This place is responsible for my new found passion in life. Sadly it’s a passion that is going to be only rarely indulged. Unless of course my home town of Perth decides to build a multimillion dollar roller coaster theme park anytime soon. Looks like I’ll just have to come up with more reasons to get back to America 😉

We hit the parks early and on the first day got through the Universal Studios Florida and the Islands of Adventure on the second day hitting the City Walk area late in the day on the first day.

The rides in the first park were VERY VERY cool. This was my first ever category 5 roller coaster and after I was absolutely petrified to within an inch of my life I decided this was one of the most exhilarating experience ever and I simply must do it again.

Here’s a video of it here:

We also lined up for one of our most favourite animated movie rides ever – Despicable Me and Gru’s House!

This ride was great fun and we enjoyed every second of it – helps if you are a fan of the movie but even if you’re not it’s worth a look. Oh and if you haven’t watched Despicable Me  what are you waiting for???? It’s pretty damn clever humour and I had to buy a tee shirt that says the following:

I’m thinking of wearing it to school the first day back for the kids 2013. Tell them if they play their cards right I’ll get a black sharpie and cross out the words laugh and giggle.

We did a bunch of things in this first park – the Twister experience and the Disaster attraction – all not bad but they were not ROLLER COASTERS. Back on the Rip Ride Rock It!

After that we headed over to the ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE (imagine that title being spoken in a loud, booming voice with extra emphasis on every letter). This is where The HULK ride is.  IT IS FANTASTICO!! Didn’t quite leave me as petrified as Rip Ride Rock It but it was still a little hair raising. Have a front seat view 🙂

Of course we had to do this one twice as well. And this here is what I call the Chicken shit Point of View and I don’t mean that in any demeaning way whatsoever.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – the highlights:

Best 3D simulation ride I have ever been on, Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey – we did it twice – well worth lining up for this one. Also we rode the Dragon Challenge roller coaster twice – which was great fun but no Rip Ride Rock It 😉 The frozen Butter beer was pretty tasty too…went into the Honeydukes SweetShop and was very entertained by the 10 year old kid walking up to a shop assistant and demanding to know “how dare they charge 10 bucks for one chocolate frog because it’s not as if it actually is magic like the ones in the books!” It was kind of true though. Everything was pretty pricey in that candy store. So much so I didn’t even buy one sweet thing! I did enjoy looking. The line for Ollivander’s and Zonko’s was too busy so we skipped those. It was pretty warm this day as well.

So yes LOTS to see and do in these parks, great fun and not bad queue wise. If I lived in Florida you could not keep me away from a season pass. I’d be visiting at least once a month. Timing it for when the least amount of people are there. It truly does feel like a thinly disguised gigantic kid’s amusement park – they all said “It’s FOR THE CHILDREN!” but really the biggest group getting the most out of these places? THE ADULTS. Well at least this adult anyway. Adult. You know I still don’t think that term applies to me at all. Just feels all wrong.