Islands of Adventure 11/18

Very good day with low crowds. Hulk is still great. 8/10. StormForce was closed. Spiderman. 9/10. Lunch at the food court next to Ripsaw Falls with Chinese food. 7/10. Large portions. Ripsaw Falls is still wet. 8.5/10. Popeye was closed. Not good. It was in the the mid-80's. too.

Jurassic Park was a walk on. 8/10. That Flyer ride was closed. Crickey. Visitor Center also closed. Dinosaurs must have escaped. Dualing Dragons. 8/10. Walk-ons if you do not want the front.

Seuss Landing was all decked out for Grinch-Mas. Had photo with Grinch. 9/10. Cat in the Hat also was there with Thing 1 and 2. Characters were out in full force. 10/10. Cat in the Hat ride. 9/10. Car-O-Seuss-el. 8/10. I visited for the first time the Seuss play area, and found half the park there, also. 7/10. Great area for kids including the Olive Oil boat.

Finished out day with desert in front of park, and dinner at Margaritaville. 8/10. Here is the hint of the day. Buy all gifts at the Universal store at Citywalk, or better yet, get them at the airport.

Way too many rides closed during IAAPA.

Yeah... all three years now they have one or two rides closed the week of the show, and this was the second year the flyers were one of them. At least they were clearly working on them though, which is more than I could say for Popeye, which was a ghost town.

I could sit there and watch the fountain in Lost Continent heckle kids all day.

Its a shame about Popeye, with the heatwave and such. I just left Orlando Friday after 10 days in Vegas and it was still hot. And Popeyes really is a treasure with drops along its course. I really wanted to ride it since the weather co-operated.

What is Storm Force? Was any of the shows open in the lost Continent?

Yes, thanks for reminding me. Posideons(sp.) Fury. 8/10. The other one across the way was going, but I missed it. Storm Force is a flat next to Hulk.

That's a tea cup kind of ride, right? It's so hidden back there that you almost don't realize it's there.

Yes. They added it when IOA was a few months old. The new attraction for 2001.

I rode storm force when I was there a few years ago. I remember it to be a quite forceful tea cup type of ride. it is definitely hidden, tucked away off the main strip in the comic book area.

They added Flying Unicorn at about the same time as Storm Force, correct? I think that was the second time I visited the park with both of them were going in. I've never seen the Sinbad show, but I love P. Fury. I'm surprised they haven't tried to go for more X-Men related rides. The movies have been quite popular (and I know Universal didn't produce the films, but Kennywood didn't produce Garfield/Paramount Scooby Doo either).

-Danny

I still haven't seen the Sinbad show. Perhaps next year. I think the water tunnel in Poseidon is cool, but I can't get extra excited about the rest of it.

I've heard there have been at least three versions of the Poseidon show, but I can't remember it being much different either time I saw it (once in 2001 and once in 2002 I believe). Does anyone know or recall having seen two different shows? I agree that the water tunnel effect is quite good.

Has anyone seen the Sinbad show?

-Danny

Danny, of COURSE you know I've seen the Poseidon show both ways, LOL....I preferred the first one, but it WAS about time to change the show....now if they'd only add another flat ride...;)

Sindbad (they add an extra D for no known reason, LOL)...the last time I saw it was a couple YEARS ago now, WAS a pretty good, action-packed show with a couple really good stunts...the fire dive was the highlight, and I think was even featured on a Travel Channel show a while back....

Popeye has undergone rehab each of the last few years right around the time of HHN, I think it's the time they clean out the troughs and such, since there's no offseason......they really *should* wait until between Thanksgiving and Christmas, IMO....then again, maybe they're keeping Bilge Rats a secret from other parks that would be wose to try and copy the ride...:)

I dunno... cleaning the trough should be a continuous process. I know they have to get the crap out at Cedar Point's pretty much every day before opening. There was no activity at all at that ride. I know the park has some off-property facilities, but all of the boats were there, or at least enough to happily soak customers.

Crap, I realized I didn't do Ripsaw Falls this time either. Drat! :)

I guess have should have specified more along the lines of checking out the pumps, examining the ride for signs of stress, repair/replace of worn tubes, etc....more along the lines of a general (annual?) rehab...on second thought though, why not just wait until Jan/Feb when no one in the right minds would want to ride the Bilge Rats....maybe they want to do it right after the peak season?

Ripsaw Falls everything seemed to be operating last time....the *effects* really do improve the ride a lot, just not as much as the ones on Spidey for obvious reasons....;)

For the record, I'm another who's seen both versions of Poseidon - the first was MUCH better than the newer version.

I'm also one who's never seen Sinbad (and I've even wasted time with the Triceratops Encounter).

IOA (and Kraken) are the only 2 things I miss about living in Florida.

I was dumb enough to do that Triceratops Encounter a few years ago, when whatever it was 'tinkled' on the vet. Lucky for me it was closed.

The Triceratops Encounter is a unique idea - just one that doesn't really fit into an amusement park.

It's almost meant to be a role playing thing - we're all supposed to buy into the "this dinosaur is real" aspect and play along.

The one time I did wander in, the 'doctor' (veternarian?, scientist?) was going through his spiel (examining the dino, passing along facts) and then asked if anyone had any questions.

At this point the idea is to play along. Ask how old the dino is, ask what it eats, ask how they caught it, ask something and keep the game going.

No one spoke up except for one young boy (probably age 7 or 8) and he says "Is that dinosaur real?"

You could just see the look on the face of the guy playing the 'doctor' - it was probably the 1000th time that no one played along and he got a question like this. This was followed by a visible deep breath, a big fake smile and an enthusiastic "yes!".

The kid looked confused and pulled his dad away.

I really think the idea of TE is to "let go" - pretend you're in Jurassic Park, pretend this Triceratops is real and play along with the whole gag.

The problem is that either people don't get it or, like me, they do get it, but expected a little more excitement to be down that long path and kind of shake their head and walk away.

I do feel bad for the guys who have to sit there and endure hours of misunderstanding and unamused guests.

Have they changed it at all? This was back in 1999 shortly after the park opened. If they felt the need to "dumb down" Poseidon for the average Joe Tourist, maybe they switched TE up a little too. I haven't been back since.

It's been since '01 that I was there, it was October 3rd & 4th and they had all kinds of rides shut down. Triceratops Encounter, Jurassic Flyers, Poseidon's Fury broke down as we were in line, and Suess-go-round was closed. Over at the studio KONG was closed both days, but in both parks we still found plenty to do. In fact, our longest wait was for Ripsaw Falls, (because it was upper-80's that day), we waited approx. 45 min., all other rides were 5-10 waits at most. Had a blast! Going back next fall, and riding "The Mummy".

I think TE is more a case of "let's do this thing because we can, not because we should" (see Jurassic park, coincidently enough).

It strikes me that the park and/or the animatronics company wanted to show off technology that they had without thinking too much about whether it would actually be an exciting attraction.

I'm kind of bummed that I haven't seen the Dr. Hammond look-alike since the IAAPA outing in 2001.