Ok so I've been over this last week for a few days from England to sort out a family property issue and managed a spare day to spend at VB. Luckily I was comped a ticket for VB and a hotel room for 1 night through a friend of my fathers who has some loose business connections with Universal so ventured in on Tuesday.
First impressions on entering the park was that it looks fantastic. The 'reveal' is quite breathtaking and filled me with excitement for the day ahead and as I had early entry I joined the hoards fighting for a sun lounger after navigating the process of acquiring a tapu, tapu wristband. Having early entry meant I was going to take advantage of riding as many slides as I could early on before the waits became prohibitive and I knew in advance it was going to be busy. So I managed a few 'ride now' slides and have to say they were extremely fun and certainly got the adrenaline flowing.
I'm still not completely accepting of the brightly coloured plastic look of the various slides against the backdrop of such a well themed volcano, however you could argue that's just a personal opinion like some guys preferring redheads to blondes etc. Certainly I wasn't going to let that ruin my day there, but it's just an honest observation along with the back of the volcano looking less themed than the front.
Everything was going swimmingly at that stage and after about 9:00am (didn't have my watch on?) I plumped for a tapu, tapu reservation which was around a 30 minute wait. As I returned to my sun lounger I was shocked to discover that a family with loungers next to mine had allowed their wet 10 year old (?) child to lie on my lounger on top of my towel. I did a double take to make sure it was actually my spot and then said "Excuse me but I think you're on my lounger and towel". The mother of the kid then said "EXCUSE ME, please don't tell my child what to do". I politely explained to her that I was merely pointing out that they were on my lounger and hadn't told her child to do anything and she said to her son "Can you please move, this man doesn't know how to ask you politely to get off his lounger which he clearly wasn't using". The boy sighed, gave me a dirty look and mumbled something before moving to bit of the ground near his mum. I resisted the urge to respond to this stupid woman and sat down ignoring them. None of this was Universal's fault but I thought I'd mention it to show what jerks some people are
After then using my tapu,tapu reservation the park had become what I can only describe as chaotically busy. It was a real shame because at 10amish in the morning I felt I'd not really been there that long and yet now it felt a bit like a battle to find things to do. I did enjoy the lazy river immensely but it unfortunately became so overcrowded that not only was there a long queue to enter, but once in it was just too overcrowded. Now the wave pool was fun but also a bit overcrowded, I did enjoy spending time in there and the waterfalls on the volcano looked fantastic cascading down the sides. I had got another tapu, tapu reservation but had over an hour to kill so again went back to my sun lounger, again to find this wet kid on my towel and lounger. This time his mum said loudly "He's here" and the boy moved as I approached, I said nothing and sat down and put my headphones on. Now I'm not sure whether this family next to me had put me in a mood or not but I must say that lying there wasn't a very relaxing experience. It felt a bit chaotic and as though they'd crowded way too many loungers in a too small a space. I decided to instead take a walk and look in the shops which I did and though I had no intention on buying anything it was ok looking at stuff for a little while and the shops were well themed.
The food for lunch was delicious, like a kid I plumped for a burger and really enjoyed it. There unfortunately wasn't anywhere to sit to eat it, though being on my own that wasn't too much of an issue and I found a rock to sit on and ate it there. Again as wonderful as this park looks (in most parts), I just couldn't get beyond the feeling that they're letting too many people in. I can best equate this feeling to being in the Magic Kingdom on Christmas day. Like there when you arrive you're blown away with the visuals and it 'feels' great being there initially and you think "Boy, this is going to be a great day". Then after an hour and a half the number of visitors starts to feel too much and you kind of end up stumbling around not going on things you particularly want to, but rather doing anything without a horrendous wait instead. There's still stuff to do and enjoy, however you feel there's something missing from what could potentially be a magnificent park and there's just too many people in there.
By 3pm I was done, hadn't ridden as many slides as I would have wanted (5 of them) but had had an ok experience. I'd not paid but feel I have to judge the day as though I had, as this is the way most people would experience it. On a quiet day I'd say it's worth the money, on a busy one maybe not so. Certainly if I'd paid for 2 of us to go in for the day, I'd have felt a little cheated but I'm sure that when new slides are added this may change things.
Finally as I went to my lounger to leave I noticed my towel was now covered in sand. The family next to me weren't there and had left their stuff on their loungers. I took this opportunity to pick up the mother's bag full of sun lotion, sun glasses, some underwear
and magazines and tipped it out onto the sand next to my lounger. They guy nearest me looked over and smiled whilst nodding his head and off I went feeling quite contented
![](http://[QUOTE="cheezbat, post: 7793638, member: 69990"]I think they should build a multi funnel slide and multi bowl slide complex just like this one...but I also think they should build a separate Hydromagnetic Mammoth, more family oriented body slides (like 4) since the only ones they have currently are extreme, and another very large multilevel play structure with a handful more slides....then this park would not only be huge but much more capable of ha)
