Kids Again
by Scott Hardie on May 11, 2015
Kelly is a big Kids in the Hall fan, so I bought her tickets to see them for our first anniversary. And since they were playing at Universal Studios in Orlando, we decided to make a day of it at the theme park, which became a whole weekend getaway. And since I like sharing my opinions at length on the Internet, here's what I thought of each part.
Downtown Disney: We stopped here first on Friday night. I used to keep up with Disney World news, but I must be way out of the loop now, because I had no idea that the whole place was under renovation. We wanted Legos for a Lego board game that we own that doesn't come with enough Legos to play it properly, but Kelly's dad spontaneously shipped us fifteen pounds of Legos from Kelly's childhood just before the trip, so we couldn't bring ourselves to buy more in the Lego store. Every restaurant was slammed, so we wound up at the utterly meh Earl of Sandwich and stood in a 45-minute line for a couple of so-so sandwiches, wishing that Aaron Shurtleff would show up behind us again to make the meal better. We weren't too impressed by the Disney stores since we've seen them all before, but on the way out, we found a soap and bath supplies store that Kelly couldn't resist. We were off to a decent start.
Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts: We started our day at the newest and most popular ride, based on the final Harry Potter film. The technology has really evolved and it now looks more or less like the movie characters are in front of you (blurry and glowing but basically real), but that's part of the problem, because the ride design was really lazy on this one, as if they were relying on the presence of Daniel Radcliffe and other actors appearing in front of you in costume to be amazing enough. Let me put it this way: One of the reasons why I gave up playing the Final Fantasy video games is that they became all cutscenes. You'd walk ten feet, and watch a cutscene of characters interacting, then you'd walk another ten feet, and watch a cutscene of the characters battling, and you'd wonder if the game was ever going to let you play. This ride was like that: There was very little motion or interaction for the audience. You'd roll along the track and stop to watch Harry and Hermione, then roll along some more and stop to watch Bellatrix and Voldemort, then roll along some more and stop to watch one of the Weasleys and a dragon. Maybe I was just cranky because I barely fit into the vehicle: It took a good minute for them to snap the safety bar down onto my fat belly, but worse was that I was too tall for the ride and my knees pressed into the seat ahead of me such that I couldn't sit down. My butt was an inch off of the seat and my knees supported my weight for five painful minutes. This did not help with the day of walking that lay ahead of me. What a disappointment.
Diagon Alley: The area around the ride was a big improvement. We enjoyed the delicious butterbeer and the weird shops, which are basically the same as the first Harry Potter themed area at Islands of Adventure, but still good. Our favorite part was the interactive wand effects: Kelly bought a replica wand from the movies, and various stations around Diagon Alley had interactive effects if you stood in front of them and waved the wand in a particular gesture, bringing a static windowfront scene to life with your "magic." What a neat idea to realize the Harry Potter concepts. The only downside was that the heavy crowds meant that nearly every station had someone there before we got to it, so the magic effect was usually spoiled for us before we got to activate it ourselves, but a few stations had multiple effects at random to keep that fresh. Great idea, Universal.
Men in Black Alien Attack: This ride was fun but dated. Not only has the technology come a long way since shooting rides were invented, but the presence of Rip Torn in the queueing videos felt like an artifact, since his legal troubles made him persona non grata in Hollywood, especially in family entertainment. The gift shop leaned heavily on the talking pug, to little surprise.
The Simpsons Ride: This was strangely bifurcated, like two teams worked on it. One team built the queueing area and thoroughly understood The Simpsons, with new videos completely in keeping with the show's humor and some greatest-hits reels of the Simpson family visiting other theme parks and a general sense of sarcastic cynicism about corporate entertainment being hollow and amoral. A different team built the ride itself and had only a loose grasp on The Simpsons, which doesn't feel at all like part of the show and in which the characters don't behave like themselves. I almost wonder if the ride was designed for some other property and was modified to accommodate the Simpson family when some deal when sour. I liked the ride fine; it was just strange that it didn't seem to understand the show at all and just wanted to serve up a big empty entertainment, in perhaps the same sense that the Star Trek: The Next Generation movies didn't understand their show and just wanted to please everybody with action. The themed area around the ride was kind of great, and it was especially eerie to walk into Moe's Tavern and see it come to life.
Terminator 2: 3-D: You could call this show dated because the Terminator brand has evolved long past it, but T2 remains a favorite movie of my teenaged years and I've always wanted to see this, and it didn't disappoint at all despite its dusty old special effects and occasionally corny humor. (A villain called the T-1,000,000? Come on.) There's just something special about seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Edward Furlong having another adventure together that cheers me. I loved this.
Shrek 4-D: We didn't plan on this in advance, but other rides were closed and the line was short, so in we went. I realize this makes me sound like an AARP member, but what is it about theme parks and cranking up the volume? The announcer couldn't have been louder if she had shouted into a bullhorn hooked up to another bullhorn that was right next to your ear. The show itself was fitfully entertaining, with the standard fart jokes and other nonsense that make Shrek what it is. The gift shop missed out on the opportunity to offer Gingerbread Man cookies.
Twister: Ride It Out: Now THIS is a dated attraction. Bill Paxton and a very young-looking Helen Hunt speak to us on blurry VHS queueing videos about the dangers of tornadoes, so much so that you feel like they should donate part of the gift shop proceeds to charity or something. Then the show is hyped and you're primed to see a tornado tear apart a small town in front of you, but it's mildly windy, mildly wet, and some objects slowly move around on their own on the stage. Lame. This couldn't have wowed audiences two decades ago when it opened, could it have? If so, theme parks have really come a long way.
Transformers: The Ride 3-D: I have zero love for the brand, which impacted my enjoyment a little because I knew none of the characters. But I have to say, this was a really well-designed thrill ride and genuinely fun from start to finish, one of the best attractions at the park. It even made me want to see the Transformers movies despite their reputations for being terrible, which is a small miracle. How was it that the gift shop did not sell actual Transformers toys? Perhaps I missed them.
Hogwarts Express: Kelly demanded to ride this train between Universal's two parks as soon as she heard about it. The train ride was fine if uneventful, strangely preferring to show us CGI scenes from Harry Potter's world on a screen instead of showing us real stuff outside of windows that was built just for the ride. We waited in line longer for this than any other attraction, for reasons that baffled me. It would have been faster to walk out of the park, through CityWalk, and into Islands of Adventure than to stand in line for this short train ride between them.
Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man: We've enjoyed this before and had to ride it again. For our money, this is the best attraction at all of Universal Orlando. It's basically the same ride as Gringotts, a series of encounters with characters, but it understands that we in the audience need to interact with the encounters as if we're part of the events. Flying through a simulated New York like Spider-Man and "battling" his airborne enemies really brings the whole concept to life, just like the better parts of the movies. This ride is worth the price of admission to Islands of Adventure by itself.
Hard Rock Cafe: We've never eaten at one of these before, but we were well aware of their reputation for being LOUD and expensive and tourist-trappy, so those aspects didn't bother us. The meal was delicious and just what we needed to unwind from a long hot day of walking around. Seeing so much classic rock iconography and videos on the walls made it feel like eating dinner inside of Rock Block.
Kids in the Hall: FANTASTIC. The audience was clearly made up of fans because they went nuts with a loud standing ovation as soon as the Kids took the stage, but the warm welcome was fully justified: I haven't seen a live comedy show this funny in a very long time, maybe ever. The scripted stuff was great, the improvised asides and stage business and Kids cracking up between lines was great, and the audience interaction with beloved characters was great. It was a short show at around 75 minutes, but every minute was hilarious. My only complaint was the terrible seating inside the Hard Rock Live theater, where the chairs were as small as airplane seats without armrests. I sat on the end of our row and was squeezed out so far that I only had one butt cheek on the chair, having to half-stand the whole time with my elbow jabbed into Kelly's ribs beside me, so it was a torturous physical experience for both of us, and left us both cranky for the rest of the night despite having just seen a hilarious live show. I can't speak more highly of the Kids, but I doubt that I'll ever go back to that theater.
We slept in on Sunday and explored Celebration, Disney's fake-real small town that seems like it must have the worst HOA restrictions on the planet. Here's taking a moment to praise our hosts at Holiday Inn, who had a good breakfast buffet and a fun game room and who upgraded us to a full apartment-grade suite when our original room was unavailable. I don't know if we'll return to Universal Studios again, but I know where we'll stay if we do.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
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