Monday 3/20/06:
We arrived at Midway airport at 4:00 in the morning to catch our 6:30 flight to Orlando. This is my second time on a plane so I was kind of excited and nervous at the same time. It was fun, me and my mom played a game of 500 Rummy and there was only a little bit of turbulence. We arrived in Orlando at around 10:00 their time and made our way to the free shuttle that would be taking us to our hotel at Universal Studios. What was funny about the shuttle is that the vehicles were vans and there was me, my mom, 3 business workers, and a family of six that all squeezed into this van. Lets just say we all met rather quickly.
After a 45 minute ride, we finally arrived at the Hard Rock Hotel, which was where we were going to be staying. We got their, immediately checked in, got our room, and we were on our way to the parks by 1:00. The hotel was really nice and we got a chance to walk through the pool area on our way to the parks. For those who have never been to Universal in Orlando, the set up is pretty simple. There are Islands of Adventure and the Studios next to each other with a waterway that runs in front of them. Across the water way is City Walk, next to Islands is the Royal Pacific Hotel and our hotel is next to the Studios.
Since, like I mentioned earlier, I couldn't wait to get on Revenge of the Mummy, we went that first. Our tickets were unlimited hopper passes so we could switch back and forth between parks as often as we wanted and since we stayed at a Universal Hotel, we had unlimited fastlane uses the entire trip. Anyway, so we made our way back to Revenge of the Mummy and rode that in the 3rd Row. The only thing that ride did for me was reassure myself that this is still by far the best roller coaster in existance. I absolutely LOVE THIS RIDE!!! It starts off like a dark ride, but quickly picks up the pace. It goes forwards, it goes backwards, it launches you up a hill V2 style, faces many firey explosives and just overall is an amazing experience. One thing that made me mad was that they removed the on ride photo for this ride so we didn't get our picture taken like we wanted to. I later on asked the ride op why it was removed and he said it was because they were switching companies so, not to worry, it will return eventually. However, on an even more positive note, the ride had much more fog going on than usual. 10/10
From here, we finally realized that we had not eaten since like 2:00 that morning and decided to grab lunch at Louie's Resteraunt which is right next door to the Mummy. Over lunch we found out the weather for the rest of the trip and realized that we should hit Islands today since it will be sunny and 90 degrees, but hit the Studios tomorrow since there was a chance of rain in the forecast. So after lunch we decided to make our way over to Islands of Adventure. However, we had to make one stop along the way.
Before leaving, we just had to experience the best 3D show known to man and that, of course, is Terminator 2 3D! What's nice about this show is that you don't have to have seen the movies to understand what is going on in the show. The show is a combination of 3 3D movie screens, live action, and has an amazing and "smokey" finale! All and all, still the amazing show I remembered. 10/10
Now, it was time to head over to the "coaster" park that is Islands Of Adventure. Once inside the park, we went immediately to the Incredible Hulk. We got lucky and were assigned the third row (I don't like headbanging so the closer the better for me). The ride was a lot more intense than I remembered it to be. The first launch/zero-g roll/drop was just as jawdropping as usual and the rest of the coaster was very intense and fast paced. I can see people getting nausous on this one because boy did it move fast. This is one fun ride, but one that would be hard to marathon. 7/10
Then we went on Dr. Doom's Fearfall which is the park's double Big Shot ride. This ride, in my opinion has gone downhill. It used to have a whole spiel before the ride started with a monitor and Dr. Doom's voice and it made the ride worth it since it really isn't all that long. The spiel was still there, but the monitor was not and the whole ride seemed a little neglected. However, the main launch/drop of it was still funtastic and worthy of a 4/10.
We decided to hold off on spiderman since it was getting REALLY hot and went over to Popeye and Bluto's Bilge Rat Barges. This ride is your basic Roaring Rapids ride, however, it is by far the best in existance. The rapids are SO MUCH larger than Roaring Rapids and the spiral drop at the end is mind boggling. What was funny was that when we got in our raft, a little kid pointed at my mom and said "Your seat is the one that is going to get really wet" and he turned out to be right!! We both got DRENCHED so that might be one of the highlights of the trip, beware of that future enthusiast!
9/10
From here, since we were already wet, we decided to head over to Jurassic Park River Adventure. This is their shoot the chutes ride and it was a lot better than i remembered. It starts off like It's A Small World only without the music and with dinosaurs instead of dolls. Then it makes it's way up an enormous lift. This lift is definitely the largest I have ever been on in terms of water rides, I mean this thing is gigantic! Then along came the finale and the big drop and splash. One thing i like about the ride, that most don't, is that the drop doesn't get you wet at all. I hate that feeling of walking around soaked all day (despite the fact that Popeye's water ride would leave us wet for the entire evening) so i found that to be rather pleasing. This was our first walk-on, but the line itself was a half hour.
8/10
Okay...I have to go to class so I'll pick this up right when I get back. Check back tonight.
Back from class and continuing on.......
From Jurassic Park we made our way to Dueling Dragons. The last time I was at the park we had a bad experience with Dueling Dragons. They made us merge into the line in the middle of the station which was JAM PACKED and there were a lot of pissed people so we only rode the fire side once and the didn't ride the blue side at all. This time, we decided to wait for the blue (ice) side in third row first thing so that I would finally be able to ride it. I was quite surprised by the Ice side. It has an amazing opening sequence with my favorite drop on any inverted coaster, an awesome g-force filled horshoe turn and a zero-g roll that I had NO IDEA was coming up. From here it seemed to turn into the hulk with inversion after inversion and was really fast paced and exciting. Overall, although I hadn't ridden fire yet, I liked Ice a lot better. 8/10
Then, of course, Fire was next which happened to be pretty similar to how I remembered it. Ice seemed to start off with a bang and kept the heat packing, this one however stays the same intensity the whole way through. Our fourth row ride on it turned out to be pretty fun none the less and i would rank this at a 7/10...just slightly worse than Ice.
At this point in time, we had had a pretty action packed day and my mom was ready for her relaxation time so we walked through the rest of The Lost Continent and Dr. Seuss area and out of the park. We decided that we would grab some dinner from the pool side cabanas, take it out on the poolside beach, eat, and enjoy the hotel and get to bed so we could get up and be at the parks early the next day.
Tuesday 3/21/06:
Today was the day for us to go to Universal Studios. After a morning wake up call from the lead singer of Deep Purple, I was ready to start the day. Today would be our last day for the Studios so we had to make sure we hit everything we wanted to. First stop was Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast. What was cool was that we got there early enough where we were the first show of the day. This ride is basically a motion simulator adventure through all of the Nickelodeon cartoons. Spongebob, Hey Arnold, Fairly Oddparents, Rugrats, and of course Jimmy Neutron were all involved in the adventure. Since I love watching Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, I found this ride to be fun. Especially at the end where Carl played the Chicken Dance and in the song where it goes "clap, clap, clap, clap" the simulator went "bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce" Good times! A must hit for all families and kids at heart like me. 9/10. Across the way was Shrek 4D, which we had already seen, so we moved on and said that we could hit it later if we wanted.
On our way through the park, we walked right past Twister since we didn't like that last time and went on Revenge of the Mummy. This time we rode twice. First in the front row and second in the last row. I have determined that the front row is the best for this ride. Then we made our way across the park to ride ET Adventure. I remembered finding this ride fun last time so we decided to give it a whirl again. Overall, this ride is an ET version of Peter Pan's Flight at Disney, but in my opinion, it's much better than Disney's version. It is so comfortable and farely fast moving and I enjoyed it a lot. Plus, I told the guy my name was Elliot
7/10
Then, since I had only ridden one new coaster so far, I decided to brave myself up and ride Woody Woodpecker's Nuthouse Coaster.
This coaster is not much different than Spacely's so naturally it was a nice calm ride. I still had fun. 5/10 From here we looked at the map for what to do next. We had dinner reservations at 4 o'clock so we had to narrow things down a bit. Earthquake, Men in Black, and Back to the Future we had hit last time so we narrowed it down to three new attractions.
The first of these attractions was Jaws. We rode this last time as well, but it has been recently renovated so we decided to give it another try. They really made this ride a lot better. For those who don't want spoilers skip on to the next paragraph, but they have made quite a few changes. It is still corny, but the effects are different and a lot more abundant. Both sides of the boat now get the same amount of action. The left side gets the original area where Jaws pops out of the water and the one at the end where the dead Jaws floats up after the boat guide shoots it. However, the right side gets action now too. They added a new part where Jaws jumps out of the water inside the barn and I don't know whether it just wasn't as strong last time or whether it is new, but everyone jumped a foot and screamed. Also, at the end, when Jaws dies, they added a big fog explosion from the dock on the right that is similar to the ending of Terminator. Overall, this new Jaws is GREAT! Still corny, but at least it is completely action filled and no longer boring. 8/10
Next it was off to check out the 11:30 showing of Fear Factor Live! This was one amazing show. This is the best live show I have ever seen at an amusement park. I don't do well with free form heights so I didn't volunteer for it, but we got their early enough to get a front row center view to watch. I'm not going into any details about the stunts because this really is a must see show, but the stunts are just as crazy as the real version of it and it is similar to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire at Disney where they treat it like the real show with interviews of the competitors and camera crews and everything. They also have an ENORMOUS surprise for the audience volunteers (which are normally young kids). It was an amazing show and definitely worthy of a 10/10.
Our final attraction was a show that I wanted to see last time, but never got to and that is the Universal Horror Make-Up Show. This show is slightly intense on the little ones, but it is very entertaining and funny for everyone else. This, too, was a great show and well worth the experience. 8/10.
Since it was another ninety degree day and it looked like rain was no where in sight, we decided to head back and do some swimming at the hotel before dinner. The hotel pool at the Hard Rock is definitely the most entertaining of the Universal hotel pools. Although the deepest it got was four feet deep, it had a rather large waterslide, sand volleyball court, and best of all, an underwater sound system. We only had like a half hour, but it was still enough to get a small tan and to enjoy ourselves. Then we made our way to Islands of Adventure where we had dinner reservations at Mythos, which was given the award for best Amusement Park resteraunt for the past four years. It was really good and since we were the last reservation of the night, we had the whole resteraunt to our selves. Great food and a nice chance to catch up since I live away from home now.
On the way out, we decided to hit Poseidon's Fury while we were already there. This show is another must see. It isn't a ride and it isn't really a show, but rather a walk through with amazing pyro and water stunts and one really cool water tunnel. It is a lot of fun, but the wait is rather long even for fastlane holders. 9/10
Once again, we headed back to the room to catch American Idol and to get to bed early.
Wednesday 3/22/06:
After a morning wake up call from Simple Plan, we made our way to Islands of Adventure. I wanted to ride both sides of Dueling Dragons in front row, so I prepped my mom for the Amazing Race by running for it when the gates opened. Once we made it back there, it was me and my mom as the only ones in the Ice train front row. Ice front row is the best thing to do if you are going to ride Dueling Dragons. Then we immediatly went and rode Fire in front row. This is a better one if you want to really feel the close calls with the other train and overall a lot better than any other row on the fire side but still not as good as Ice.
From here, we made our way to ride the final coaster I have never been on between the two parks and that was Pteranodon Flyers. This is a pretty cool ride. It was short, but it moved faster than i thought and i still found it pleasurable. 6/10
Then we made our way to Marvel Super Hero Island where we wanted to finally get on Spiderman. This was the same as I remembered it and it is really cool. Even when i tried to recognize how it was made, I still found myself sucked into the ride and story and overall liked it a lot. I can see why people love these types of rides. 7/10
Afterwards we decided to give Dr. Doom's Fearfall one last chance and give Incredible Hulk the award for last ride at Islands of Adventure. Both were fun and a nice way to end out that park. Then we made our way over to the Studios to make Revenge of the Mummy the last ride of our trip. We rode that twice in the second row. What was funny about this time was that the audioanimatronic for Imotep didn't work right so he never came out of the coffin when the sound claims he did.
After two wonderful rides, we put the passes away and decided to kill the rest of the time at City Walk. We went to Jimmy Buffet's Mageritaville and saw V for Vendetta. Then we checked out, took the free taxi to the airport and hopped on a 9:00 Red Eye flight out to Chicago...where we were greeted by snow. 
OVERALL:
It was only three days and my mom is not the coaster lover that I am but she was a good sport and we had a lot of fun. I wasn't thrilled with the service at the Hard Rock Hotel so if you are looking for good service and a nice calm florida-like atmosphere, the Royal Pacific is the better hotel. Also, I thought that the Studios was better than Islands, but others will disagree with that as well. Oh well, I look for a lot more than insane inversions and crazy experiences in coasters, I look for quality and theme and I think that Universal is amazing when it comes to that and I couldn't have had a better trip. I would have done a bit more partying, but like i said, I was with my mom.
There was a lot more details that i didn't mention and if you have any questions, just post them and i'll answer and if you read this whole thing, you guys really do love amusement parks. 
