Universal Studios Rides :(

Universal Orlando Resort
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Today was our first day at Universal Studios, even though it was a very short day we were able to ride 6 rides at Universal Studios and one at Island of Adventure.

Our experience with the Universal Studios has been so far, a very disappointing one, I watched so many youtube reviews about different rides, and these people kept raving about them.

We rode Minion, Rip Ride Rocket, The Mummy, Transformer, The Simpson, Escape from Gringotts and Hagrids.

Minions was not immersive at all and very mild.

Rip Ride Rocket, was rough and shaky, the intensity was fun but the roughness made it not as enjoyable as it should be.

The Mummy was the one that I heard the most praise about. What a disappointment that was -gimmicky, rough, short, disjointed.

Transformers was enjoyable, immersive and unpredictable, which is a good thing, but I kept being pull back from the experience, because of the screen quality, is not that it was horrible, but it wasn’t as sharp as I was anticipating to be. After riding Flight of Passage last year, that set the bar for me, into what to expect from the level of sharpness than can be achieve in these types of screens.

The Simpson was pretty much what I was expecting, a goofy ride. I may have to do it again because our daughter enjoyed it so much.

Escape from Gringotts, was so immersive, from the queue to the ride, I think it’s the best ride on Universal Studios for us, but again the voice in my head about the quality of the screen, kept me from fully enjoying it, I kept wondering why after so much work and detail was done to achieve this ride, the screens haven’t been updated.

Hagrid was just amazing, I left some comments about it here: Tracking Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure opening times - #699 by mousematt

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I agree with you about the screen quality. I love Transformers, but the clarity in Spider-Man is so much better, I wish they could find a way to make Transformers as clear as Spider-Man. Ditto with Gringotts. I love the ride, but it could be so much clearer. However, I absolutely love the Mummy and Universal overall, so I guess this is one of those “different strokes for different folks” things.

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This makes me glad we’re doing Universal (first time) before Disney (second time, kids haven’t seen FoP yet) in April.

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I guess it is a matter of opinion.

I just found Rip Ride Rocket not rough at ALL. I even payed attention last year because people complained, and it just wasn’t rough. We eventually came to the conclusion that height plays a factor. I think if you are shorter, you get more roughness on the ride. I guess. But I just love it. I also enjoyed playing some of the secret music menus…such as Rainbow Connection and Movin’ Right Along.

I also love The Mummy. Possibly my favorite ride in Universal. It is gimmicky. It is supposed to be. Noticed the details in the queue, and you’ll see that’s actually what it is going for.

Transformers, to me, is a frenetic mess. It just moves too fast to take it in. And the story doesn’t make sense. I just got off the ride going, “Uh…What was that?”

But truth is, I just don’t see Universal is at the same caliber as Disney overall. There are some great/unique experiences…but we left our 4-day trip to Universal longing to go back…to Disney. :slight_smile:

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Totally agree about RRR, I ride it several times but not back to back!

The Mummy is one of my favourite rides! We all adore it.

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I’ll give it a try to the Mummy again. Today we tried:

Hagrids, here are the details: Tracking Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure opening times - #703 by qbacreative

The Forbidden Journey: We were amazed by the magnitude of the structure and as with Escape from Gringotts, overwhelmed by the marksmanship and detail of the queue, I felt that the ride it’s self was pretty close to Escape from Gringotts, but I think we all preferred Escape from Gringotts over the Forbidden Journey.

Spider Man: we liked the ride, the quality of the screen was better than Transformers.

Jurassic Park: What we were expecting from an older ride, the last dinosaur was impressive and the last the drop was fun.

King Kong: The quality of the screens were better than the others, the magnitude was pretty impressive, the animatronic of King Kong at the end was mind blowing.

The Hulk: Oh, We love the hulk!!!, So smooth and intense, we did it 4 times. We had to leave the park around 2 pm because we had some other places to go, otherwise we would have done it a few more times.

I think we realized, that we prefer rollercoasters over dark rides, unless we are talking about Flight of Passage.

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We loved that one too, so much. The only ride I loved more was Bilge Rat Barges.

How much longer do you have at Universal? I hope the rides grow on you. I agree with you about screen quality.

Rip Ride Rocket felt rough for both me and my husband (8 inch height difference), but based on our experience at RnRC at HS (which he found rough and I started to but then didn’t) it might help to hold your head firmly back against the headrest. Once I did that on RnRC I didn’t feel so bashed about.

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I’m better if I keep my head away from the back on RnRC. But I keep it back on RRR, maybe that’s why I find it so rough. Even though they do say to keep it back.

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Bilge Rat Barges? We have something similar to that in Canada’s Wonderland, we weren’t even planning to ride it because they are all the same. Maybe we will check it out.

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As long as you don’t mind getting wet (because you will) both the water rides at Universal are great fun.

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I love both Disney’s and Universal’s parks equally, from last year at Disney we really only felt in love with a few rides, Flight of Passage, Space Mountain, Mission Space and Big Thunder Mountain and Expedition Everest.

We rode early this morning SDD, it was a walk-in, I asked the kids if they wanted to do it again, they said nah is ok, let’s go try to Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster.

Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster was fun, we are going to do it again and we have fast pass for it.

Tower of terror was a big anticipation with very low delivery, none of us reality cared for it.

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I’m afraid you shall forever be banished to the netherworld for such a view. :wink:

Great theme, great effects, a few surprises, and a drop experience that is different each time you ride it.

What’s not to love?

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Canada’s Wonderland is our home park too and Bilge Rat Barges gets you so much more soaked than the raft ride there. It’s totally unfair and I thought it was hilarious. But in August getting soaked was a good thing, not sure about your weather now.

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Dudley Do Right and Bilge Rat Barges are a log flume and a raft ride respectively, but they are easily some of the best examples of those ride types. Head and shoulders above your typical local regional park’s offerings. If you don’t like flumes or rafts at all, you may still not like them, but if you like flume or rafts even a tiny bit, I suggest you give them a try.

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My favorite rides at UOR are Gringotts, Jurassic Park, and The Mummy. I am sure I will love Hagrid’s when I get a chance to ride it. I’m not surprised you weren’t impressed by the others, but the Mummy is really solid in both thrills and atmosphere (if not theming).

I’m aghast at your lack of love for ToT. But to each their own, I suppose.

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We are at Disney today, but tomorrow we will do universal and starting at 7 animal kingdom, plus we have another two days at Universal after that, so I’ll give it a few tries to the mummy.

Now ToT I’ll try to do it again tonight, but with this one I got the feeling it will be the same reaction of, is this it? Right now we are taking a break at the Disney resort, we were prepared for the rain that never came, and the heat was making us exhausted, because we are wearing jeans, good thing we packed changing clothes.

By the way we tricked the kids yesterday, by telling them that because we had to get up at 4 AM, we were going to be sleeping by 8, but in reality was 6pm, we shifted the dinner earlier, and the kids failed to check the time on their devices. So this morning at 4am when the alarm went off, we all had sleep for 10 hours, the kids were so awake and fresh :slight_smile:

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Each to their own opinion! We felt this way about Kong, about the longest line of the day (except Hagrid’s of course) for a very mediocre experience.

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I really enjoyed Kong a lot…except the end. It is weird seeing a huge disembodied head that is about 4 times bigger than what we saw earlier in the ride. It just didn’t belong. But they did the same thing with the Forbidden Journey ride. First half is fun, and then we just get a bunch of mechanical arms with Dementors swinging down on them over and over again. I guess they ran out of money and had to figure out how to fill up a huge amount of ride space?

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Oh is that what happened? I only remember something about Quidditch and after that I was just focusing on not losing my lunch. :joy:

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Sheer coincidence, but our experience of both those rides was admittedly coloured by them breaking down whilst we were on them. We were stuck in the spider forest on FJ for about 10 mins, and for about 5 beside the huge Kong head. At least we had a chance to examine it thoroughly!