The Honeymoon part II

Once we got the early morning call out of the way we had a pretty relaxing day, not getting to Universal until about 6 o clock. This worked very nicely as parking is free after 6...prior to that it is $11.00.

Huh? Why $11? That is a number that makes no sense at all. You know before going to the park ol' tourist pappy runs to the bank, hits the ATM and summons up a pile of what...eleven dollar bills? 8s and 3s? No, you know he is getting 20s. So why 11 bucks? The extra dollar per car really worth handing out packets of 9 bucks in change over and over and over? Well, actually...yeah, it probably is. Thousands of cars park there every day so every dollar they add to the fee is literally worth hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. Even better, that $11.00 is carefully figured...the taxes are included in that and they somehow balanced it so parking fee + taxes = 11 bucks...so the fee is like 10.2753 or some ridiculous figure like that and the rest goes to the State of Florida. I just want to say, "You are welcome" to some 90 year old geezer sitting on a beach blanket under an umbrella sipping mohitos using Social Security money I donated to the State of Florida so I could park close to Universal Studios.

Anyway, we had a great time touring the park. Neither Emily nor I are really "Amble around enjoying the ambience" people...we are there to RIDE.

The first ride we went on was the Hulk, a roller coaster I had told her took off really fast. We ended up near the end of the train. It did not, in fact, start out quickly...it did the typical coaster crawl up. I was feeling bad, like I had mis-remembered it and gave her bad information when suddenly the last car in the train hit the slope...and THEN it took off, going zero to 55 by the crest of the climb, then instantly into a corkscrew. She loved it, it was awesome.

The best ride, though, was Ripsaw Falls, a ride with a Dudley Do-right theme. The walk through the line is well-done thematically, fun to look at with just the right amount of cheese. The ride itself continues on with Dudley riding backwards on his horse, stuff like "Scenic Overlook Ahead" on one sign, then an opening in the fence marked with a sign saying, "Overlooked Scenery", a picture of a penguin on a sign saying "Crossing", then a picture of him being held up by another penguin on a sign saying "Double Crossing". The ride takes you through an animatronic episode of Dudley with Snidely Whiplash performing villanous deeds as you do some roller coaster stuff and some boat stuff to a final long drop/rise/drop that gets you soaked and adrenaline-filled at the same time. Awesome.

The other truly memorable ride there is the Dueling Dragons, 2 coasters that intertwine, at one passing within 18" of each other.

Later in the week we went to Sea World which is definitely more a "soak in the ambience" type park. One show was exceptional as at the beginning a live cat & mouse show where a mouse runs across the stage into a trapdoor...a few seconds later a cat runs across the stage into the same door...the mouse runs out of a different door, soon after the cat does...the cat keeps "chasing" the mouse through several doors until the mouse runs into a doghouse, the cat pursues...then scampers back out as a barking dog emerges. It was really cute and funny. There were lots of other routines performed by animals and all the animals are rescued from various shelters, so that was a cool touch. The grand finale saw about 50 animals involved in a carefully timed sequence where each animal would open a door for a succeeding animal until one opened a door to a skunk which went into a "beach house" and all the animals sprinted out of it, the last being a pot-bellied pig that "got stuck" in another dog house...and as soon as it got stuck, all you could see was it's behind which was then covered with a flag saying "The End". Good show.

Right after we saw the Shamu show Emily got the call we had been expecting/dreading...her Dad had passed away the previous day (Wednesday). So we went into scramble mode to make sure she could attend the funeral and called it a day. Actually, we didn't...after we got everything arranged, about 10:45 we decided to go mini-golfing.

Florida takes its mini-golf seriously. The one we went to, the Bonanza, has 2 18 hole courses...that are on the tallest structure in sight, raising about 100 feet in the air I would guess. We had a great time just hitting a ball around, taking goofy pictures, just enjoying being with each other. In some ways, as much fun as we had at Universal and at the movies (be sure to check out my movie reviews in a couple days for reviews of Transformers and Harry Potter) and just chilling at the resort swim pool...this was as much or more fun than any of it.

Overall, it was an incredibly fun week/honeymoon and one I would not have missed for the world, though it was hard to be apart for 3-4 days so soon after getting married.