Thursday in the Park with Crowds

As the last day of the big high school band/orchestra trip, and after two days at Walt Disney World (at one of which the kids actually did a very interesting clinic involving sound tracks ), our partial last day before heading to the airport was spent at Universal Studios in Orlando.

For all our many trips to WDW, we’ve never done Universal, so I was looking forward to it based on all ads and people going and ooohing and aaahing over the new Harry Potter stuff and so forth.

Short summary: a mixed bag of interesting ride technology, area and ride theming that was very good to “bad show,” and a real dislike of “if someone wants to throw money at it, they can go to the front of the line on any ride they want.”

For the record, we did stuff at both Islands of Adventure and the Universal Studios park. Rides we managed to go on in our 5-odd hours there:

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (nicely done signature ride)
The Harry Potter Hippogriff coaster (too short for the wait)
The Hogwarts Express (excellent use of simple technologies)
Harry Potter and the Gringotts Heist, or whatever it’s called (well done, though very dialog-heavy for an action ride)
Men in Black (fun gallery-shooting ride, with short lines)

Lines ranged up to a bit over an hour and a half.

A few thoughts:

— Harry Potter academic / wizardly robes are not suited to the Florida climate, either for park workers or for the kids we saw running around in them.

— A plethora of Harry Potter wands being waved about by little kids almost certainly has to result in a lot of eye injuries on any given day, given the crowds.

— The rides were all generally pretty good; the two HP showcase rides were multi-media of practical effects, physical movement, and video projections, all blended satisfactorily. For the record, we enjoyed Forbidden Journey over Gringotts, though the latter is usually more highly rated.

— Lots of effective use of video displays and so forth in the various HP zones (for moving portraits, for animated newspapers and wanted posters, etc.)

— Universal does a lot with in-ride or ride-adjacent lockers for loose items. Somehow, that was never a problem at WDW, but at Universal it was always a madhouse (esp. with the in-ride ones) to get a locker (or two) and then to recover the items after (when the finger-print readers worked).

— Lots of stairs at Universal inside the rides.

— Some of the theming was excellent. Hogsmeade was a gorgeous winter-bound town, and Diagon Alley was a lovely zone as well. One could easily spend much more time them, just pushing your way through the over-filled and over-crowded shops and peering through the windows.

The same was true in the areas we went to elsewhere. Walking through the Dr. Seuss zone was surreal, and felt just like what it should.

That said, there were plenty of cases of “bad show” — unthemed elements visible where they should not be, chinks in the illusion. My sense is that Universal hasn’t caught up to Disney there.

— All the things we went on were fun, and I don’t regret the time spent there.

— To generalize, though, Disney create a broad environment that tries to grab you before you enter and goes with you through the whole day. There is a sense there of commitment to you as the guest, and an eye to detail that remains exquisite.

Universal is out for the wham-bam experience. The zones and rides and so forth are chock-a-block, with little rhyme or reason. Why is there a San Francisco area, and why is it across the lake from Springfield? Where would one expect to find Dr. Seuss? There are zones, but no theme.

This ties into Universal’s broader use of big movement, fast movement, thrill rides. Disney tries to provide thrills mostly through engagement in the overall park experience and immersion in the story. Universal focuses more on fastest, biggest, wildest. Both are valid approaches, both have their audiences, but in the end it makes (for me) the Universal experience feel a bit more frenetic, more forgettable.

Moreover, though Disney is certainly not at all cheap, Universal seems to really emphasize the the commercial nature of the the park experience, complete with two tiers of “I get to cut to the front of the line” tickets that are available for gobs of cash; while Disney does this to some degree with FastPass, that’s for free and is clearly an effort to manage crowds; Universal’s is clearly an effort to build an additional revenue stream. Both offend social conventions against queue jumping, but Universal’s felt more egregious.

Or, put another way (this via the young’un): going to Disney World is like going to the grandparents house for the holidays — they’re going to care for you, take care of you, and if it’s not going to be thrilling, it’s going to be fun. Universal is more like the aunt you visit sometimes who always has cupcakes and who has really weird furniture that doesn’t quite smell right — it’s also enjoyable, even exciting, but also not where you want to spend all your vacation.

After this trip, I’d love to go spend more time at Universal, at a more sedate pace, and explore some of the other things they have there. But I’d rather go back to WDW again and be able to do the same.