16 Dec 2016
[07:51 EST+1]
As we had the tickets for Star Wars in the evening, we decided to head over to Universal Studios again this afternoon. I still wanted to get on the new Kong ride if possible as this was the main ride I'd not been on yet (it was broken earlier in the week).
On the way there we were at the lights when this pulled up next to us...
I'm not sure how road legal this thing was, nor how safe it would be to drive behind it either as those were clay and porcelain ornaments stuck on the roof. But hey.
We detoured along International Drive to see how things are changing along that road. When we were first there in 2002 it was a lot less built up.
The conference centre above was only just being built back then.
So we drove to Universal, into the ET car park again. This time, however, the row of cars was almost at the near end.. it looked close but amazingly we got the very last space in the row, meaning we were right next to the stairs, instead of having to walk 3 minutes to reach them! A small victory to start the day off!
We walked over to Islands of Adventure and I went straight to the Kong ride. At the gate I asked one of the attendants for the single rider line. This is normally off to the side, but I couldn't see it. She told me that there wasn't a single rider yet, despite it saying so on the Universal App. However, the kind girl obviously took pity on me and gave me a fast pass to get me onto the ride. It's a large simulator set aboard a big lorry thing.
You got maybe 4 or 5 people per row and with 3D glasses you go into a cave area where there's Kong and dinosaurs having a battle. It's very well done and looks really nice. Well worth queuing up for I think (and kid friendly too).
From there it was straight over to the Harry Potter area to catch the return train back to the park. This was so that we could get back for the Blues Brothers Christmas show which started in 40 minutes time. Fortunately the line for the train wasn't too long and we were into Kings Cross in time.
A quick walk over a couple of streets and we made it to the show.
There wasn't much more time after the show before the parade was due to start, so we waited for that right next to the tree
It was clear that this particular area was also a collection point for a number of characters in the parade itself.
Straight after the parade, we moved over to a local food place to pick up something to eat before heading out and to the cinema.
On reaching the cinema, we got some popcorn then went upstairs to the main screen. It appeared to be empty, until we turned around behind us.
That queue was all for this screen and we'd arrived a good 45 minutes before the start time. Yikes.
Once we'd got past the 30 minutes of trailers, the film itself was pretty good, especially towards the end.
Then it was out and back to the car - happily the walk was a lot shorter than it could have been.
FULL PHOTO ALBUM : https://goo.gl/photos/aTZ3HauBCUNVNspF9