The Rest of the Adventure

So, as I mentioned yesterday, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was the "main attraction" drawing we two Slytherins to Orlando. But we did plenty of other things while we were there. We spent day one of the trip at Islands of Adventure, and came back for a few more hours on the morning of day two, and on our final night. Here's a meandering batch of comments on our non-Harry Potter experiences there:

Poseidon's Fury. This was my first experience with a "thrill ride" that was neither thrilling nor a ride. You're herded from room to room with fifty other people, standing for about three minutes in each while a too-perky blonde recites too-hokey dialogue about a too-cliché archaeological expedition. The rooms get progressively more elaborate, beginning with black light and sound effects, and eventually working up to fire and water effects. But it never truly gets interesting. Actually, if you've ever been to Casa Bonita in Denver, it's a lot like one of their waterfall sketches, but with higher production values.

It was after this ride that we began to develop our ride policy for the rest of the trip: if there wasn't a "test seat" out in front of the line ("make sure you can fit in this"), we probably didn't want to do it. I'd say by the end of the trip, I personally had refined the policy to this: if it was something pregnant women aren't supposed to do, we probably wanted to. (I've known my share of pregnant women, and I think many of them would agree that's also true of actually being pregnant.)

River Adventure. This was a water ride in the Jurassic Park area of Islands of Adventure. (It was the only ride in that area to do, since the glider flight ride requires you to ride with a child.) Amusement park water rides are frankly all the same to me. Float around looking at animatronic critters, go up a big hill, splash down the other side and get wet. There's really only a narrow window in which to be much better or worse than "average water ride." I think we both must have felt this way, as we skipped most of the other water rides for the rest of the trip without actually discussing it.

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. This is a pretty good motion simulator ride. We'd already ridden the Harry Potter ride (Forbidden Journey) by this point, and that made every other motion simulator ride seem worse by comparison. But setting that aside, this was pretty cool. Several fun moments built around interesting effects including "fire" and falling. Well worth the wait.

Doctor Doom's Fearfall. Most amusement parks these days have some form of this ride -- the "shoot you straight up a several hundred foot tower at blinding speed, then freefall back down" ride. This one tried to have some story around it about Doctor Doom harvesting the riders' fear. I don't really see the need. Though the best form of this ride is on top of the Stratosphere hotel in Las Vegas, it's still a rush in any venue. Rides like this are among the few that can still give me that "pit in my stomach"/"why am I doing this?" feeling right before launch. Great stuff.

Incredible Hulk Coaster. A good roller coaster with one really solid gimmick that makes it great. A friend told me that there was a gimmick, but not what it was. In fact, she urged me not to even look at the ride before getting on it, if possible, so as not to spoil it. And that was awesome advice. So I'll pass it on to you. Ride this ride. I'm not going to tell you why. I'll just say that if you like roller coasters, you'll really like this one.

One extra fun bonus to our experience on this ride was that some seriously bad weather was rolling into Orlando about the time we were waiting in line for it -- ominous thunder clouds and such. A recorded voice was coming over the speakers every few minutes while we waited, warning us that inclement weather would possibly force them to close the ride soon. Nevertheless, we rolled the dice and waited in the longer line to ride in the front seat.

While we were actually mid-ride, that's when the sky opened up. It started to rain, splashing in our faces (but not too hard) the entire time. Better still, just as we were upside down in the middle of a loop, a huge, multi-forked bolt of lightning split the sky on the horizon directly in front of us. It was a perfect accent that couldn't possibly have been choreographed better. And when our coaster pulled back into the boarding station, they were launching the next one completely empty -- they had just decided to close the ride for the night, and ours was the last trip to go.

Yes, stop to think about this for a moment, and we probably had a too dangerous ride. But I lived to tell the tale, and that tale was freakin' sweet. Loved this ride.

Seuss Landing. For those of you who might go to Islands of Adventure with kids, there's a whole area themed like the books of Dr. Seuss. It all looked cool, but as you'd expect, the rides there were all kid-oriented and didn't really meet our "policy." So we walked right on through.

I did feel sorry for anyone who has to work The Cat in the Hat ride, though. The whole waiting area is done up like some Rube Goldberg-esque whirling device that makes a high-pitched "Sneetch" noise about every 1.5 seconds. I practically got a headache from it before I could even get out of earshot. Stand there for eight hours a day? No jury would convict you of anything you did as a result.

Actually, there was one other problem with the Dr. Seuss area. They had a food stand named "Green Eggs and Ham." But it didn't actually serve green eggs and ham; it was just one more place to get burgers and what-not. Disappointing! What a sham! I would have tried green eggs and ham!

Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company. Okay, this isn't actually in Islands of Adventure. It's in the mall-like area just outside of the park, and the place we ate dinner that first night. I may have misgivings about the movie (Forrest Gump), but none at all about the restaurant. It was damn good. I had Shrimp New Orleans, and it was awesome. I say this as a person who isn't often moved to rave about food. This was damn good shrimp, and I really need to find a good Shrimp New Orleans recipe somewhere and attempt to recreate the experience myself some time.

So... that ought to about cover Islands of Adventure. Still more trip stories to come. At the rate I'm going, I'll probably spend more days writing about the trip than I did actually taking it. What can I say? Good times.

Oh, and one more parting thought, an observation that applies to the entire trip. Smart phones have made the experience of waiting in amusement park lines so much less painful! While you're waiting, you can surf the web, check your Facebook, play some games, and next thing you know, you're at the front of the line. What's more, there are also a number of apps available that track amusement park ride times. You can find out with reasonable accuracy how long the wait is for a ride without having to walk across the whole park to find out for yourself. And when you report a wait time for a ride you just did, you get a tiny thrill of having performed a minor public service. (Very minor.)

Of course, depending on who you're waiting with, just talking can be a decent option too.