27th: Non Disney Day #2 at Universal Studios

The park was basically empty when Karen and I arrived. There was no one in line for The Simpsons Ride, Men in Black, The Mummy, or Disaster.



Let's talk about Disaster. This re-opened earlier last year and was revamped. A group of 100 guests pushes their way into a room. A casting director jokes around for a bit, then asks for "volunteers" from the audience to play certain types of roles. The process was made funny and entertaining. "We are...", he would say, and we would answer, "...moving on." This became a catchphrase with the director saying the first part and the audience saying the second as we moved from room to room. It, too, became rather funny.

We moved on to the next room where we got to sit down and watch the various volunteers do their piece of the movie they would be in. This went by rather quickly because there were many assistants setting up the scenes ahead of the director who would say, "Action". It was fun to watch and the movie they created was funny.

We are...moving on.

Now EVERYONE was going to be an "extra" in a Disaster movie. We loaded into a subway tram. Cameras and monitors were in the tram. The tram moved forward and we were given "direction" by the director to looked shocked or scream or point. On our left as we entered the tram stop a gas truck drops through the concrete and ignites. On our right a torrent of water poured down the steps toward our tram. As the scene resets the tram is sent back to the beginning and as we move we see a movie on the screen and people on our tram are interspersed in the movie. Once again this is fun to see the movie magic happen.





We are...moving on...to the ride's exit and on to other attractions before leaving at about 3pm or so.

This place doesn't have the Disney Magic for us. We just aren't as happy when we leave this place as we are at a Disney Park. I think what we have decided is that while we are in Orlando the ONLY thing we want to do is be at a Disney Park. If we were on a roller coaster trip to other cities then Universal would probably be fine for us.

We are...moving on...to Walt Disney World.



We did meet up with Doug and Betty for dinner that night at their resort, Port Orleans French Quarter and rode a boat from their resort to Downtown Disney and had dinner at Wolfgang Puck's Express. We all agreed the food was good.