Okie dokie... Here goes my thoughts on Universal itself. To my complete and utter surprise, while my favorite land was HP, for a park as a whole, I actually liked Studios over Islands of Adventure, though both are great. I think I just enjoyed the slightly slower pace of the park and I actually loved all the long pre shows (minus Twister's but Ill get to that). It may not be quite as highly themed or organized as IOA but I liked the movie lot feel. Plus everything was set up for Mardi Gras and looked great, which I think made the experience extra special. I just felt like I could go at my own pace and when you slow down to look around there is really quite a lot to see.
Now for the rides...Not going to talk about all of them but some. Minion Mayhem was very cute. As I said before, I generally liked the pre shows and this was one of the best. It was also very fun to see the minions when you came out of the ride. And props to whatever CM was dancing in there with the little kids. He showed so much enthusiasm given that it was 9 in the morning.
Shrek surprised me. I'd forgotten what a cute storyline it is. It'll probably get more and more dated and eventually need replacing but I'd recommend it to anyone now. Heck I'd tell people go see T2 because that is a very fun show even though it is most definitely dated.
Mummy is such an excellent ride. It was the only one I rode twice (at that point in the trip my feet where hurting pretty bad so I needed a break so decided I would only ride things once... So me deciding to go on mummy twice says quite a lot). And the ride looked great too. I love the animatronic mummy. Scarab room looked great to my eyes. And the roller coaster part is just too much fun. That fire!
Disaster is an underrated gem. That's another where I have to give the lead CM props. She was so enthusiastic and cute. If she didnt enjoy her job, I certainly couldn't tell.
Also enjoyed the Simpsons ride quite a bit. Though ill be honest, I missed Back to the Future. But that's probably partially because I'm not a huge Simpsons fan. The area is very well themed though. Crazy fun colors. And I saw a lot of people getting into the games being offered there.
My last thing I did was the Universal Horror Make Up Show. Found it excellent. It's relatively short quite funny and pretty interesting to boot. And seeing all the clips of Universal's monsters made me wish that much more that there was a ride that featured them. I know they have the Beetlejuice Revue but man, if they had a Haunted Mansion so to speak that featured all their great monsters... Think that would just be spectacular
I didnt eat anything really special in yhe park that I can recall but I had a good burger (and margarita) at Margaritaville that really hit the spot. It's a fun eatery.
The park itself was very very clean and like I said, decked out for Mardi Gras. It made things super fun. I unfortunately didnt see the parade (feet called it quits and wanted the pool by the afternoon) but I've been told it too is excellent.
One final note. The Transformers building is HUGE! I watched some workers on the side of it for a bit. Looked like they were doing some touch up paint job. And the amount walled off for the HP 2.0 area is very obviously quite massive. It was very exciting to see the construction area under Dragon Challenge in IOA and then to see the big construction area in Universal. I couldn't really see anything except the Gringotts show building which looked to my eyes bigger even than the Transformers building.
One thing that did surprise me... Very few people seemed to know that that huge construction zone was for HP. I talked to several CMs about it and quite a few were surprised I knew. I feel like it is the worst kept secret on the Internet but it would appear that to the average guest, the announcement, whenever it comes, will be quite the pleasant surprise to a good amount of people. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though.
Overall, a very good experience. And whenever I get back to Florida/Disney, I plan to keep including Universal as part of my trips
