride itself was exceptional with thrills and great 3d elements.
After that we moved into Jurassic Park. Another excellent area that captures the feeling of actually being in Jurassic Park.
The first ride we went to was the velocicoaster and since the wait was over an hour we decided to try the single rider line. In this instance it was a mistake because there were so many single riders and perfectly numbered groups we ended up waiting longer. So the single rider line can be a gamble. But it was a killer ride. Probably the best roller coaster in all of the parks, and one of the best roller coasters in the world.
Then we waited for the Jurassic Park River Adventure for 75 minutes. It was hot with not enough engagement happening in the line compared to other rides we'd been on. Just TVs playing the same dated 90s promo video over and over again. Once we got into the complex, the storytelling came back and we started the ride. This is a great river adventure ride with a ton of great animatronics and storytelling with a strong finish with the plunge. We got a little wet, but nothing too crazy. The front row seemed to get drenched.
For timing purposes, it was a little after noon at that point. I had been keeping an eye on hagrid's and it had only grown into the realm of about 180 minutes at that point. So we had a corn dog and kept going.
The next ride was Skull Island: Reign of Kong and it had been down, so we lucked out and got in with a shorter 30 minute wait. This is another ride that I was really impressed with the stroytelling while we waited. Awesome animatronics guiding you along the way to robot-driven busses. The ride itself was exciting with 3d and thrill elements and the best animatronic in any of the parks.
As I mentioned earlier, we don't have kids, so we just walked through the old-timey comic book area. My overall thought there was the shelf life on it is quickly running out. I am only barely nostalgic for the Sunday comics and I can't imagine most kids today feel any affinity toward Popeye and li'l Abner, but what do I know? The wait times for Dudley do right and the bulge rat barges we're both over an hour, so we skipped those.
On into Marvel land. Here's another area that will likely need to be completely redone once the license with marvel runs out. I'm really nostalgic for this time period of marvel, but can't imagine kids get that excited now that we've had 20+ years of avengers and everything else. Spiderman ride holds up with fun 3d and minor thrill elements along with great storytelling and a retro office to walk through.
Dr. Doom's free fall is not that great, though the videos they play in line are cool.
At this point it was like 3-4 in the afternoon and all we really wanted to ride was hulk and hagrid's. Hulk had dropped down to about 35 minutes and hagrid was still hovering over 100.
Hulk was awesome. Another world-class coaster with a fun wait (and some Easter eggs sprinkled in). Maybe I'm crazy, but I think I liked the old one just a little better. But it's been a long time, so maybe I'm just remembering with rose-colored glasses.
After hulk it was just the long wait for hagrid's so we circled back around.
While we didn't spend much time there, Dr. Suess land is really well done. Like walking through a Dr. Suess book. I'd imagine it's timeless and that kids and adults alike will love it.
The lost continent was neat in style but very much lacking in substance. The only "ride" is Poseidon's Fury. Granted it's a kid's thing, but holy crap does it need to be razed and turned into something more interesting.
Hagrid's was a pleasant surprise. I knew it would be fun but I didn't realize all of the different elements that came together to make it my favorite ride I've ever ridden. Truly a masterpiece of thrills and storytelling.
From there we left to make our 7:30 dinnere reservation at Antojitos. In our experience the food was meh and the service was terrible. We had a good waiter, but drinks took forever. I'm also fairly certain that he thinks Colorado is on the east coast because he said he'd spent some time in North Carolina after asking where we're from.
After dinner we went back to see Hogsmeade at night, finish doing some of the magical elements we missed, and watch the light show. All of which were fun and worth going back for.
Step total: over 20,000 or about 10 miles.
Day 2: Volcano Bay Now neither of us identify as water park people so we weren't super excited about Volcano Bay. But the tickets were basically free as part of the promotion for the hotel stay and other park tickets. So I sprung for premium seating and intended to treat it like a relaxing pool day.
I misread the early entry so we got there an hour earlier than we needed to. So we walked over to the Adventura to grab a coffee and breakfast and then walked back. At that point they were letting people into the park, so we made our way over to the concierge and found our seats and then started walking around.
The Tapu Tapu system there is awesome. Essentially if a ride has a wait, you check in and then can go around and ride anything without a wait until the Tapu Tapu buzzes at which time you go back to the ride to finish your wait. You can also connect your credit card to it and use it to make purchases.
We checked into the krakatau aqua coaster (35 minutes) and made our way over to the body plunge, which was ride now. We climbed the 200 steps to the top of the volcano and pretty much immediately stepped into the tube. In this ride, the bottom drops out and you slide essentially straight down to the bottom of the volcano. Talk about a thrill. That's when we were hooked on the water park.
I will side tangent here, and this is the part that several of you will roll your eyes at my over-wokeness and I'm okay with that. My only major gripe about this park is they appropriate a lot of indigenous Pacific islander names and traditions without providing any context to the actual peoples. For example the body plunge invites you to "join the centuries old tradition of honoring the volcano god..." I doubt that the tradition has anything to do with the giant decades old volcano at the water park, and the least they could do is a add a sign at the bottom that explains the origin of the tradition and the culture it relates to. There are several examples of this throughout the park and I see it as a missed opportunity.
Over the course of the day we were able to ride pretty much everything. I won't go ride-by-ride but some general takeaways we're: Generally the blue ride is more thrilling than green or yellow. The lazy river is not lazy... Too many random squirts and drips for it to be truly lazy. We preferred the fearless river because at least you knew what you were in for. The toasted coconut pineapple was our favorite cocktail. The sushi wasn't worth it. The premium seating was totally worth it ($199).
All-in-all Volcano Bay was our favorite day, which was surprising.
That night we ate at Big Fire and it was absolutely wonderful. Though for having such an extensive old fashioned menu, they weren't exceptional.
Day 3 - universal studios Florida.
I actually don't have a lot of good things to say about this park.
We started by riding Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket, the only roller coaster in the park. It starts out really exciting, but is not super thrilling throughout. Plus it banged my nuts pretty hard a few times. Every roller coaster we rode in islands of adventure was better.
From there we moved along to race through New York, which was fun but less of a ride than a 3d experience, which essentially held true for most of the rides in universal studios. Most rides were either straight up 3d or like spiderman in islands of adventure.
After that we rode transformers, which was good. On par with spiderman.
One of the saving graces of universal is the shows. We had a lot of fun with Blues Brothers (surprising because I certainly didn't care). Sing it, Marilyn Monroe, and beat builders were also fun.
After beat builders we went to fast and furious which is laughably awful. This was also our first experience seeing how fast past holders get a bit more opportunity than non fast past holders. They were able to get closer to the cars. But seriously this ride is terrible. Bad storytelling and more time telling you not to use your cell phone than the actual exciting part of the ride.
From there we headed into the saving grace of universal studios, diagon alley. It was better than Hogsmeade, and Hogsmeade was awesome. More shops, more shows, precious shade. We had lunch at the leaky cauldron (you order on the app and then they guide you to a table). I had scotch eggs (served with a small beet salad, both were really good) and my partner had the meat pies (he said he would skip the seafood pie next time) with more pumpkin juice and the fizzy ale (pretty good, though I can't do the little boba balls).
We explored and watched both shows, the tales of beedle the bard and Celestina warbeck and the banshees which were great.
Then we hopped into the 75 minute wait for escape from gringotts. It started out fine, but in the back queue the line just seemed to stop. 90 minutes in we were still standing there. Nothing on the app said there was a delay, but over the speaker they said that the ride had returned to normal operation. It was another hour before we were on the ride. The waiting area was another great example of good storytelling with fun animatronics and other props (express pass holders get closer to the animatronics than non express pass holders) with the last goblin on the left looking remarkably like Ted Cruz. The ride itself was fun, though closer to transformers or Spiderman than forbidden journey.
At that point it was getting later in the day and I wanted to see the Bourne stunt show, so we headed past MIB and the Simpsons to the front of the park.
The Bourne show was ridiculously amazing. The things they did seemed impossible using a mix of video and practical effects.
We went to the makeup show after that and it was fun and funny. There were a lot of cool props and things to see in the queue area, with a few that you couldn't get close to without an express pass.
We worked out way back to the Simpsons and while Springfield is really well built out and fun to walk through, especially as a Simpsons fan, the ride itself was another let down. Just another 3d thing.
MIB was experiencing technical difficulties so we went back to Diagon Alley to see it at night, which was also really cool. Protip: the dragon shoots fire every 10 minutes, on the 10.
We noticed MIB was back up about 10 minutes before park closing. I wanted to see the light show so I didn't know if we wanted to ride. The attendant told me the ride would be better than the show, so we did that. MIB had the most immersive experience with cool animatronics and storytelling.
The light show was happening as we left the park and looked like it would have been fun to sit and watch.
Universal studios compared to the other parks did terrible with providing shady spots in most of the cities. There also wasn't enough differentiation between the cities and all of the jaws stuff seemed odd without there actually being any jaws stuff.
As expected we skipped all of the kids stuff so I can't say anything about minions or woddy wood pecker.
Day 4: Out and about
After we left universal, I went to get a rental car. We spent day 4 driving over to Daytona beach for a beach day and sunset cruise. As an unexpected bonus we climbed the Ponce De Leon Lighthouse on a whim and saw a Space X launch.