Mark9

Chill dude, even if they built it now you won't be riding for another 10 months...

Part two of Islands of Adventure.So a little known ride called Spidermen is quite unlike anything I'd ever ridden, Fantasticly themed queueline, good story. Apparently Dr Octopus has invented a levitation gun and has stolen the statue of liberty. He then proceeds to drop a train load of people into water, killing them all I assume. Our job is to follow Spiderman and defeat all the evil people. Avoid the rest if you don't want it ruined. You board big blue cars that take you through the ride, you wear 4D specs and various things are sprayed at you and fire effects dry you off from the water rides and every character bounces on your car and threatens you with various methods of death. I make it sound tedious, but it's actually really good fun. It almost seems strange that they have Spiderman and Harry Potter in the same park as both are very similar rides in terms of what they are trying to do. I like that Islands of Adventure not only have the scary rides such as Hulk and the Dragons, but they have experience rides to.Now, the water rides. Ridiculously wet, we're talking soaked to the bone. I'm not even sure where the waves came from sometimes as we seemed to be just mingling on and then a giant wave topples us. No wonder it has seatbelts frankly. Dr Do's Ripsaw Falls wasn't a favourite. After Splash Mountain it just felt very empty and lacking. The drop is very effective sending you through mist and tings, but not a favourite unfortunately.Now, Jurassic Park, I was so excited to ride it, couldn't wait, the music echoing over that area of the park. Oh it's closed. Thanks for the warning guys. This happened just after we were told Dragons were closed because of technical difficulties so maybe some will understand why I compared with Thorpe earlier. Now, Hogsmeade which is the main part of the Harry Potter area. It is absolutely stunning and it is clear that is where most of the money seemed to go. I have never seen an area so busy, and so happy and its testament to the franchise that it can attract so many people in Florida's quiet time. Unfortunately what Harry Potter does is overbalance the park. That area of the park was heaving, you had to queue just to enter the tiny shops and Hippogriff which looked like Pegasus from Europa Park had a 60 minute queue all day. When you have three B&M's going round with 5 minute queues, it's obviously going to be missed out on. Other rides all had 5 minutes, but the Harry Potter area, packed. Really nice area though, the view when entering is so picture-esque and its no wonder people would enter Dragon's queueline just to take pictures in front of the castle.I did have some butterbeer. It's amazing just how much it tastes like Vanilla Coke Finally onto one of the most shocking and over the top attractions, Poseidons Fury. Wow, if you've never done it you'd have no idea any of that was coming.

I miss the days where women couldn't vote*.. times change.*Obviously a complete joke..

One wonders why any park bothers to hide their dark rides then. Just have the sheds out in the open, call it suspension of disbelief and all is fine.

You're using two different mediums and different context. If you go to a theme park you expect the ride to be hidden or themed in a certain way. For instance, Poseidon at Europa Park the rides station by all intents and purposes is a Greek Colosseum. Forbidden Journey doesn't try and hide the metal shed convincingly (or at all) and so my suspension of disbelief goes. Look at Hex for example, because you never see the ride building from the queue or from the outside. You'd think it was part of the Towers. The join is so perfect, I still can't tell when I leave real and enter fake. Harry Potter doesn't even try and hide the shed.By using the theatre analogy, if everyone is performing well then suspension of disbelief remains because they are those characters. But if you have someone actihng badly, chewing the scenery then the suspension of diseblief is gone.

You see you make a very good point, why should I be bothered about the white shed when I'm in an immersively themed queueline and all the impressive stuff thats going on inside there. Because if the first thing I see when I view the ride is a white shed then no amount of atmosphere or theming is going to get rid of that initial first impression. Especially when you have this amazing themed castle but just one step to the right and you see the white shed of doom. I don't care if its voted as the best park in the universe to be honest Adam, I make my own mind up judged by my own experiences. I did call Islands of Adventure a better themed Thorpe. Yes there are some fantastic touches such as Poseidons Fury and Hogsmede for example (which I'm covering in part two ) But then there are rides like the Dragons and Hulk which have ride areas through concrete trenches. There's no queueline interaction and no will solid views of the Dragons in particular. That seems ridiculous to me, I can't believe that B&M would build a ride where its trains can't be dispatched together and they'd design a ride where the first train has to wait on the lift hill for ages to let the other one catch up. Grand National has been doing it for 70 years before Dragons even opened. Never experienced the old queue, I had heard it has better but I never saw it so can only judge from what I have seen.

You've seen Krake right?

So to speed forward, the next park I'm going to cover is Islands of Adventure.And I'm going to be controversial at the same time. Islands of Adventure is essentially what Thorpe Park is but slightly better themed. When I mean slightly, I mean when Islands of Adventure have bothered the theming is second to none. But areas they think of unessential have been left. Good example is any ground under the Dueling Dragons. It's just concrete troughs.So to start with rides, Harry Potter and the Hogwarts area.Mm, gorgeous ain't it. Everyone photoing a castle and by far the most popular ride on the trip. but whats this I see...Slightly takes the sheen of an amazing looking front when you see a giant shed behind it. They've tried to hide it in the queue with greenhouse roofing but its so easy to see. Regular guests probably don't notice... but I'm a geek and I'm afraid after a week of well hidden Disney dark rides, Harry Potter dissapointed. The ride itself is good, very good in fact and certainly throws your balance of guard. The idea of trying to fit 7 books into one ride is quite commendable, the fact they've done any justice at all is credible. So next is the Dueling Dragons, two rides I highly anticipated. They're fun but neither really have anything on Nemesis and Black Mamba. I think one of the main issues is that because of the dueling elements there's a lot of dry bits during the ride where it's just waiting to lead up to the leg chopper moments. They are memorable moments but they only last for about 2 seconds each so I'm not quite sure if it's worth the duelling ness of the ride. The Ice dragon was by far my favourite thanks to its cobra roll and jerkier moments during the ride. Despite Fire having more inversions and faster moments it didn't quite flow as well as Ice. I do realise I'm calling them by the rides old names.. but bothered. I liked the queueline. I understand it was better when it was the Dueling Dragons, but as far as I could see the new one is just as impressive. very windy, very long and almost an adventure in itself. One of the more unique things I picked up on was this is the only B&M I've seen so far that has separate loading and unloading areas. This really didn't help the throughput of the thing as having to wait for floors to go up and down and the front/back rows having to have their bars down before the train moved.. felt very laborious. And thanks to the duelling element of the ride if your train is dispatched first, you'll be waiting a good while for the other train to catch up. And because one ride seems to be longer then the other, chances are you'll be waiting a long time. So I'd rate Ice Dragon 8/10 and Fire Dragon 7/10.Onto The Incredible Hulk, certainly a very impressive ride. Located right next to the entrance watching the ride splurt out trains every minute certainly makes you take note. Neither Hulk or Dragons had longer then 10 minute queues when we visited which made re-riding Hulk very easy. I got a good indication of the rides quality. There's a certain train that can rock you to hell, very rough and very teeth chattering. The other two trains gave much nicer rides. Hulk is a ride of two halves. It starts off incredibly fitting in a launch and five inversions into it's first 30 seconds. And then the ride seems to lose it a bit with very tame helixes and banked turns. The corkscrews and zero g roll are very very good and the ride is very striking with its neon green and white supports. Universal like you to clap, whenever a train returns from its journey all staff members act like they've seen a play and clap crazily. Hulk gets an 8/10 from me.Stay tuned for part two

God, sucking the fun out of rides by talking about its speed when you take into consideration weight, air resistance and angle of drop.Face it people, only Oblivion man can make physics interesting thanks to his dialogue and rich, fruity talking.

Sounds extremely exhausting but have fun with it. Are you just going for main rides or are you including small rides and shows with it?

Just saw that everest is at 91. TPR

Watching strollers get on the Disney buses and then the 5 minute thing the staff do in locking that thing in place. Not good at 10pm at night when you've waited in a long queue for your bus to come and the fatty just rolls up and gets on straight away. These people would never survive in the UK.

Did you not se Illuminations Nicky.. in fact did you not see Fantasmic either?!

Theme Park review hate Vekoma. It didn't stand a chance.

I don't think it shows anything about the quality of our rides to be honest. Fury would be right up there (as it was on the single year that it was included in the poll) and TPR are certainly not indicative of quality rides.

Afternoon all, I didn't want to clog up Nicky's Florida trip report topic so here's mine! For our second anniversary Chris and I went off to Walt Disney World Florida for ten nights in what has ended up to be the hottest May in Florida since 1916. The parks were busy, the rides packed out, you'd be lucky to get near the parades and yet it was the best ten days off my life. To try something different I'm doing my trip report in the wrong order. So here we go..I'm going to start with Animal Kingdom which we spent two of our days at, the reason for this will become apparent as you read. Animal kingdom is the park I'd heard the least about and for me was the park I was least looking forward to. It ended up being the surprise hit of the trip and is far more then just three rides and a safari. The Disney parks don't just open, they roll out the characters on trains, jeeps, buses, monorail trains and have a big countdown to let guests in. I'm not going to lie when I say this is magical. It diverts interest away from the tedium of waiting. The only other park I've seen do that is Warner in Madrid. Other parks take note.So when you go to Animal Kingdom, what ride do you start with?Yeah, of course, Expedition Everest. A ride that with hindsight is what Th13teen was trying to be and utterly failed to be. Expedition Everest is stunning. I'm sure you all know about it's little trick but its not this that impressed me, it's the stunning attention to detail all around the ride. From the beautiful queueline that talks about the legend of the Yeti to the small gift-shop that sells yeti t-shirts. I actually got a bit annoyed about the queue actually; it moves to fast. I wanted to read about the yeti but because the ride eats people by the bucket loads, I never got the chance. With 5 trains seating 34 people each, it was crazy. The ride itself is sublime, the drop out the mountain is full of speed, air time and beautifully smooth, and the lift hill is a superb touch; it slows down slightly and the train lets out a honking speed as if its stepping up a gear to get you up the mountain. The other stand out attraction for us was Dinosaur. No one speaks about it. Good, the ride is excellent and far scarier then its's queue and surrounding area. The photo point is also.. perfect. Kali Kali Rapids was.... okay. After its drop it kind of died a quick death and just meandered back to the station. It's theme is deforestation. Loads of burnt out trees decorate the top of the ride. It's quite wet and American reactions to rides have to be seen to be understood. It just lacked length for me.So onto the other major attraction at Animal Kingdom, Kilamanjaro Safari, basically a trek through a reserve where you can see Hippos, Lions, Ostriches, Elephants, Zebras and Alligators. Very popular but very interesting at the same time. They try to intersperse the ride with a story of poachers stealing a baby elephant. It's slightly bad taste really but on the other hand gives the ride a certain finale.So why did we spend two days at Animal Kingdom. Well we were at the meet and greet area hugging Goofy and Pluto when a guy came to us and said he wanted out help in a little project. What we didn't know is that the project was to be part of the park parade. If you know Disney, you know the parades are massive and a huge majority of the park will state their turf, refusing to move so they could get a chance to see the gang on themed cars. We were on the Mickey float to!The most magical moment of the trip without a doubt. Buh Bye Animal kingdom

Gosh, is this poll even relevant anymore?I'm very impressed that Nemesis is in there year in, year out though. To be fair it deserves to be.

Well they would say that. Because they hate the baby Jesus.

Just going back a bit, for those saying the death of Osama will cause retaliation... well considering future attacks were already being planned it's not so much retaliation, it's more the inevitable consequences of religious extremists believing the Western world is evil.It will bring closure to some people but it won't be the end of things.

Rubbish image I know... meh, Beasts Castle topped of at Magic Kingdom.

It's amazing how your reactions to Harry Potter are so different to mine. You saw an amazingly themed castle and I saw a beautiful castle with a huge white shed nailed on the back that would make Nemesis Inferno blush...

Agreed with Daniel9 here completely. One bug bear, the early Tussauds weren't in it for the short haul, they built well meaning, permanent attractions that looked the part and were the part. Chessington still relies on Runaway Train, Dragon Falls, Vampire, Bubbleworks and Tomb (even if the original rides have been pervereted and raped by late Tussauds) and Alton still gets loved because of Nemesis, RMT and Oblivion.I actually take huge insult with Merlin. They claim to be the second biggest entertainment owner after Disney and if you include the amount they own, then yeah thats true. But the sheer gulf in quality is so huge you could fill it with the Pacific and Atlantic ocean and still have room left over for a B&M.

Hey everyone. My rant is against the amount of people with strollers in America. Being fat does not mean you block the entire pathway.

Euch, don't get me started on the shoddiness of Chessies dressed up characters. Used to watch the dragons when I operated Sea dragons, just go and stand on a podium for 5 minutes, wave at a kid, talk to the entertainment host who is with them then bugger off. They could do much more with them if they just let them wander round the park and wave at kids but their apperances are so brief its pointless having them.

Yep and every Maurer spinner bar Dragons Fury can seat 4 adults. Chessington are either lazy or to careful to attempt to sort out Fury properly.