Orlando Trip--Day 3

We started off our day at Universal Studios. The first show we attended was Shrek 4-D. In Alex's own words, "We might as well get it out of the way." As in the past, I found those pigs with the German accents in the introduction to the show incredibly annoying.

After this, we went on the Mummy ride three times in a row. This ride is not that bad at all. Granted, it is not as thrilling as riding the Hulk in Islands of Adventure, but it serves its purpose and it the most exciting actual ride in this park.

After this, we went to the Jaws attraction. It's always good for a laugh due to the different actors' varying degrees of acting skills. This one guy was decent.

We went on the Men in Black ride. It is a competitive ride where you have to shoot targets and you get points based on your performance. I lost the first time around. I had lost the battle, but not the war. I insisted on going on the ride again, determined to kick Alex's butt. But once again, Alex kicked my butt. Now I had lost the war. On a positive note for me, an old lady in the same vehicle as ours kicked Alex's ass. The picture to the right shows the scores of the people in our
vehicle. If there is no picture there yet, there will be one, soon. We have to scan it and upload it. Patience is a virtue.

Afterwards, we went to the E.T. Adventure ride. I decided I wouldn't give E.T. the easy version of my name ("Ralph"). The reason you give your name to the attendant is basically E.T. mentions your name at the end of the ride when he thanks you for your troubles. I gave my full name, "Rafael." We went through the cute little ride through E.T. land and helped E.T. get to his home planet. This ride would be me more exciting if the outcome weren't always the same. Perhaps, say, one out of every eight times you go through the ride, he turns on you. He starts calling you names, attacking you and everyone in the vehicle, and drawing blood and biting off entire limbs, not just fingers. Or at least perhaps he can utter an obscenity or a racial slur. Alas, he did a decent job of pronouncing my name and the ride ended without incident.

Then we went to see the animal show, "Animal Actors on Location!" This is a super cute show with cats, dogs, monkeys, and other animals doing all sorts of cute tricks.

We then attended the Universal Horror Make-Up Show which was absolutely hilarious from beginning to end. The point of this show was to give you an introduction to Hollywood special effects but the two guys hosting the show infused it with so much comedy that it was like attending a comedy show. The grand finale consisted of a segment designed to trick the audience into believing that this huge animatronic werewolf was being controlled by a volunteer from the audience wearing a special suit which supposedly transmitted her exact movements to the werewolf and made it mimic her. Lo and behold, the "animatronic" werewolf suddenly goes out of control and attacks the audience member. She is rescued from certain death by one of the guys hosting the show, but the werewolf goes on to maul the other host and make a bloody mess out of him. All in all, a very enjoyable show and one I wouldn't mind seeing again, preferably with the same two guys hosting it--the chemistry between them was great.

After this show, we went to see Terminator 2 3-D. This is an action-packed show which combines scenes from the actual movie, scenes filmed by the real actors specifically for this show, and live action. A humorous introduction to the new technologies being developed by Cyberdyne Corporation precedes the big show, which is still funny even after seeing it many times.

After Terminator, we went to see the Jimmy Neutron show. I can't say that this is one of my favorites. You basically sit in an auditorium that bounces around as you watch a cartoon.

We headed back to our hotel room, changed, and headed to find a park to do some jogging/walking. The first park we ended up at wanted to charge $4 just to go inside. Yeah, right. We asked Tabitha (our trusty Garmin GPS) for the location of the nearest park. Bingo! Free park. I had a decent jog up and down a street near the park as opposed to within the actual park.

For dinner, we went to Pirate's Dinner Adventure on 6400 Carrier Drive. The pre-show entertainment was not bad at all. There was a Nativity scene which had a live goat and sheep. There were appetizers being served, which included pork or veggies. Alex partook in the pork offering--several times. I had one serving of pork. There was the obligatory gift shop. Then there was a mini-show which included some magic acts like loading a lady (supposedly a random volunteer from the audience) into a cannon which was supposedly fired and she ended up being teleported into a round fishtank swimming around with a snake. Then, a curtain was pulled over the fishtank and we never found out what happened with her. Perhaps the snake had a tasty feast. We'll never know. We were eventually led into the main dining area. Unfortunately, I'm not really into pirate stories, so it was hard for me to stay focused on the story being told--especially considering I was starving and there was food (eventually) to be eaten. Some excellent acrobatics by the actors piqued my interest, as well as some rather handsome waiters, including our own. There was this elf in the story because it is a holiday storyline. This elf never failed to be annoying and unfortunately did not meet his demise throughout the duration of the rather lengthy story. As far as the meal itself, the portions were not exceptionally large but not tiny either. The food was good (I had turkey and pork with mushroom dressing [all 2 milliliters of it] on the side), and the dessert, according to Alex (he had both mine and his due to my current avoidance of carbs), was also good. Alex and I would summarize the entire experience as money well spent.