Universal Studios

 Theme park.  Two 60+ year olds.  Does anyone see a problem here?  Bazillions of people.  Miles of walking to get to the park.  Sure wish I had a step meter (and don't anyone dare tell me how to put an ap for one on my phone) for about the first time in my life.  Did you know that Universal is now divided into three different theme parks, not that you really care.  We did not end up in the one we thought we were going into.  Still not sure exactly where we went wrong.   Not to worry.  Although the rides in the different parks have different names, they are the same.   The idea for the majority of the adult oriented rides is to twist and turn you, put your body under an immense amount of G force more than what the astronauts suffer on launch, and abuse your sense of balance and equilibrium in such a way so as to get you as close to sick to your stomach as possible.

Observations.  Rollercoasters in this day and age are more radical in every way than the ones people our age are familiar with from their youth.  They are engineering marvels that do their jobs extremely well.  Designers are still able to come up with surprises.  The sojourn in the middle of  Hagrid's Magical Motorcycle coaster included supposedly running out of power and going backwards for a bit then once stopped suddenly dropping down some distance (6 or 8 feet ?) because of a botched magic spell.  Haven't done that before.  The rides that use visual effects to ruin your equilibrium are just as bad if not worse than the ones that do it using physics only.  We managed two straight coasters and two with visual effects.  I know I used to do more.   I would say it is age, but I think these coasters and visual effects are so much more radical I'm not sure I could have done many more when I was younger.  The Spiderman ride with 3D glasses was very cool and when the water villian Hydroman shows up right in front of the car and points at you throwing drips of water on your forehead it is quite real.  We also did a classic river ride-flume, this one dressed up as a misadventure in Jurassic world. 

Disney used to be king of the pre-ride line.  They kept your senses engaged in line like no other park.  Nobody else was trying very hard.  This is no longer the case.  Universal has spent time and effort on their pre-ride line artistry.  They do a great job.  This is important with lines often being thirty minutes long or longer.  And this is where we run into the theme park conundrum.  Is it worth $30 per ride to go to a theme park?  You can do more if you have the stomach, or arrive early enough and stay all day.  To do the biggies you are looking at an hour or more in line, and they are set up for longer lines than that suggesting that when the park is full lines are longer still.  Our first ride listed a 75 minute wait.   You can pay more to jump the line raising the cost of the park by 25% or so.  I think parks have pretty much reached or surpassed their optimal combination of price and entertainment value.  This is just a personal opinion, but how much more can you charge for an experience that is mostly waiting in line for a limited number of short experiences.

We had a great day.  We are ten degrees above normal here, right around 80, just a bit warmer than Iowa was a few days ago.  Beautiful weather.  Hope you missed the worst of the storms that went through.  Our thoughts and prayers are with you all.