Up and at 'em at the crack of dawn today. It was an early opening at Universal Studios due to it being a Halloween party tonight so we set off from base camp at 7:30am. We got there with about 5 minutes to spare before opening and were 5th in the line to get in the gate! Wahoo!
Once the gates opened we walked at a fast pace to get to Despicable Me. Well, I broke into a jog - I really wanted to ride this. There was no need to panic, we were in the first wave of people through the doors and there is a great video sequence with all the gang explaining how we were going to be transformed into Minions! It was really funny, we were is stitches. Then on to the ride. Which broke down halfway through. Booooo... This left us hanging for a few minutes, but they go it fixed and played it from the beginning, so we got one-and-a-half rides. We all enjoyed it.
Next we headed for Transformers - hopefully a fully working Transformers. As we rounded a corner we stumbled across Megatron doing a meet-and-greet so we had our photo taken with him. We went round the many queuing areas (guess this gets busy at peak season) and pretty much walked on to the ride. It was another simulator on a short track, like Spiderman and many other Universal rides. The story was better than Spiderman, but it had the usual water spray, vertical plunges, spinning around and stuff. Anyway, Master B really enjoyed it, and wanted to go on again. I was done with it, but Mrs B was happy to do it with him.
Next, there was another chance for me to wander round some of the movie facades in the park as Mrs and Master B went on Revenge of the Mummy which is another high octane ride I can't cope with. They both enjoyed it, though.
We walked round the lake in the middle and looked at the construction work happening on the new Harry Potter area, where they are building Kings Cross and Diagon Alley. All looked very exciting... We then headed to Men In Black: Alien Attack which is a shoot-em up ride (like Buzz Lightyear). We were a bit confused as to what were aiming at the first time round, but seeing as there was zero queue (this was really weird having no queues at all) we went on it again. Much better the second time round and our scores all improved.
We then moved on to the new Simpsons area and rode The Simpsons Ride. It was similar to Star Tours in that it was a simulator that rocked around whilst a movie played in front of you. Not in 3D though, which was interesting - and slightly odd seeing as most things are nowadays. Anyway, it was OK, nothing special. To be honest, to my mind, a lot of these Universal rides are very similar. I find them a bit repetitive, but Master B seems to enjoy them more than me and Mrs B, so very much more his thing than ours.
Anyway, we explored the new Springfield area and had some fun photos taken on the Simpsons' couch as well as looking round the other bits. Sadly, the eating areas like Moe's Tavern were closed - but it was still before 11am so not really surprising.
We were a bit peckish so headed to Beverley Hills Boulangerie for pastries and drinks. I had a cherry danish and coffee (a Lavazza coffee and he first decent cup I've had for ages), Mrs B had a hot chcoclate and a croissant and Master B had a cookie the size of a car tyre and a Coke.
Much refreshed, we headed back to Transformers to ride it a third time (clearly I didn't, I sat in the sun and finished my coffee) and then back to Springfield to see if the eateries were open. They were, so Master B had a Flaming Moe in Moe's Tavern, which he liked, and Mrs B had her photo taken with a plastic Barney!
It was still quite early, so we decided to ride ET. It's not the greatest ride and has a long old wait time even with no queue as you have to tell and operator your name so ET can thank you personally at the end of the ride. Except it's pointless as you can't hear it. Still, it may not be there much longer, so we rode it for 'old time's sake'.
We had pretty much no lines for the whole morning, but the park was filling up, and wait times were rising. We'd pretty much done what we wanted anyway, so we headed back to Saratoga Springs and hit the pool. Mrs B and I had burgers whilst Master B swam and played in the kids area. We spent nearly three hours there! We all had a good time.
We came back and had a lazy evening.
A good day - the early opening at Universal was useful and it was really quiet in there so we went round it in record time at a relaxed pace.
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