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Stardust. Monsters. Downtime.
12 Plays3 months ago
The Spooky Squad returns! This past month, we all had the opportunity to check out the previews to Epic Universe, and we will dive into all the details, so FULL SPOILERS AHEAD! Join us as we discuss our favorites, headaches, and much more!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Thrills, Chills, and Spills'
00:00:11
Speaker
We're going to play a little game we call Spill the Tea.
00:00:19
Speaker
What is up everybody?
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome back to Thrills, Chills, and Spills, where we spill the tea on all things theme parks, special events, and especially spooky season.
00:00:29
Speaker
I'll be hosting
Meet the Hosts and Episode Focus on Epic Universe
00:00:30
Speaker
tonight.
00:00:30
Speaker
I'm Tyler.
00:00:31
Speaker
I'm Joey.
00:00:33
Speaker
I'm Kelly.
00:00:34
Speaker
And I'm Rafa.
00:00:36
Speaker
And welcome to our Epic Universe special edition episode.
Experiences and Frustrations at Epic Universe
00:00:42
Speaker
At this point, all of us have been to Epic at least once.
00:00:45
Speaker
So we want to do a full episode covering everything Epic Universe related.
00:00:50
Speaker
Just so you know, we will have some spoilers in this episode.
00:00:54
Speaker
We're going to go deep into detail on some of the attractions.
00:00:58
Speaker
So just a fair warning for that.
00:01:00
Speaker
We're just going to do a quick overview first, though.
00:01:02
Speaker
So if you want to stick around for that, feel free to.
00:01:05
Speaker
But yeah, we'll let you know again right before we start doing the deep in-depth reviews.
00:01:14
Speaker
Let's start with our spills for the week.
00:01:17
Speaker
Who wants to go first?
00:01:19
Speaker
I'll go first.
00:01:22
Speaker
So since this is our epic themed episode, I have an annoyance that I've been seeing all over social media.
00:01:29
Speaker
So recently, the park has been on the struggle bus, to say the least, during the preview period.
00:01:38
Speaker
Tyler, I'm sure we'll speak about this a little bit more.
00:01:41
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker
But there have been moments where
00:01:44
Speaker
Basically, 90% of the attractions have been all down at the same time for an extended period of time, especially within the past week.
00:01:54
Speaker
Some of the attractions have not been available all day.
00:01:57
Speaker
And only one of those like Ministry of Magic had a planned closure that was advertised on the Park Hours website.
00:02:03
Speaker
So that was known.
00:02:05
Speaker
However, there were several closures that were unknown and people found out day of like Stardust Racers being closed all day, Curse of the Werewolf being closed all day.
00:02:13
Speaker
And there's been some extended downtimes there, especially the day that it rained a lot.
00:02:18
Speaker
That was turned out to be a big problem.
00:02:20
Speaker
So what's grinding my gears is there are a lot of people posting frustrations about those occurrences on social media.
00:02:28
Speaker
And then people immediately coming to the defense and saying, well, you're an idiot.
00:02:33
Speaker
Like you bought a ticket during a preview period and you should have known that a preview could have gone poorly and
00:02:39
Speaker
And I'm like, okay, yes.
00:02:41
Speaker
Like, I'm pretty sure that everybody who bought one understood that it was a preview and that there could be issues.
00:02:47
Speaker
And during that time, expecting like one to three rides to, you know, be down for part of the day is like, okay, sure.
00:02:53
Speaker
Even one ride down for the day.
00:02:55
Speaker
Sure.
00:02:56
Speaker
But what's been happening recently has been...
00:02:59
Speaker
Kind of insane.
00:03:00
Speaker
And if you're paying upwards of $140 to get in there for the preview period, which is only like maybe a 10% discount off of the regular ticket price, I think they kind of are obligated to provide you a pretty good experience, 90% of the experience if it's 90% of the price.
00:03:17
Speaker
And so getting 20% of the experience and then trying to tell people, oh, well, you're dumb.
00:03:22
Speaker
It's a preview.
00:03:23
Speaker
Like you should have known that and you should be prepared for that is kind of unacceptable.
00:03:27
Speaker
So those people need to stop defending a corporation that makes a lot of money.
00:03:31
Speaker
Like Comcast is a billion dollar enterprise and they should take care of their customers, which I will say.
00:03:35
Speaker
Good for them.
00:03:36
Speaker
They have done as far as I've seen.
00:03:38
Speaker
Like I've seen a lot of people post that they went to guest services on those days where there was significant downtimes and they didn't really ask any questions.
00:03:47
Speaker
They didn't push back.
00:03:48
Speaker
Universal gave them a ticket to return to Epic Universe.
00:03:52
Speaker
And from what I understand, those are going to be valid like sometime after September.
00:03:56
Speaker
But at least they gave them an opportunity to say, yeah, you're right.
00:03:59
Speaker
Like this was not an, uh, the experience that you paid for, please come back, you know, for free at a later date.
00:04:05
Speaker
And I think that's the right way to, to go about it.
00:04:08
Speaker
So like, stop defending them.
00:04:09
Speaker
Like they know that it was a problem and they're addressing it to stop trying to tell people that they're, you know, wrong for complaining about 80% of the rides being down.
00:04:18
Speaker
Like that's not a thing.
00:04:21
Speaker
Anyway, stop defending corporations.
00:04:22
Speaker
It's fine.
00:04:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:25
Speaker
I agree.
00:04:26
Speaker
A hundred percent.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
00:04:28
Speaker
You said it very well.
00:04:29
Speaker
All right.
00:04:31
Speaker
And then my spill, I have a little bit of a hot take Epic related.
Evaluating Epic Universe Attractions
00:04:36
Speaker
I didn't like battle at the ministry and we'll go more into detail about that later.
00:04:41
Speaker
But I was not a fan of it and I actually would prefer Mario cart, which I know nobody would agree with me on, but I actually liked Mario cart more than battle at the ministry.
00:04:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:04:54
Speaker
I'll go more into it later, but that's my hot take.
00:04:58
Speaker
You're not even saying that it's overrated.
00:05:00
Speaker
You're saying that you do not like it.
00:05:02
Speaker
I just didn't.
00:05:04
Speaker
I feel like on paper, it's amazing.
00:05:08
Speaker
There were certain things that were great, but I just felt like it wasn't worth the stress of being attached to my phone and trying to get that virtual queue three times during my visit.
00:05:20
Speaker
That's fair.
00:05:21
Speaker
We got very lucky.
00:05:22
Speaker
We did get the virtual queue, but to be on my phone and freaking out over this and stressing it just to get on it and not be that satisfied with it, I was kind of like, I was kind of let down.
00:05:32
Speaker
It wasn't, you know, I was hoping for more.
00:05:34
Speaker
It definitely raises the expectations, the process of, yeah, like making it happen.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's wild just to look around and see everybody stop what they're doing.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yes.
00:05:43
Speaker
And just everybody's staring at their phone, just flicking back and forth the whole time.
00:05:48
Speaker
It's wild.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:49
Speaker
And don't get me wrong.
00:05:50
Speaker
The queue is absolutely incredible.
00:05:52
Speaker
That is the most insane queue, but I, I'm okay.
00:05:57
Speaker
I would just get the virtual queue just for the queue in my opinion.
00:06:00
Speaker
Like I, I don't think I need the ride again.
00:06:02
Speaker
I'm good.
00:06:03
Speaker
We'll get more into that later.
00:06:04
Speaker
We'll go into that later.
00:06:06
Speaker
I'm excited to hear more about it.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:09
Speaker
Kelly, do you have anything?
00:06:11
Speaker
Nope.
00:06:12
Speaker
All right.
00:06:15
Speaker
I said I didn't have anything, but I did think of something.
00:06:18
Speaker
So what annoys me is that I bought a ticket as a pass holder preview, as part of the pass holder preview.
00:06:28
Speaker
And then they decided to open it up after that to the entire public, which I mean, whatever, maybe they weren't getting the ticket sales that they wanted.
00:06:36
Speaker
But that's very frustrating as a consumer thinking that I'm getting a reduced capacity day.
00:06:42
Speaker
And then they just opened up to anybody.
00:06:44
Speaker
And I'm sure it got bought up all the way to whatever their capacity is.
00:06:47
Speaker
So that's my spielder.
00:06:52
Speaker
Yeah, that was an interesting choice because obviously some people jumped over hurdles to be able to buy a preview ticket and then they sort of took the hurdles away.
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah, people waited hours in a virtual queue.
00:07:03
Speaker
Another virtual queue.
00:07:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:06
Speaker
That's what it was.
00:07:08
Speaker
Knowing some of the details that I know, it's definitely still not at full capacity yet.
00:07:13
Speaker
So like even when they added those tickets, it wasn't like blowing the park out of the water with with capacity or anything.
00:07:19
Speaker
But it was an interesting choice.
00:07:21
Speaker
And I think maybe part of that had to do with even the pass holder sales not being quite what they expected.
00:07:27
Speaker
And they like wanted more people to be in the park because it wasn't enough.
00:07:30
Speaker
You could definitely see with the wait times, at least from what I'm seeing, it seems like announcing the closure of ministry for that week period definitely led to like a decreased visitation.
00:07:43
Speaker
Totally.
00:07:45
Speaker
I was just going to say like the effort, and I guess I'll talk about this more when we start talking about, you know, when we went and how we got in, but I, um,
00:07:58
Speaker
had to go through some stressful situations to get my park tickets both times because I am a pass holder, but my pass was not active at the time I purchased both of my pre-D-Day tickets.
00:08:09
Speaker
So I can talk a little bit more about that, but yeah, it was, I agree, also frustrating that I was trying to jump through hoops to get my tickets.
00:08:18
Speaker
And then like two days later, found out that like I could have just waited and
00:08:23
Speaker
purchase tickets like anybody else and it kind of sucks yeah it sucks for those people like in tyler's case i mean we'll go more into your your experience later but like i feel like some people weren't able to go during the first couple of days of previews like you could only go when you went and just to find out that now it's no longer just a pass holder experience and now it's more of a general experience kind of takes away from that
00:08:49
Speaker
And that was just the beginning of the problems on your day, which is just ridiculous.
00:08:53
Speaker
Like, yeah, we'll talk about it, I'm sure.
00:08:55
Speaker
But I thought you were going to have the best experience because you're going on a random weekday towards the end of this window.
00:09:03
Speaker
What the heck?
00:09:04
Speaker
Okay, we'll get into it later.
00:09:07
Speaker
Well, I think that brings us into it.
00:09:08
Speaker
We'll do a little summary on when we went, I guess, kind of how our overall day was without too many in-depth details.
00:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, I'll start.
00:09:18
Speaker
So I went on Thursday the 8th, just a few days ago.
00:09:23
Speaker
I will say I picked this day somewhat strategically because it was, at the time, the last advertised day of the previews.
00:09:31
Speaker
I assumed they would obviously extend those up until the opening day, but I said...
00:09:36
Speaker
They've been doing previews for three weeks, a month, whatever.
00:09:39
Speaker
They're going to have all the kinks worked out.
00:09:41
Speaker
Everything's going to be good, getting ready for opening day.
00:09:44
Speaker
It was genuinely one of the worst days I've ever had in a park as far as attractions being opened.
00:09:51
Speaker
I was one for five on coasters.
00:09:56
Speaker
The only thing I got on was Hiccup.
00:09:59
Speaker
I rode Monsters twice, and I rode Fire Drill.
00:10:03
Speaker
And that was it for...
00:10:06
Speaker
early entry all the way to park closing.
00:10:09
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:10:11
Speaker
Wild.
00:10:11
Speaker
There was some weather towards the end of the night.
00:10:14
Speaker
And I can get into that more once we get into the detailed attractions.
00:10:17
Speaker
But long story short, we were in the mine cart queue for 2.5 hours and did not get to ride.
00:10:27
Speaker
So.
00:10:29
Speaker
genuinely bad day.
00:10:30
Speaker
I will say it was good just to get in and see the different lands and check out the atmosphere.
00:10:37
Speaker
The nighttime atmosphere is incredible in Epic Universe.
00:10:42
Speaker
I loved it a lot.
00:10:44
Speaker
It didn't redeem the day, but it definitely at least had me leaving the park on a happier note.
00:10:49
Speaker
So yeah, that's what I have.
00:10:52
Speaker
What about you, David?
00:10:53
Speaker
You've won a couple of times.
00:10:56
Speaker
Are you talking to me?
00:10:59
Speaker
I didn't hear what you said.
00:11:00
Speaker
I said Joey.
00:11:01
Speaker
I was like, no.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:04
Speaker
So I got to go twice during the team member friends and family previews period, which was obviously a little bit earlier than the public preview sale.
00:11:15
Speaker
The first time I went was on a Saturday.
00:11:19
Speaker
I want to say that was, I think, the second week of friends and family previews.
00:11:25
Speaker
And I didn't have Tyler's Day, but I did have a rough day.
00:11:30
Speaker
The attraction availability wasn't great.
00:11:33
Speaker
Monsters was down the whole day.
00:11:36
Speaker
And two of the coasters, Hiccups and Curse of Werewolf were closed all day until the last hour when they both opened.
00:11:46
Speaker
And just the queues in general were kind of longer than we expected.
00:11:50
Speaker
Like we spent a while in Mario Kart and Donkey Kong, which I think it's going to be a normal experience there.
00:11:55
Speaker
But it was just a lot of standing in queues and then kind of like waiting out down times.
00:12:01
Speaker
So I still had a like a good time, but not like an amazing time.
00:12:07
Speaker
My second time was, I think, two weeks later on a Monday.
00:12:12
Speaker
And it was one of the days that the hours were extended till 10 p.m.
00:12:16
Speaker
So we were excited about that because our preview closed at 7 p.m.
00:12:20
Speaker
So we just got like a tinge of the nighttime, but not very much.
00:12:24
Speaker
So a 10 p.m.
00:12:24
Speaker
close was super exciting to like be able to see the park at night.
00:12:27
Speaker
So that's why I went back.
00:12:29
Speaker
And that day was like.
00:12:31
Speaker
three times better, probably attraction availability was fantastic all day.
00:12:38
Speaker
I got to ride the things that I wasn't able to do the time before.
00:12:41
Speaker
And then we got like multiple rides on certain things, got to take in a show, got to like vibe around the park and try some more of the food.
00:12:50
Speaker
And the queues were a lot more manageable, presumably since it was a Monday.
00:12:56
Speaker
So, yeah, that was really fantastic.
00:12:58
Speaker
It's coming out of that.
00:13:00
Speaker
And I still am kind of like, I don't I don't know that it's my favorite park in the world.
00:13:06
Speaker
But it's definitely up there for the US for sure.
00:13:10
Speaker
It's very impressive what they've managed to achieve.
00:13:13
Speaker
And I think this will maybe emerge the more that we talk about it.
00:13:18
Speaker
But for me, it's kind of a triumph from Universal Creative, but in some ways an operational nightmare.
00:13:28
Speaker
And I think that may evolve, especially as attendance continues to increase just with the number of attractions that they have, which is limited and the capacities of those.
00:13:38
Speaker
It's going to get interesting.
00:13:40
Speaker
So I think everybody will be very impressed with the theming and immersion that they've managed to produce.
00:13:47
Speaker
But I think there is going to be some operational pains.
00:13:51
Speaker
with multiple elements of the park, not just rides, but some of the other ways that they've chosen to do things.
00:13:57
Speaker
So we'll see how that goes.
00:13:58
Speaker
It'll be, it'll be interesting to see how the reviews turn out, especially after the public opening day and attendance starts to escalate.
00:14:06
Speaker
For sure.
00:14:09
Speaker
Rafa, you were there one day, right?
00:14:12
Speaker
Yes, I only went one day.
00:14:13
Speaker
I went on Saturday, the 26th, April 26th.
00:14:18
Speaker
You got a whole crew.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, we had a whole group going on there.
00:14:21
Speaker
We had Kayla, Bethany, Javi was there, Scott Don, our single listener.
00:14:29
Speaker
He was there with us.
00:14:32
Speaker
And Nate was there as well.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah, we had a really good time with everybody.
00:14:37
Speaker
I mean, as far as like downtime goes, I mean, it was a pretty good day.
00:14:41
Speaker
I mean, I think the only like delays that we had were on Donkey Kong, which we expected that probably added an extra 20 minutes to the to the line, which wasn't too bad.
00:14:54
Speaker
And then Mario Kart.
00:14:55
Speaker
I think added another like 20 minutes and it was actually the perfect time because it was when virtual cues were being released for ministry.
00:15:02
Speaker
So we're like, okay, we're okay with this.
00:15:04
Speaker
Cause otherwise we would be on the ride at 11 o'clock.
00:15:08
Speaker
But, but yeah, it was a pretty smooth day.
00:15:10
Speaker
We got to ride everything.
00:15:12
Speaker
The only thing we missed was the, the carousel.
00:15:15
Speaker
We didn't go to that.
00:15:17
Speaker
We didn't get to watch any of the shows and we missed the, what's it called?
00:15:22
Speaker
The,
00:15:24
Speaker
the racer rally one and yeah, that one.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:28
Speaker
We'd miss that one.
00:15:29
Speaker
Um, but everything else was working pretty well.
00:15:32
Speaker
I love the atmosphere of the park.
00:15:34
Speaker
Um, like you said, I can see how it could be a nightmare and I, I don't know how it's going to go once the park opens.
00:15:41
Speaker
Um, that's going to be a sight to see, but at least during previews, I mean, we had a pretty solid day.
00:15:48
Speaker
I'm going to do my best to hide my jealousy.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:15:54
Speaker
I felt so bad when I heard that you had that.
00:15:55
Speaker
I know.
00:15:59
Speaker
I know you messaged me.
00:15:59
Speaker
You're like, oh my gosh, I'm so happy for you.
00:16:01
Speaker
You're going to love it.
00:16:02
Speaker
And I was like, this is terrible.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, you wrote me.
00:16:05
Speaker
You're like, it actually sucks.
00:16:07
Speaker
I was like, oh no.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:10
Speaker
Wait, so did you go to guest services?
00:16:12
Speaker
Because I know that some people did go.
00:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, so to Universal's credit, I messaged them the very next day and without really hardly any questions, they gave me a ticket to return from, I think it's like 1st of September towards the middle of November.
00:16:28
Speaker
Sweet.
00:16:30
Speaker
I thought that was more than fair.
00:16:33
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:34
Speaker
Kelly?
00:16:36
Speaker
I hated to see your day.
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:40
Speaker
Um, okay.
00:16:41
Speaker
So I went twice the first time I
Personal Visits and Experiences
00:16:44
Speaker
went.
00:16:44
Speaker
Context though, you weren't planning to go twice.
00:16:47
Speaker
I wasn't planning to go at all.
00:16:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:49
Speaker
To be fair, set the tone here.
00:16:53
Speaker
I was planning to visit Epic for the first time in the middle of June, which I still have tickets for.
00:17:00
Speaker
Um, and we're still going, um, before our week of our Disney vacation, um, with the kids.
00:17:06
Speaker
So I, um,
00:17:10
Speaker
had FOMO once people started going and I couldn't handle it.
00:17:14
Speaker
So we went, this is a little bit wild.
00:17:19
Speaker
I'll try to do a long story short here.
00:17:21
Speaker
So like I said earlier, I had purchased a universal pass or was purchasing one.
00:17:29
Speaker
I don't know where the timeline was there, but
00:17:32
Speaker
I had a pass.
00:17:34
Speaker
It expired.
00:17:35
Speaker
I was getting a new pass.
00:17:36
Speaker
It wasn't active because I didn't use it yet to get into a park, even though it was purchased.
00:17:41
Speaker
Same thing with Tom.
00:17:44
Speaker
So we were like, how do we buy these Epic preview tickets when our passes are not active?
00:17:51
Speaker
Um, so we tossed around a couple of options and what we landed on was we were going to make a hotel reservation because they had tickets for hotel guests as well as pass holders.
00:18:03
Speaker
And then either hope that those tickets were still available when we got to the hotel or activate our passes real quick and then hope that those were still available.
00:18:12
Speaker
We weren't really sure how it was going to work, but we made it happen.
00:18:15
Speaker
We went on Saturday, April 19th.
00:18:18
Speaker
Tom flew down the day before because he did not have school.
00:18:21
Speaker
It was Easter break.
00:18:22
Speaker
He checked into Terra Luna, which I can talk a little bit about too.
00:18:28
Speaker
got our tickets for the next day without having our passes activated.
00:18:32
Speaker
He then activated his pass.
00:18:34
Speaker
He was also told because we had the same last name.
00:18:36
Speaker
This should have been my spell.
00:18:37
Speaker
Oh man.
00:18:38
Speaker
We were told, we were told so many different things by people working at universal as far as pass activation.
00:18:45
Speaker
It is insane.
00:18:46
Speaker
Like he called multiple people.
00:18:48
Speaker
He called through his travel agency.
00:18:49
Speaker
He called just like
00:18:52
Speaker
The guest services line, we were told from numerous people that because we had the same last name, he could activate my pass.
00:18:59
Speaker
I was very skeptical of that because they typically take your photo.
00:19:02
Speaker
You have to like swipe into the park.
00:19:04
Speaker
They're telling him that it's going to work.
00:19:06
Speaker
It's going to work.
00:19:07
Speaker
Well, it's facial recognition now.
00:19:10
Speaker
I know he was able to get my physical pass and like it said that everything was active.
00:19:15
Speaker
But then when we tried to purchase tickets for our second round of pass holder previews, I did not have that access.
00:19:23
Speaker
So a joke was on me.
00:19:24
Speaker
So basically I went Saturday, April 19th.
00:19:28
Speaker
It was just me and Tom.
00:19:30
Speaker
We met up with Matt, our friend from coasters and brews.
00:19:34
Speaker
He was there.
00:19:36
Speaker
So I flew down to,
00:19:38
Speaker
The very late Friday night, we went, we got obviously early entry because we stayed on site.
00:19:46
Speaker
The park opened at 11, so we got in at 10.
00:19:48
Speaker
And then I was there until about maybe like five something or six something that first time.
00:19:57
Speaker
I had to fly home to work the next day.
00:20:02
Speaker
And then I went again just yesterday.
00:20:05
Speaker
That was...
00:20:07
Speaker
the 11th of May for Mother's Day with Tom and the children.
00:20:12
Speaker
And we also stayed at Terra Luna again, and he was able to purchase a true pass holder preview ticket with his pass, but because mine still wasn't active, our favorite listener, Scott, not Don, did us a solid and got our, my ticket and the kids tickets when he was down there
00:20:35
Speaker
Hopefully I'm not exposing you, Scott.
00:20:39
Speaker
We did some games to get tickets.
00:20:42
Speaker
So my first day, which was a Saturday, I think was a pretty good experience.
00:20:52
Speaker
We got a lot done, even though I was only there for part of the day.
00:20:57
Speaker
A lot of the rides did have downtime like intermittently throughout the day, but all of the rides were open at some point during the day.
00:21:06
Speaker
Um, yesterday I was not expecting a good time, especially because I was like talking with Tyler through his day, which was only how many days before was that three?
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:18
Speaker
three um so i was not feeling like it was going to be a good time but i actually had a great and maybe even better time than the first time um ministry the battle of ministry was closed which we knew before like that that it was going to be down um and werewolf was not yet open but everything else managed to open stardust racers opened again after a couple of days of being down um
00:21:45
Speaker
There was some weather delay, but we had actually left before that.
00:21:49
Speaker
We got to do pretty much everything that we wanted to do in the day.
00:21:55
Speaker
We had to make some choices of like what we could do over other things, but I've now seen both shows.
00:22:03
Speaker
The only attractions I'm missing are the Carousel, the racer relay one that you were talking about, Rafa.
00:22:10
Speaker
I didn't do Fire Drill.
00:22:12
Speaker
And I think that's it.
00:22:14
Speaker
I think I've done everything else.
00:22:15
Speaker
I've tried a variety of different food locations.
00:22:19
Speaker
I have multiple rides on a lot of the attractions.
00:22:23
Speaker
Um, and yesterday honestly felt so empty.
00:22:26
Speaker
Like there were times I was walking through celestial park and I like, didn't see people at all.
00:22:31
Speaker
It was wild.
00:22:32
Speaker
It was wild to me.
00:22:35
Speaker
Um, I was watching on real data and I was like, Ooh, they're having a good day.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:39
Speaker
We were flying around.
00:22:40
Speaker
I actually, I took notes with timestamps because I.
00:22:45
Speaker
thought it was just insane.
00:22:46
Speaker
Like all of the rides were marked over, like the wait times were overestimated.
00:22:52
Speaker
I was getting, I was literally walking on almost every single attraction and I felt so guilty about it.
00:22:58
Speaker
Like it was insane.
00:23:00
Speaker
I felt so bad.
00:23:02
Speaker
I like the only thing I wish is like both times I didn't get to experience the park at night because we had to fly home.
00:23:11
Speaker
So I'm looking forward to doing that on our June visit because we do plan to be there the whole day.
00:23:17
Speaker
Um, I'm not sure what their hours will be, so I don't know how much of like darkness I'll get in the middle of June, which is like the longest sunlight days of the year, but I'm really looking forward to that.
00:23:27
Speaker
I feel like I've had a good variety of experiences for when we get into the spoilers to kind of talk about different experiences on different attractions, both days that I've been, um,
00:23:38
Speaker
My only concern and I was mostly concerned like when I saw Tyler's day, like I don't know how many more people I didn't go back on for all day.
00:23:47
Speaker
I don't know how many more people you had and obviously you had.
00:23:50
Speaker
very few attractions open at a time, but it's like, even so, I don't know what they're aiming for when the park opens for their capacity, but I am concerned.
00:24:01
Speaker
I am.
00:24:03
Speaker
Even my difference between yesterday and the first day I went to Passholder Previews, like there was definitely felt like there were less people in the park, but there were only like 7,000 people in there my first day that I went.
00:24:13
Speaker
And there were some like pretty long lines, like pretty deep.
00:24:17
Speaker
heinous long lines.
00:24:19
Speaker
And some of that was because of that intermittent ride downtime, but I just don't know how it's, I don't know.
00:24:26
Speaker
I have some fingers out there and I've been hearing things.
00:24:29
Speaker
So I know that like the, the beginning of the preview period before they opened it up to the public, generally speaking, they didn't have a day that was over 10 K and it was typically less than 10 K guests.
00:24:40
Speaker
Um,
00:24:41
Speaker
Some of the days during the friends and family even were higher than what it was during the previews.
00:24:47
Speaker
So like, especially towards the ends of the friend and family previews when they added even more tickets for team members to bring people to the park, I think it was getting up into the 14, 15 K range.
00:24:57
Speaker
And then when it went back into like the, the for sale previews, they dropped again under 10 K to my understanding.
00:25:05
Speaker
All of these numbers, you hear different things from different people, but I think opening day is going to be about 20 K is going to be capped, which is not, not their max by any means.
00:25:14
Speaker
I can't imagine that.
00:25:15
Speaker
And that could be kind of crazy, but also like maybe is only 50% of their capacity or less.
00:25:23
Speaker
And I have a feeling that they're kind of going to be stepping that up.
00:25:26
Speaker
I don't think it's going to go immediately to like full capacity sales the day after opening.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think they're going to be kind of spooling that up over the next couple of weeks.
00:25:34
Speaker
But it is definitely not reached anywhere close to like its maximum during these preview periods at all.
00:25:42
Speaker
That is quite concerning.
00:25:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:46
Speaker
And when I saw the park in person, I kind of felt also like, I was like, how is this going to fit the amount of people that they're probably expecting?
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:55
Speaker
I mean, it looks... I don't know.
00:25:56
Speaker
In videos and photos, it kind of looks...
00:25:59
Speaker
I guess more spaced out, but when you're there, you kind of see how close everything is.
00:26:02
Speaker
It definitely feels smaller in person, which is not a bad thing though, because like, it's very easy to navigate the park.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:08
Speaker
I feel.
00:26:09
Speaker
I do like the way it was all laid out.
00:26:11
Speaker
I think that works pretty well.
00:26:13
Speaker
Um, but just thinking about the amount of people going, I just don't, I don't know how that's going to go.
00:26:17
Speaker
Well, and another crowd flow thing that's kind of funny is like, and I don't know if they're going to keep doing it this way, but with the early entry, it's Stardust Racers and Mario, Super Mario.
00:26:28
Speaker
And so, I mean, you have, I want to say like 75% of the
00:26:33
Speaker
people who are entering the park go straight into Mario World because they see that it's like a whole land to go and visit and it gets absolutely slammed like uh Donkey Kong minecart goes like shoots up to like 105 minutes like it's yeah and you kind of have to do it that way strategically you do yeah that's kind of the move we were talking about this with Tom if you want to meet uh Toothless
00:26:56
Speaker
You kind of have to rope drop that during the entry.
00:26:58
Speaker
You have to rope drop it.
00:26:58
Speaker
This should have been my spell.
00:27:00
Speaker
Because there's a line that stays the longest all day long.
00:27:03
Speaker
Like it never dips.
00:27:04
Speaker
It's the same all day.
00:27:06
Speaker
Okay.
00:27:06
Speaker
This is wild.
00:27:08
Speaker
I'm on thrill date.
00:27:08
Speaker
I don't know.
00:27:09
Speaker
This is my Bible, not like the Bible of the world.
00:27:12
Speaker
But like, this is how I plan everything that I do in life.
00:27:16
Speaker
But Tyler, did you feel like it was your like long lines were just because there was nothing open or did it feel crowded there in general?
00:27:26
Speaker
I think it was because nothing was open.
00:27:27
Speaker
It didn't feel light, but the pathways were not overly crowded for the most part.
00:27:33
Speaker
Because this says, this is wild.
00:27:35
Speaker
It says your capacity, your day.
00:27:37
Speaker
I don't know if, I think this has been updated was like 4,000.
00:27:40
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:27:40
Speaker
With the weather forecast, I could see it.
00:27:45
Speaker
And then my day, which was yesterday, and I believe it says 2,500.
00:27:49
Speaker
Like I truly believe it was that, that empty.
00:27:53
Speaker
That's crazy.
00:27:54
Speaker
That's nothing.
00:27:55
Speaker
That is crazy.
00:27:56
Speaker
My first day, the 19th, it said 7,000, which I think that's probably on.
00:28:02
Speaker
Rafa, what day did you go?
00:28:05
Speaker
The 26th.
00:28:06
Speaker
7,700.
00:28:07
Speaker
So around the same as my first day.
00:28:08
Speaker
Right.
00:28:09
Speaker
Which it seemed like you guys had similar wait times, like when I was following you.
00:28:14
Speaker
So interesting.
00:28:16
Speaker
It says it's ramping up.
00:28:18
Speaker
It shows the upcoming days being...
00:28:21
Speaker
Today it says capacity is at least, oh no, no, no, it does not.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if they've sold as many.
00:28:29
Speaker
I really think that the ministry closure had a chilling effect and that's part of why your day yesterday was better.
00:28:36
Speaker
It wouldn't affect me, I would go.
00:28:39
Speaker
When did they announce that closure?
00:28:42
Speaker
Uh, maybe five days ago.
00:28:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:45
Speaker
It wasn't a long time ago.
00:28:47
Speaker
I do think that a lot of the preview guests are repeat visitors at this point.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:28:52
Speaker
Because a lot of the people who are really excited about the park probably made plans to come and visit before they even announced the preview period.
00:29:00
Speaker
So they already have a vacation booked and that's not something that you're going to go and like uproot and change all of a sudden unless you're Kelly.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:08
Speaker
Most people aren't crazy enough to fly all the way down there for one day.
00:29:12
Speaker
Right, exactly.
00:29:14
Speaker
So I think a lot of people just stuck with what they had, which is booked after the official opening.
00:29:18
Speaker
So I can see it kind of slowing down.
00:29:20
Speaker
But anyway, so what do we kind of think overall is like, what makes this park
Epic Universe Layout and Theming
00:29:25
Speaker
special?
00:29:25
Speaker
I guess like, is there a takeaway that makes this different than other parks, other universal parks and then other parks in the US?
00:29:34
Speaker
One thing I thought was,
00:29:36
Speaker
that I wouldn't necessarily like, okay, so let me, how do I set this up?
00:29:41
Speaker
So you know how one of my favorite parks in the US is Silver Dollar City.
00:29:45
Speaker
And I feel like there's really good seamless transition between like the different areas and all kind of feels like it's like one general theme, but like there's different themes within it and everything kind of melds together.
00:30:01
Speaker
I was a little bit worried how, and even like, if you think about
00:30:04
Speaker
Magic Kingdom, there's such different, like, lands, but when they're transitioning, they try to make it kind of, like, one area kind of melts into another area, and the point of Epic was for it to not be that way.
00:30:18
Speaker
Like, clearly, there's very separate portals.
00:30:20
Speaker
You can't get from one land to another land.
00:30:22
Speaker
You have to come back out and go back in, and I was kind of like, oh, is that going to feel, like, super disjointed, and, like, I don't know how that's going to be, but I think it actually...
00:30:32
Speaker
really works well.
00:30:34
Speaker
I think it's a little bit frustrating as far as like navigating at times that you have to kind of like backtrack, but I think it helps.
00:30:41
Speaker
There's no other way to do such different themes in a park without doing it this way.
00:30:48
Speaker
Like I think if it was set up like any other park where you're walking from one land to the next, and then you're like completely taken out of where, I don't know.
00:30:57
Speaker
I think transition wise, I,
00:30:59
Speaker
this was the way to do it.
00:31:00
Speaker
And I think it works really well.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I can't even really think of another park who's set up the same way.
00:31:06
Speaker
No, there's nobody that does it like that.
00:31:08
Speaker
It's a, I mean, it's a great concept, like the idea of just kind of having this astrological center area.
00:31:14
Speaker
And then you warp through to each of these portals.
00:31:16
Speaker
Also like knowing the day and age that we're in, it's clearly designed to be a social media moment to walk through these portals and appear somewhere else.
00:31:24
Speaker
So they knew what they were doing.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah, and they have those cool lights that go around and all of that.
00:31:29
Speaker
Right.
00:31:29
Speaker
And the green mask going there for Super Mario.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's made for Instagram.
00:31:35
Speaker
We'll get to it later, but talking about Future Park expansion, it kind of makes it easy.
00:31:39
Speaker
You don't have to force it in between other lands.
00:31:42
Speaker
It's kind of like, okay, well, we already have a plan for adding more portals instead of trying to fit it in somewhere else between two lands or something.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:52
Speaker
I want to say that and we'll talk specifics later, but I do think that one of the standouts of this park is the food.
00:31:59
Speaker
It is a little pricier than other parks.
00:32:02
Speaker
However, the quality of it was significantly higher than most other parks in the US.
00:32:08
Speaker
And they have so many choices.
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:11
Speaker
It's like elevated and it tastes good.
00:32:14
Speaker
You know, there's lots of different types of options.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's not like every place just has chicken tenders.
00:32:19
Speaker
Yeah, I was really impressed with that.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:22
Speaker
And once again, it's like the like you were saying about the social media thing.
00:32:25
Speaker
It's what I'm seeing on TikTok now.
00:32:27
Speaker
People are like instead of doing drinking around the world in Epcot, they're doing drinking around the universe.
00:32:31
Speaker
And that's like that just shows like how many different options they have in each of these lands, which is great for the future of the park.
00:32:40
Speaker
Anything else?
00:32:43
Speaker
I don't know.
00:32:43
Speaker
It's hard to kind of talk about.
00:32:44
Speaker
I think maybe when we wrap it up, it'll be a little bit easier because we'll have talked about everything in more detail.
00:32:49
Speaker
Like specifics.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:52
Speaker
All right.
00:32:53
Speaker
Now that we've teased you a little guys with our thoughts, let's take a quick break and we're going to go back to a bit that we started last week and let's get to know Rafa a little bit more.
00:33:05
Speaker
This is our little interview section that we're going to do for everybody.
00:33:08
Speaker
So you ready, Rafa?
00:33:10
Speaker
Yes, I am ready.
00:33:11
Speaker
All right.
00:33:12
Speaker
So first question, no time limit on this one.
00:33:14
Speaker
When and why did you become a theme park and roller coaster enthusiast?
00:33:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:20
Speaker
So I feel like I, when I was like younger, I was always like hooked to like the travel channel segments of like roller coasters and theme parks.
00:33:27
Speaker
I was always hooked to those little like segments.
00:33:30
Speaker
And then I started really getting into it.
00:33:32
Speaker
Like as I got older, once I was like tall enough to ride these rides, I
00:33:36
Speaker
Even though I was always like the biggest chicken, like I was always terrified to get on these things.
00:33:40
Speaker
Like it looked cool, like on television or like in the books when you see pictures and all that.
00:33:46
Speaker
But when I would actually go, like I would be terrified and I sometimes wouldn't even ride some of these things.
00:33:52
Speaker
But, but yeah, eventually once I was tall enough, I would actually ride and ride.
00:33:56
Speaker
I started going to Universal because I was born and raised here in Miami.
00:34:00
Speaker
And, and yeah, the Hulk was my first like big coaster.
00:34:05
Speaker
And it was like terrifying for me.
00:34:06
Speaker
But you know, that was like the one that started it all for me.
00:34:09
Speaker
And then
00:34:11
Speaker
I kind of stopped with the coaster love for quite a bit.
00:34:15
Speaker
Like once I reached like high school and then I think once the construction started for VelociCoaster, like I started getting like geeking out over it and I started like really getting into it again.
00:34:26
Speaker
I'm like, all right, let me look at this.
00:34:27
Speaker
Let me look at that.
00:34:27
Speaker
Like I was always on top of all the updates and all of that.
00:34:30
Speaker
And then, and then I'm here today.
00:34:33
Speaker
I got to this point.
00:34:35
Speaker
I joined Buzzbars because of that.
00:34:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
And yeah, so it was kind of like that.
00:34:40
Speaker
It was kind of gradual.
00:34:41
Speaker
Like it started off just like as like a like looking at the channels again, travel channel, all that stuff.
00:34:47
Speaker
And then eventually it kind of died out.
00:34:49
Speaker
And then I kind of got back into it later on.
00:34:52
Speaker
I was going to say, I loved those shows on travel channel growing up.
00:34:55
Speaker
I was hooked to those shows.
00:34:56
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:34:57
Speaker
It was a different era.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah, you don't find that anymore nowadays.
00:35:01
Speaker
But I used to be obsessed with those shows.
00:35:03
Speaker
Same.
00:35:05
Speaker
All right.
00:35:06
Speaker
Now's the lightning round.
00:35:07
Speaker
So I'm just going to go through these quickly.
00:35:10
Speaker
Just say first thing that comes to mind.
00:35:12
Speaker
You ready?
00:35:12
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:13
Speaker
All right.
Quick Fire Questions with Rafa
00:35:15
Speaker
Cred count.
00:35:17
Speaker
180.
00:35:18
Speaker
Favorite coaster.
00:35:20
Speaker
Veloci coaster.
00:35:22
Speaker
Favorite theme park.
00:35:24
Speaker
Silver dollar.
00:35:25
Speaker
Silver dollar city.
00:35:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker
What is your next park visit that you have planned?
00:35:31
Speaker
Next park visit is holiday world.
00:35:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:35:36
Speaker
Hollywood Nights?
00:35:37
Speaker
Hollywood Nights.
00:35:38
Speaker
Nice.
00:35:39
Speaker
I was going to say Fantasialand, but not yet.
00:35:41
Speaker
That's afterwards.
00:35:42
Speaker
Wood or Steel?
00:35:44
Speaker
Steel.
00:35:44
Speaker
All right.
00:35:46
Speaker
And the good question, always skip over spooky season or you can only ride coasters that were built in 2000 and earlier.
00:35:55
Speaker
Okay, so I would always skip spooky season.
00:35:57
Speaker
Last time I thought this was a hard one, and then I thought about it.
00:36:00
Speaker
I was like, wait, why did I say that was a hard one?
00:36:01
Speaker
I didn't really listen to the question.
00:36:03
Speaker
Yeah, I would always skip spooky season.
00:36:05
Speaker
Okay, interesting.
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah, Velocicoaster would be gone.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah, so I can't do that.
00:36:13
Speaker
Number one hobby outside of coasters.
00:36:17
Speaker
I like going to the beach.
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah, I like beach.
00:36:20
Speaker
In Miami.
00:36:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:23
Speaker
Your go-to drink.
00:36:27
Speaker
A margarita.
00:36:28
Speaker
I'm a big tequila guy.
00:36:31
Speaker
Good.
00:36:32
Speaker
Best pizza topping?
00:36:35
Speaker
I'm basic.
00:36:36
Speaker
Pepperoni.
00:36:38
Speaker
Your bucket list travel destination?
00:36:45
Speaker
I don't know.
00:36:46
Speaker
Quick, quick.
00:36:47
Speaker
You got to be quick.
00:36:50
Speaker
Bali.
00:36:51
Speaker
Okay.
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:52
Speaker
I'd love to go to Bali.
00:36:54
Speaker
What is your karaoke song?
00:36:57
Speaker
I don't like karaoke, so no song.
00:36:58
Speaker
Okay, fair enough.
00:36:59
Speaker
What about to listen to?
00:37:01
Speaker
What do you want to hear somebody else sing?
00:37:03
Speaker
What do I want to get somebody else to sing?
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:06
Speaker
I don't know.
00:37:08
Speaker
Old school R&B.
00:37:09
Speaker
2000s R&B.
00:37:09
Speaker
Anything 2000s R&B.
00:37:11
Speaker
Okay, good.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:13
Speaker
And then what is your rollercoaster hot take?
00:37:17
Speaker
Rollercoaster hot take.
00:37:20
Speaker
I think Outlaw Run is very overrated.
00:37:23
Speaker
I don't like it.
00:37:26
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:37:27
Speaker
I don't like it.
00:37:27
Speaker
I think it's very overrated.
00:37:29
Speaker
Time traveler all day.
00:37:32
Speaker
But yeah, Outlaw Run is overrated.
00:37:33
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:37:33
Speaker
I think I agree with that one, actually.
00:37:35
Speaker
Not by a lot, but by a little bit.
00:37:38
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:39
Speaker
I agree.
00:37:39
Speaker
I agree, too.
00:37:40
Speaker
Time traveler all day.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:42
Speaker
Not much of an Outlaw Run fan.
00:37:44
Speaker
And last thing, do you have any social media you want to shout out?
00:37:50
Speaker
Yeah, I do have on Instagram.
00:37:51
Speaker
I am at travel for thrills.
00:37:54
Speaker
Travel for thrills, follow him on Instagram.
00:37:57
Speaker
And also follow us on Instagram, thrills, chills, and spills.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, we have that.
00:38:03
Speaker
We do have that.
00:38:04
Speaker
I didn't ask any questions through the Instagram.
00:38:06
Speaker
We should do that next time.
00:38:07
Speaker
It exists.
00:38:08
Speaker
We're trying to get better about posting on it, but it does exist.
00:38:14
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:38:16
Speaker
Wallenballen coming through live with the questions on Twitter.
00:38:20
Speaker
I was on Twitter earlier to get more questions.
00:38:22
Speaker
No way.
00:38:24
Speaker
So many.
00:38:24
Speaker
He said all of the topics.
00:38:27
Speaker
We'll come to this later.
00:38:29
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:30
Speaker
Add them and we'll take a look.
00:38:33
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:34
Speaker
I don't know.
00:38:35
Speaker
Okay.
00:38:39
Speaker
Oh, walling, balling.
00:38:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
All right.
00:38:43
Speaker
Now we're going to just kind of get into detail about each land and each ride, food and beverage, vibe, theming, all that kind of good
Celestial Park and Ride Reviews
00:38:52
Speaker
stuff.
00:38:52
Speaker
So if you are somebody that doesn't want the heavy spoilers, then maybe you shouldn't listen.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah, but...
00:39:02
Speaker
If you've been already and you want to hear our opinions, continue listening.
00:39:06
Speaker
So we're going to start with Celestial Park.
00:39:10
Speaker
Who wants to go?
00:39:11
Speaker
Me.
00:39:12
Speaker
I love Celestial Park.
00:39:16
Speaker
I love anything water.
00:39:18
Speaker
So I feel like the use of water in this land and the fountain is so beautiful.
00:39:24
Speaker
I love the kind of like
00:39:26
Speaker
old school, but like new age, like art deco kind of like vibe that they're going with in there.
00:39:33
Speaker
And I just feel like,
00:39:37
Speaker
And maybe it's because I've been there on like lower attendance days.
00:39:40
Speaker
I feel like this area being open, like so open, the paths being so wide is like really nice for just like hanging out, which is like something I picture us doing once we are able to be there together.
00:39:53
Speaker
Until it's 100 degrees in Florida.
00:39:57
Speaker
Right, of course.
00:39:58
Speaker
And until there's like triple the amount of people.
00:40:01
Speaker
But like in my brain, I was like, oh man, we could drive here and it would be so fun.
00:40:05
Speaker
I did not get to go to the Tiki bar that's in Celestial Park, but I really, really want to.
00:40:10
Speaker
Oh, no.
00:40:11
Speaker
Me too.
00:40:12
Speaker
I want to try one of the drinks, but I will say I walked past it and I was like, that's not Tiki enough.
00:40:16
Speaker
Like, the theming is a little... Oh, I didn't really get that close.
00:40:18
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:21
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, we'll get into the specifics, but I just, I really feel like when you, oh, one thing I do want to say about this, and I saw some people talking about it on Twitter is like, obviously the backdrop of the whole park and like the backdrop of Celestial Park is Helios Hotel.
00:40:39
Speaker
And it doesn't blow me away visually.
00:40:42
Speaker
I don't know what you guys think, but it's kind of like, oh, this looks like it was maybe built like 20 years ago.
00:40:47
Speaker
It's kind of weird.
00:40:48
Speaker
It's a little underwhelming.
00:40:51
Speaker
It is.
00:40:51
Speaker
I mean, at night, it does change.
00:40:53
Speaker
It does look a lot better at night.
00:40:55
Speaker
It does, yeah.
00:40:56
Speaker
It's still pretty underwhelming, I think.
00:40:58
Speaker
It's a little boxy, and it definitely got budget cut if you look at the original renderings of what it was supposed to look like.
00:41:06
Speaker
So I'm not thinking that's going to change at this point, but they have grander visions at the beginning.
00:41:12
Speaker
And another little piece of insider intel that I have is that
00:41:16
Speaker
Out of all of the park, it's over budget, first of all, which, I mean, that tracks.
00:41:21
Speaker
But Celestial Park was the least amount of theming budget in the whole park.
00:41:28
Speaker
Because it's not an IP, they didn't have contractual stuff to deal with.
00:41:32
Speaker
And so they had the least amount of budget to work with for that area.
00:41:36
Speaker
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.
00:41:38
Speaker
There's not a ton going on.
00:41:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:42
Speaker
Did you like any particular rides there, Kelly, by chance?
00:41:46
Speaker
Did I?
00:41:46
Speaker
Are we doing this already?
00:41:48
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:41:49
Speaker
We can do it now.
00:41:52
Speaker
Okay, well, how about, did anybody do the carousel?
00:41:55
Speaker
Yes.
00:41:56
Speaker
Okay, talk about that first.
00:41:58
Speaker
Nobody else did.
00:42:00
Speaker
So we did it and it was hilarious because like the cycle started boarding during the 11 a.m.
00:42:06
Speaker
drop for virtual queue and I was like, oh no!
00:42:11
Speaker
So, but I managed to get it like right before we started to start walking up to the animals.
00:42:17
Speaker
What I will say is that I should have ridden it at night.
00:42:20
Speaker
because it is not a very exciting ride cycle, which I mean, like no carousels are to be fair.
00:42:27
Speaker
Um, the movements that it does are different.
00:42:30
Speaker
It's a unique type of carousel.
00:42:32
Speaker
Um, like it has way more vertical movement than you would expect.
00:42:37
Speaker
And the way that each individual, um,
00:42:41
Speaker
vehicle whatever you want to call it is kind of able to spin independently was interesting too and it was all synchronized to music and I think that's really cool because most of them don't like it's just a generic thing that's playing on a cycle but this has multiple programs with like different songs and each one does different movements and the songs at night are completely different and like the lighting is looks really incredible at night and everything so I would say if you're going to do it do it at night but to be honest during the day kind of a skip
00:43:09
Speaker
I would feel like I would go and watch it it's it's more interesting to watch than it is to ride that's yeah I saw it from afar I know that I know my kids will want to do it and I feel like it's because it's one of the things we haven't done and we have a full day to do the park again like I think I'll try to prioritize it for sure but yeah it was an easy skip I'm sure that's how you guys felt too definitely yeah yeah it was either that or
00:43:36
Speaker
Or Stardust.
00:43:38
Speaker
So, of course, we're going to go to Stardust Racers.
00:43:40
Speaker
Speaking of, it's time.
00:43:43
Speaker
Okay, Stardust Racers.
00:43:46
Speaker
I don't even know how to organize thoughts on this.
00:43:52
Speaker
So, I have ridden it now eight times total.
00:43:59
Speaker
Six yellow and two green.
00:44:01
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:04
Speaker
I've ridden in the front and back of each and the middle of yellow.
00:44:11
Speaker
Most of my rides are in the back of yellow because that's where I think it's the most fun.
00:44:15
Speaker
So, okay.
00:44:16
Speaker
So,
00:44:18
Speaker
Are we going to talk about this?
00:44:19
Speaker
Can we just element by element real quick?
00:44:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:22
Speaker
Are we doing that?
00:44:23
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:24
Speaker
Go through it.
00:44:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:44:26
Speaker
So my first ride, to be fair, was on green.
00:44:32
Speaker
We were in, I don't think the back, back, but toward the back.
00:44:37
Speaker
Matt was in front of us.
00:44:39
Speaker
It was really under hyped for me, like by Matt and other people who had written it like just before me.
00:44:46
Speaker
Like, yeah, including you, Joey.
00:44:48
Speaker
And honestly, I thank everyone for it because I went in thinking it was just going to be like, maybe this will be like toward the end of my like top 25 episodes.
00:44:58
Speaker
coaster.
00:44:58
Speaker
I love Mach Extreme Spinners.
00:45:00
Speaker
I love everything that Mach has been doing lately.
00:45:03
Speaker
Even Voltron, even though it rattled my brain, I still had high hopes for Stardust because it looked like it was supposed to be airtime focused and the airtime on Voltron really surprised me.
00:45:13
Speaker
So that was kind of like my thoughts going into it is like, I'm going to like this, but I'm going to keep my expectations low.
00:45:21
Speaker
First surprise of the ride was on the initial launch.
00:45:24
Speaker
So you launched
00:45:26
Speaker
And it starts off by feeling kind of like a stronger version of a regular mock launch.
00:45:32
Speaker
Like you're just like, okay, this is like, you know, mocks typical thing.
00:45:36
Speaker
And then like three quarters of the way through the launch, you get like a boost launch.
00:45:43
Speaker
And that really surprised me actually the first time I spacked my head because I didn't think that that was gonna happen.
00:45:50
Speaker
I had no idea about that.
00:45:52
Speaker
No idea.
00:45:53
Speaker
That's one of the biggest surprises for that ride, for sure.
00:45:56
Speaker
That was like Tom's favorite part.
00:45:58
Speaker
He keeps talking about it.
00:45:58
Speaker
He's like, oh, the boost during the launch.
00:46:01
Speaker
It's actually really interesting because of how the ride is set up, they chose to put the transfer track down there to be able to get both tracks, trains off into the same maintenance bay.
00:46:13
Speaker
It's literally two separate launch sections, just like Pantheon has a section in the middle with no LSMs.
00:46:19
Speaker
So yeah, you hit that last batch of LSMs and it goes crazy.
00:46:23
Speaker
It is wild.
00:46:24
Speaker
It feels very strong in that moment.
00:46:26
Speaker
Like it's not like just like a gradual increase in speed, like you're launching already and then you're like really launching.
00:46:34
Speaker
I didn't talk about anything else.
00:46:35
Speaker
I didn't even talk about the queue yet because I got so excited.
00:46:37
Speaker
But let's finish the ride, I guess.
00:46:40
Speaker
So then you go over, people are like calling it a top hat.
00:46:44
Speaker
It's just like a hill.
00:46:45
Speaker
I don't, I mean, because it's after a watch, it's a top hat.
00:46:51
Speaker
The positives pulling up into it and coming down out of it are extremely intense in the back.
00:46:57
Speaker
Like just for a moment, it's not like anything sustained, but yesterday, especially like I was getting folded a little bit over the lap bar and I know that
00:47:08
Speaker
you know, this was a concern for the ride and its initial testing.
00:47:12
Speaker
What were those moments, especially toward the back?
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:47:16
Speaker
The rest of the ride.
00:47:18
Speaker
It reminds me of Copperhead Strike.
00:47:20
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:21
Speaker
Because like the way it slams into the loop when you first hit it and you were straight goes.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yes.
00:47:26
Speaker
It's exactly that feeling.
00:47:28
Speaker
And if you're not like ready for it, I can see how that would be uncomfortable depending on, you know, if you're used to writing.
00:47:37
Speaker
coasters like that or not, I guess.
00:47:38
Speaker
Cause there were definitely some people who rode around me yesterday that were not prepared.
00:47:44
Speaker
Um, and then, so you, you do that and then you kind of do like a, what feels like it's going to be, how would you, how would you describe that second element?
00:47:55
Speaker
You like, it's like a turnaround.
00:47:58
Speaker
I don't know how else to describe it.
00:48:01
Speaker
It's a dive loop, but a non-inverning dive loop.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:04
Speaker
Correct.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:04
Speaker
That's exactly how it feels.
00:48:06
Speaker
That I think is the worst part of the entire ride.
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's the weakest part.
00:48:11
Speaker
Weakest part.
00:48:11
Speaker
It's a shame that happened so early on in the ride because you lose a little bit of momentum right there.
00:48:15
Speaker
That's like my one critique of the layout.
00:48:18
Speaker
And then after that, it's like a series of airtime hills that have some very strong airtime moments before you go back around to hit the second launch, which does not have a boost in the middle of it.
00:48:31
Speaker
It's just like one stronger launch.
00:48:33
Speaker
But then...
00:48:35
Speaker
The standout of the ride, the celestial spin.
00:48:37
Speaker
So on green, you go up or you spin going up and then come down.
00:48:43
Speaker
On yellow, you go up and spin on your way down.
00:48:48
Speaker
That is the highlight for me, not just because of how the element feels, but like the interaction of how the other train is moving as long as they're both, they're dueling is like really, really visually cool.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:00
Speaker
And then the rest is really kind of just airtime hills.
00:49:03
Speaker
There is one kind of like twisted airtime hill, which is like a little bit of a different sensation.
00:49:09
Speaker
Yeah, I really like that part.
00:49:10
Speaker
It's really good.
00:49:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:12
Speaker
But I think just like overall, a lot of airtime.
00:49:15
Speaker
It's very double out and back.
00:49:21
Speaker
was a little bit worried about because of Voltron, the rattle, or if there would be a rattle.
00:49:27
Speaker
And I would say like my first visit, I felt zero anything.
00:49:31
Speaker
Every single ride I had felt really smooth.
00:49:33
Speaker
Yesterday, I felt a little bit of something.
00:49:37
Speaker
I don't know if it was just because it was hotter out and like I could just like feel more.
00:49:42
Speaker
I was dehydrated or what.
00:49:44
Speaker
But both my rides yesterday, I felt not a rattle, but like a little bit shaky on the positives, I would say.
00:49:51
Speaker
a little bit different.
00:49:54
Speaker
This was after the, the like three days of downtime that it had.
00:49:57
Speaker
So I don't know if that had anything to do with it.
00:49:59
Speaker
They are only running two for both of my visits.
00:50:02
Speaker
I don't know about you guys, two trains on each side.
00:50:05
Speaker
And I know that they have very many more.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yes.
00:50:09
Speaker
They have nine trains.
00:50:11
Speaker
So it'll be interesting to see how that works because the way the queue is set up is interesting.
00:50:18
Speaker
You kind of,
00:50:18
Speaker
There's a queue downstairs, which I've never had to wait in, but you get to the lockers, which are facial recognition lockers, which are super cool.
00:50:25
Speaker
I love them.
00:50:27
Speaker
Very cool.
00:50:28
Speaker
You don't have to remember anything except for like maybe what area of locker you're in.
00:50:34
Speaker
And then you go up the steps and you do your metal detector.
00:50:39
Speaker
And then that's when you can choose what side you want to ride.
00:50:41
Speaker
There's a sign on the ground that says yellow or green.
00:50:44
Speaker
For some reason, the yellow line is always so much shorter, which is part of the reason why.
00:50:50
Speaker
Disney mom.
00:50:51
Speaker
It's because it's left.
00:50:55
Speaker
I went straight into green.
00:50:56
Speaker
I didn't even know that's where the two lines split up.
00:50:58
Speaker
I was like, I'm just going to go straight to the side.
00:51:00
Speaker
Yeah, always go left in every line ever in your entire life.
00:51:03
Speaker
Hopefully that doesn't increase the the wait time.
00:51:06
Speaker
Well, the other thing too is the actual layout of those cues.
00:51:09
Speaker
The yellow one is shorter than the green one.
00:51:12
Speaker
There's more snaking.
00:51:13
Speaker
Yeah, there's more snaking for green and then you always be shorter.
00:51:17
Speaker
It's the best you hit the straightaway basically the entirety like the state the station is over top of where the launch is.
00:51:25
Speaker
So the entirety of the station
00:51:28
Speaker
once you get through the like switchback portion is like just a straight shot.
00:51:31
Speaker
You walk, it's a very long straight shot to where there's batching for you to get your row to get on.
00:51:41
Speaker
What else?
00:51:42
Speaker
What else is important to note?
00:51:44
Speaker
The station felt kind of grand to me.
00:51:46
Speaker
Like I like the way that it looks when you're in there, it kind of gave me the same feeling.
00:51:50
Speaker
They kind of look like, like the monorail, like when you're waiting, like in that,
00:51:55
Speaker
I barely go to Disney, but like when I do, they have like this big grand station and I got that same feeling in this station, which looked really cool.
00:52:02
Speaker
And at nighttime, it looked even cooler.
00:52:04
Speaker
Like the storyline is based on the Celestials of Celestial Park harnessing the power of the comets and that's their form of transit.
00:52:11
Speaker
So the station is themed around kind of almost looking like a subway station or like a train station.
00:52:16
Speaker
That's why it has that big curved roof and you see the comets going through it.
00:52:21
Speaker
I was not super impressed with the theming, to be honest.
00:52:23
Speaker
I think the trains are like the prettiest part, especially at night.
00:52:27
Speaker
And they obviously have the most detail.
00:52:29
Speaker
But I talked to somebody who worked on Celestial Park and that was another thing that got budget cut.
00:52:34
Speaker
It was like, well, you're either going to have two coasters, a dueling coaster, or you're going to have less theming.
00:52:38
Speaker
And, you know, that's the direction they went.
00:52:40
Speaker
But like from my mind, I'm thinking of an e-ticket like VelociCoaster where the queue is just like awesome.
00:52:46
Speaker
And then you compare that with what you get there and it's not even close.
00:52:49
Speaker
Like it's a much more, I don't want to say bare bones.
00:52:52
Speaker
It's just a coaster.
00:52:53
Speaker
It's just a coaster.
00:52:54
Speaker
Exactly.
00:52:54
Speaker
It's basically just the coaster.
00:52:55
Speaker
VelociCoaster is an experience.
00:52:57
Speaker
And I just rode VelociCoaster two days ago, the day before I just went back to Epic just to like see how it was.
00:53:06
Speaker
And yeah, like VelociCoaster does such a good job of building your excitement.
00:53:10
Speaker
Every single time I ride that ride, I am excited, even though I've seen the queue a billion times by now.
00:53:15
Speaker
It's just like the whole package is so much better than what Stardust offers.
00:53:20
Speaker
And we can get into like what you guys think about the ride itself.
00:53:23
Speaker
For me, the ride on Stardust is better, just the coaster itself removing everything else.
00:53:29
Speaker
But I agree, like
00:53:30
Speaker
There's not a ton of theming.
00:53:31
Speaker
There's not an experience around it.
00:53:33
Speaker
I get what they were going for at the theming.
00:53:35
Speaker
And I think it's beautiful.
00:53:36
Speaker
One thing that bothers me, and I don't know if you guys know about this, who decided to paint the green side pea green?
00:53:42
Speaker
Why is that track?
00:53:43
Speaker
The colors are not good.
00:53:44
Speaker
Don't like them.
00:53:48
Speaker
I wish it was like purple and blue or I don't know something.
00:53:51
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know why those colors were chosen.
00:53:53
Speaker
Like, and when they fade in the sun, which they're going to do, they're going to look like the same color.
00:53:59
Speaker
They already kind of do.
00:54:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:02
Speaker
Like, I love the yellow color, but I just know when it fades, it's not going to look as great as it does right now.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:07
Speaker
And I feel like, I feel like this ride would have like, it would have looked so cool to have like an indoor queue.
00:54:12
Speaker
I feel like they could have done so much, like almost like,
00:54:17
Speaker
I don't know, like have it all like futuristic looking like kind of like a space.
00:54:20
Speaker
That's what I wanted more of.
00:54:21
Speaker
Like a Tron.
00:54:24
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:54:24
Speaker
The best moment of the queue is the Oculus.
00:54:26
Speaker
There's if you don't notice this, you should notice it while you're going through.
00:54:29
Speaker
There's an Oculus like in the roof of the queue.
00:54:31
Speaker
And if you look up, you can see the trains launch over the top hat.
00:54:34
Speaker
And that's like the coolest little Easter egg, if you will, in the queue, in my opinion.
00:54:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:41
Speaker
I'm learning so much.
00:54:43
Speaker
Oh, Tyler, you're so quiet.
00:54:45
Speaker
I hate it so much.
00:54:47
Speaker
You did see it.
00:54:49
Speaker
I did see it.
00:54:50
Speaker
It does exist.
00:54:51
Speaker
It did not run, but I saw the track.
00:54:55
Speaker
I really didn't want you to know about that boost in the launch because that's such like a surprising moment.
00:55:00
Speaker
To be completely honest, I didn't even know it spins.
00:55:04
Speaker
So I remained as spoiler free as you possibly can.
00:55:10
Speaker
I've seen some photos, but I didn't watch any POVs or anything.
00:55:14
Speaker
So yeah.
00:55:15
Speaker
I definitely wouldn't recommend doing anything like that before you go.
00:55:18
Speaker
Just go.
00:55:20
Speaker
And we, oh, and we forgot to mention it does have onboard audio, which during the day is a certain thing.
00:55:25
Speaker
And then at night it switches to another soundtrack and the night soundtrack is better.
00:55:30
Speaker
Oh really?
00:55:31
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:55:31
Speaker
I can't wait.
00:55:31
Speaker
So the night soundtrack is like a EDM version of the daytime soundtrack.
00:55:36
Speaker
And it's like, no idea.
00:55:38
Speaker
The audio is kind of low for us in our night ride.
00:55:40
Speaker
So that's why I didn't, I couldn't tell.
00:55:42
Speaker
I yeah they probably need to boost it on that one but when you sit down you can definitely hear it like in the station you hear like this swirling kind of sound you have to kind of pay attention on the ride to notice that it's it's hitting but it's a good soundtrack if you can hear it yeah audio in the park in general needs some help I think that's like an overarching theme for me I'm like I don't know if I have a problem but I can't hear anything no they do have some things kind of low
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want anyone listening to roll their eyes at me.
00:56:12
Speaker
But I feel like I do have to say that this is my new number one.
00:56:17
Speaker
I am not a person you guys can at least vouch for me.
00:56:20
Speaker
I'm not the type of person who has new number ones all the time.
00:56:23
Speaker
I've had the same number one for three years.
00:56:26
Speaker
Yeah, you're not jack.
00:56:28
Speaker
It's true.
00:56:28
Speaker
Now, did it?
00:56:32
Speaker
Did it go down at all for you with the little bit of the rattle?
00:56:38
Speaker
I don't know.
00:56:39
Speaker
I didn't move it.
00:56:40
Speaker
I don't think so.
00:56:41
Speaker
Because I think just taking like all of my rides and averaging them, I still think I like it better than Zadra, which was my number one is now my number two.
00:56:52
Speaker
I don't know.
00:56:53
Speaker
I just I, I like what I like.
00:56:57
Speaker
And what I like is airtime and not getting a headache on a ride and not hurting myself.
00:57:03
Speaker
And
00:57:04
Speaker
I feel like this is a good airtime focused coaster.
00:57:08
Speaker
If you're into like all kinds of different elements, I could see how it maybe isn't your favorite.
00:57:12
Speaker
And I too rolled my eyes, all the people on Twitter being like, number one coaster, this is my number one.
00:57:18
Speaker
I'm like, you've gotta be freaking kidding me.
00:57:20
Speaker
Like I hate that I like it so much.
00:57:25
Speaker
Cause it's like much more accessible than my, my number one was Zadra and my number two was Ride to Happiness.
00:57:31
Speaker
Obviously I'm not gonna go ride those very often.
00:57:34
Speaker
And my number one in the US was Velocicoaster until this.
00:57:38
Speaker
So I'm very excited that I will have access to a coaster that I love so much.
00:57:43
Speaker
But I rolled my eyes at myself.
00:57:47
Speaker
What about you, Rafa?
00:57:48
Speaker
Where is it kind of falling out?
00:57:50
Speaker
Where did I rank it?
00:57:51
Speaker
I think I ranked it at like number four.
00:57:54
Speaker
Okay.
00:57:55
Speaker
Or three.
00:57:56
Speaker
I don't know.
00:57:57
Speaker
I haven't decided yet, but yeah, it's up there.
00:57:59
Speaker
I, I loved it.
00:58:00
Speaker
Um, my last ride on it was at night in the front row on yellow and I loved it in the front.
00:58:06
Speaker
Like I loved it in the back, but I don't know why I feel like I, the airtime was better in the front at night.
00:58:12
Speaker
I think you're going to have different opinions because the front, you also get the sensation of speed.
00:58:17
Speaker
Like, yeah, that was a really cool experience.
00:58:21
Speaker
Um, but yeah, no, it's, it's up there.
00:58:23
Speaker
It's it.
00:58:24
Speaker
I understand the hype.
00:58:26
Speaker
It's not being over.
00:58:27
Speaker
I think for me, it's like, it's below Velocicoaster for me, just because I prefer Velocicoaster's layout.
00:58:34
Speaker
I think Stardust, like purposefully is different.
00:58:38
Speaker
And I find the layout a little bit uninteresting.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:41
Speaker
parts like that that first turnaround I wish had airtime or I don't know any kind of force and then I do like the straight airtime hills after that but then the celestial spin is probably the highlight for me if not like the second little part of the launch um and but I don't love the like
00:58:59
Speaker
part at the end where the trains are sort of weaving around each other because there's not a ton of forces in that part and the twisty airtime hill I really wanted that to be like time traveler and it didn't hit as hard and I was like oh it's a little float but not like ejector or anything so but I think it's going to be like a very crowd pleasing thing
00:59:18
Speaker
um, coaster.
00:59:18
Speaker
I think people are going to find it who like maybe think Velocicoaster is a little too intense might prefer it and find it, you know, less crazy.
00:59:28
Speaker
Um, so yeah.
00:59:29
Speaker
Oh, and another thing I wanted to mention is that I wrote it, you know, like front back and then I got a middle ride.
00:59:34
Speaker
Weirdly, the Celestial Spin was my favorite in the middle because you got the balance of force.
00:59:40
Speaker
So you were like out of your seat longer during it.
00:59:44
Speaker
And you could like the middle, you can kind of like, you can still see the train.
00:59:48
Speaker
Like if you do it in the front, you don't get as much of the dueling visual.
00:59:51
Speaker
You see more of the interaction in the middle.
00:59:53
Speaker
Exactly.
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:54
Speaker
And that was cool.
00:59:55
Speaker
Cause like, you're just staring straight up during the spin and you see the other train like right above you and you can like reach up towards it.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:03
Speaker
I hope it stays smooth.
01:00:04
Speaker
I could see.
01:00:06
Speaker
We'll see.
01:00:06
Speaker
I mean, they did a lot of shaving to the track.
01:00:10
Speaker
They were like shaving the track joints because apparently when it first opened, it was rough.
01:00:16
Speaker
And so they've invested a lot of time in like trying to make it smooth, which I would say they were successful at because I didn't find it rough either.
01:00:24
Speaker
I'm just curious to see how it's going to hold up over time because we know that sometimes mocks don't hold up.
01:00:29
Speaker
So I don't know.
01:00:29
Speaker
We'll see.
01:00:31
Speaker
It makes me wonder what they were doing to it in those three days of downtime before it opened back up on, I think, Saturday.
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, they had like a lift on the brake run and they took a train like completely off the main circuit.
01:00:43
Speaker
There was something something beyond normal going on for that.
01:00:46
Speaker
That was not planned downtime for sure.
01:00:48
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
01:00:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:51
Speaker
I will just quickly add, I know we spent a lot of time on this, but.
01:00:55
Speaker
My six year old child rode Stardust Racers yesterday, which is wild.
01:01:01
Speaker
This girl was so afraid of all coasters last season.
01:01:06
Speaker
She's getting so brave.
01:01:08
Speaker
I don't know how I talked her into it.
01:01:09
Speaker
And it wasn't even like sometimes we get into a station and she's like, I don't know, Mom, like, I don't want to do it.
01:01:15
Speaker
She like she was like full ready to do it.
01:01:18
Speaker
I will say she cried.
01:01:20
Speaker
She cried.
01:01:23
Speaker
And I hated it.
01:01:24
Speaker
I was like watching her the whole time.
01:01:25
Speaker
And she, I probably should have warned her about the launch that like really took her by surprise.
01:01:32
Speaker
And she was not ready.
01:01:33
Speaker
She needed that spoiler.
01:01:35
Speaker
She needed the spoiler for sure.
01:01:37
Speaker
The rest of the ride, she like kind of liked, like she says she liked it.
01:01:42
Speaker
She says she likes the hills and the twists.
01:01:44
Speaker
She's like, I just didn't like how the launch felt.
01:01:47
Speaker
So like, I don't know.
01:01:48
Speaker
She's learning what she likes and what she doesn't like.
01:01:50
Speaker
I feel like she can ride a lot.
01:01:52
Speaker
She's like 49, 50 inches tall.
01:01:55
Speaker
So she can ride all the 48s now.
01:01:57
Speaker
And I feel like there's not much more scary than that for what she can ride, which makes her feel confident.
01:02:04
Speaker
She's like going into Virginia.
01:02:06
Speaker
She's like, I think I can ride anything.
01:02:08
Speaker
And I think she, I probably would say that she could, like, I think she can handle.
01:02:12
Speaker
I would think so.
01:02:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:14
Speaker
She can ride Rapterra for sure.
01:02:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:18
Speaker
So that was exciting.
01:02:19
Speaker
That is wild though.
01:02:20
Speaker
That like Velastic Coaster is what?
01:02:22
Speaker
51?
01:02:23
Speaker
I think it's like 51 or 52.
01:02:26
Speaker
And Stardust is 48.
01:02:28
Speaker
So it has a much more accessible height requirement.
01:02:31
Speaker
um compared to some other parks and that's the highest one that they have i'm pretty sure is 48 for any attraction and it's for that and monsters is 48 everything else is very like family accessible park in terms of restrictions i would say although unless you're a baby because weirdly like the carousel and yoshi you you can't bring babies on those even though they don't do anything so i don't understand that part but
01:02:53
Speaker
Yeah, for a little bit older kids, it's a very accessible park.
01:02:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:59
Speaker
The only other thing I wanted to say about Celestial was like I was initially underwhelmed like my first visit because I'm not sure.
01:03:08
Speaker
Maybe just like kind of the vagueness of some of the buildings and walking around, but it gets like three times better at night.
01:03:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:15
Speaker
Um, that was, and we got to see the fountain show the second time, like that was fully running and that was really cool.
01:03:22
Speaker
Um, like with the music going, that definitely makes adds to the atmosphere of that, that whole area.
01:03:28
Speaker
And as the trees grow, I think it'll, it'll get better.
01:03:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:32
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:03:32
Speaker
You got to see some of those.
01:03:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:34
Speaker
Fountain show is fully running.
01:03:36
Speaker
It was funny.
01:03:36
Speaker
My friend was walking by and she was like, um,
01:03:41
Speaker
Maybe they'll do a show like the Bellagio and literally as she said that it started.
01:03:47
Speaker
I mean, it was awesome and it was long too.
01:03:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:51
Speaker
Did you see the one where they do like a musical section for each portal?
01:03:56
Speaker
Um, I think I did, but I didn't realize it at the time because I remember seeing the main fountain.
01:04:01
Speaker
That's what I was watching.
01:04:02
Speaker
And then we kind of left halfway through and then we were like, Oh, it's, there's a show over here too.
01:04:08
Speaker
So I didn't, I don't think I put that together at first.
01:04:12
Speaker
yeah i think like when we saw it it was in technical rehearsal so they just did them all back to back but they do have like a celestial park one they have one for each of the four portals i don't know if they're planning on always like running them all together as a unit but they i think they're kind of spacing them out and so like you'll hear the dark universe one and then you'll hear the super mario one and that kind of thing so that's cool yeah they they were playing one just in the middle of the day they were playing like harry potter one um
01:04:36
Speaker
I was like, wait, I didn't know that this happens now.
01:04:39
Speaker
So it's cool that it's kind of like... I got to see part of it.
01:04:42
Speaker
It was during the day, but... It makes Helios look even more like the Bellagio.
01:04:46
Speaker
For sure.
01:04:47
Speaker
For sure.
01:04:48
Speaker
So it does.
01:04:50
Speaker
Did you do any food in Bev in Celestial?
01:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, I did Pizza Moon both times.
01:04:55
Speaker
The first time that I went, I...
01:04:58
Speaker
loved it I was like thinking about it since I left I was like that pizza is so good for theme park pizza I had like the their version of the Hawaiian which I love pineapple on my pizza and Tom had like um the something with like had all kinds of peppers and sausage and like hot honey like very Tom pizza
01:05:20
Speaker
And both were really good.
01:05:22
Speaker
I really enjoyed them.
01:05:23
Speaker
I was talking Pizza Moon up to everyone.
01:05:25
Speaker
Also, the vibes in there are so cute.
01:05:27
Speaker
And then yesterday when I went, something changed and the pizza was completely different.
01:05:31
Speaker
And it was subpar pizza.
01:05:34
Speaker
Oh, no.
01:05:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:37
Speaker
Was it the dough?
01:05:39
Speaker
It was much thicker dough.
01:05:40
Speaker
Tom got the exact same one as he got last time because we both liked it.
01:05:44
Speaker
And the kids got pepperoni.
01:05:45
Speaker
And I tried both.
01:05:47
Speaker
And, like, it just wasn't –
01:05:49
Speaker
The pepperoni tasted like normal theme park pizza.
01:05:52
Speaker
And the one that we had had previously, like the first time we went, the dough was really thin and kind of like New York style, like a little bit crispy.
01:05:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:00
Speaker
And I like my pizza that way.
01:06:02
Speaker
And this time it was like thick and it was just like a pile of arugula on there.
01:06:06
Speaker
And like so many jalapenos or like really, really hot peppers where it was like hard to even eat it.
01:06:11
Speaker
I don't know, something.
01:06:12
Speaker
I've definitely seen mixed reviews there.
01:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, Tom, I guess.
01:06:16
Speaker
I feel like some people will think it's great and then others are like, eh.
01:06:18
Speaker
It was so good the first time.
01:06:20
Speaker
Like I was raving about it.
01:06:21
Speaker
I even, I was like telling Tyler like multiple times, like you have to go to pizza and you have to go.
01:06:27
Speaker
And Tom, I guess, talked to somebody on Twitter who said like,
01:06:30
Speaker
the it's a different like whoever the chef is on is like making them their kind of like their own way within like the same ingredients so i'm like oh like we just had a different chef i guess like i don't know did you like it that much either did you who me yeah yeah um it was very good i you did way over hype it
01:06:57
Speaker
It wasn't that good.
01:07:00
Speaker
It wasn't called the margarita, but whatever the margarita one was.
01:07:04
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:05
Speaker
So with the fresh moths and everything.
01:07:07
Speaker
So I thought the crust and the dough was very good.
01:07:11
Speaker
The toppings were just okay.
01:07:13
Speaker
Everything was kind of messy, like it was falling off the pizza.
01:07:17
Speaker
And yeah, I didn't really love like I think it was like sun dried tomatoes.
01:07:20
Speaker
I didn't love those.
01:07:21
Speaker
But it was very good for theme park food.
01:07:24
Speaker
It didn't.
01:07:26
Speaker
It wasn't like the best pizza in the world like Kelly told me it was.
01:07:30
Speaker
It felt like it was okay.
01:07:32
Speaker
I agree.
01:07:33
Speaker
It wasn't good the second time.
01:07:35
Speaker
Did you go wrong?
01:07:37
Speaker
I didn't go.
01:07:37
Speaker
I wanted to go, but we, we, yeah, we were like rushing through all the rides.
01:07:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:42
Speaker
I mean, I highly recommend going in there and walking around because it is camp.
01:07:46
Speaker
So cool.
01:07:47
Speaker
So really cool.
01:07:48
Speaker
We walked past, I was like peeking over and like, Oh, it looks really cool.
01:07:51
Speaker
And they have like an ube crust like pizza, which I was like, what is that?
01:07:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:55
Speaker
They've been doing this.
01:07:56
Speaker
Like, so all over celestial park, there's these ube things because of purple, like the purple color they keep using.
01:08:02
Speaker
It's very interesting.
01:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, the first time we went, we waited in a pretty long line to get a table.
01:08:09
Speaker
And then you can mobile order at your table and they bring it over to you.
01:08:13
Speaker
Yesterday, there was no one in there.
01:08:14
Speaker
We just walked right in and sat down.
01:08:16
Speaker
That's something I wanted to talk about operationally.
01:08:19
Speaker
This is the whole park.
01:08:20
Speaker
So you have two table service places, which are both in Celestial, Atlantic and Blue Dragon.
01:08:26
Speaker
Blue Dragon just opened.
01:08:27
Speaker
The pictures look cool, but none of us would have gotten to do that.
01:08:30
Speaker
And Atlantic is very expensive.
01:08:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:32
Speaker
And then you have like a tier of quick service and they all seem to operate the same way.
01:08:36
Speaker
Like if the restaurant is at capacity, you have to stand in a line and wait to get a table.
01:08:42
Speaker
You get to the table, scan a QR code and then like mobile order from the universal app and then they bring it to your table.
01:08:49
Speaker
So it's not like full table service.
01:08:51
Speaker
They just sort of bring it to you.
01:08:52
Speaker
You don't have to like tip or anything.
01:08:55
Speaker
And then they have what we do call it like a snack stands type places where there's no mobile ordering.
01:09:00
Speaker
You just get in line for it and order it and get your food.
01:09:03
Speaker
So I feel like the mobile ordering table service or yeah, like quick service situation is going to get interesting.
01:09:11
Speaker
There's going to be like these long lines just to get a table in the first place.
01:09:15
Speaker
I don't know about you, but so the first time we went to Oak and Star, which is the barbecue place in Celestial,
01:09:20
Speaker
It was very good.
01:09:22
Speaker
The mango like cornbread.
01:09:25
Speaker
Oh my God, that was delicious.
01:09:27
Speaker
However, we waited one hour for that from the time that we mobile ordered it, which is wild.
01:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, see, this is heinous.
01:09:33
Speaker
Like on our first day, like I said earlier, there were about 7,000 people in the park and we waited.
01:09:38
Speaker
like 20 minutes to just get the table.
01:09:42
Speaker
And that was like, we almost bailed and went somewhere else because we didn't want to spend so much of our day just waiting in a line to get food.
01:09:47
Speaker
And I worry that that's going to be like just the norm.
01:09:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:52
Speaker
I will say the second time was better when we went to, um, Oh, we'll get there to another one, but the food came out faster at the other place, but they're going to have to figure that out because the, there's a limited number of snack type locations where you can just walk up and get stuff.
01:10:05
Speaker
Um,
01:10:05
Speaker
And if you're not looking for that, you're going to be waiting, I feel like.
01:10:09
Speaker
And hungry.
01:10:11
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:12
Speaker
I also waited about 20 minutes for Pizza Moon.
01:10:14
Speaker
The line was all the way inside and a couple people outside.
01:10:17
Speaker
So they actually had somebody at the door like, how many to, okay, come in, you know, you can get in this line now.
01:10:23
Speaker
So, and I don't love...
01:10:27
Speaker
the mobile order only.
01:10:28
Speaker
Like maybe I'm just old school.
01:10:30
Speaker
Just show me what you have on the menu and I can tell you what I want.
01:10:33
Speaker
I don't want to have to go through the app and everything.
01:10:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:38
Speaker
You also got a scream in Celestial Park and so did I yesterday.
01:10:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:43
Speaker
Frosty Moon.
01:10:45
Speaker
I got a vanilla cone with...
01:10:48
Speaker
Oreo and birthday sprinkles.
01:10:50
Speaker
I wanted celestial sprinkles.
01:10:52
Speaker
No idea what they are, but they sounded cool, but they were out.
01:10:56
Speaker
So I got the birthday sprinkles, which were hard as a rock.
01:11:00
Speaker
Oh no.
01:11:01
Speaker
My poor children yesterday were like...
01:11:05
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:11:06
Speaker
We're like breaking teeth over here.
01:11:07
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:11:08
Speaker
We're going to lose a tooth.
01:11:10
Speaker
We went and we wanted to try the cheesecake ice cream.
01:11:13
Speaker
They were out and they were out with one of the toppings that we wanted.
01:11:16
Speaker
So we only got like vanilla with streusel on it.
01:11:19
Speaker
The streusel was good, but we were like, this is the most mid thing that we've had food wise here is the ice cream.
01:11:24
Speaker
It was just so disappointing.
01:11:26
Speaker
It was very much just basic soft serve.
01:11:28
Speaker
And yeah, the customer service was not good either.
01:11:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:34
Speaker
So I guess don't go to Frosty Moon.
01:11:37
Speaker
There's so much other better news.
01:11:38
Speaker
Not blowing reviews.
01:11:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:40
Speaker
All right.
01:11:42
Speaker
Well, we said we wanted to cap this at an hour and a half.
01:11:45
Speaker
We're at an hour.
01:11:47
Speaker
Sorry.
01:11:49
Speaker
But anyways, on to Super Nintendo World.
Impressions of Super Nintendo World
01:11:54
Speaker
Anybody have thoughts on the vibes theming?
01:11:57
Speaker
I mean, I think you can all agree.
01:11:59
Speaker
It's just overwhelming.
01:12:02
Speaker
I thought it was, yeah, it's very overwhelming, but for me, like, in the best way possible.
01:12:06
Speaker
I think it's so cool going in and seeing everything moving.
01:12:10
Speaker
All of the colors are so vibrant.
01:12:12
Speaker
Like, they're so in your face.
01:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, I thought it was really, really cool.
01:12:17
Speaker
Like, I feel like everything about it, it's interesting, though.
01:12:20
Speaker
Like, I didn't think that you were going to have a ride on the level that you're entering into the portal, like, which would be Mario Kart.
01:12:28
Speaker
And then you would have to go down to get to Donkey Kong Country.
01:12:32
Speaker
So that kind of threw me off a little bit, but it was cool to see like all the little like interactive spots like for the bands, which I didn't get, which I wanted to, but I'm like, I'm not going to spend $45 on that today.
01:12:46
Speaker
And also there was like a line for every single little like thing.
01:12:50
Speaker
interactive thing.
01:12:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:52
Speaker
Every single spot had a line.
01:12:54
Speaker
So yeah, I don't think it's worth it.
01:12:56
Speaker
I feel like maybe the bands will be worth it later on when the crowd dies down a little bit or they try to control that a little bit more.
01:13:04
Speaker
But yeah, I think this actually surprised me.
01:13:07
Speaker
Maybe because I wasn't so excited for it.
01:13:11
Speaker
Just because we've seen pictures of how it is in the international park.
01:13:16
Speaker
And then you also have the California one.
01:13:19
Speaker
I was kind of like, okay, it's Super Nintendo.
01:13:21
Speaker
We've seen it before because of all the other parks.
01:13:24
Speaker
But I was blown away by it.
01:13:26
Speaker
I thought it was really, really cool.
01:13:28
Speaker
Definitely higher on high levels than I expected.
01:13:30
Speaker
The reveal.
01:13:31
Speaker
Yep.
01:13:31
Speaker
I was just going to say.
01:13:32
Speaker
It's the reveal.
01:13:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:35
Speaker
But like you said, the stairs are probably going to be a problem for some people.
01:13:39
Speaker
It's kind of wild.
01:13:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:41
Speaker
I don't mind them, but I just wasn't expecting them.
01:13:44
Speaker
I was like, what is going on here?
01:13:45
Speaker
It kind of creates almost like a funnel effect.
01:13:48
Speaker
It all kind of spools down into the center, which is not that big.
01:13:52
Speaker
This is the land I think that is most at risk for getting closed and having a virtual queue or a queue to enter just because it's not huge.
01:14:02
Speaker
It's very overwhelming.
01:14:04
Speaker
Like it is.
01:14:05
Speaker
And I am sure it's accessible.
01:14:07
Speaker
I'm sure there's ways for people to get around.
01:14:08
Speaker
But I just feel like it's, it's hard to like, obviously, you know, where the like the attractions are.
01:14:14
Speaker
But it's like, hard to navigate and figure out like, where's up and down?
01:14:18
Speaker
And how do I get in and out?
01:14:19
Speaker
And it's just like, a little bit confusing once you're in there.
01:14:23
Speaker
And like, just geographically very small.
01:14:26
Speaker
And like, yeah,
01:14:28
Speaker
Tight.
01:14:28
Speaker
I don't know.
01:14:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:29
Speaker
Overwhelming is definitely a good word for it for me.
01:14:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:32
Speaker
But it's very.
01:14:35
Speaker
And just frenetic.
01:14:36
Speaker
And not see everything that's there.
01:14:39
Speaker
That is true.
01:14:40
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:40
Speaker
Like you.
01:14:41
Speaker
I didn't even realize that when we first walked in.
01:14:44
Speaker
Like I should have known this.
01:14:45
Speaker
I played the video games that I was walking in through Peach's Castle.
01:14:48
Speaker
But I didn't really take that in until I was like on the complete opposite side of the land and happened to look over and I was like, oh, wait.
01:14:55
Speaker
There's like a whole castle there.
01:14:57
Speaker
I didn't notice that until later.
01:14:58
Speaker
Because you're like, I need to get in queue.
01:15:03
Speaker
You're like, I don't care about anything.
01:15:05
Speaker
Yeah, to an extent.
01:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, this is true.
01:15:10
Speaker
I like the Donkey Kong land better than the other land.
01:15:14
Speaker
Like the main Super Mario land.
01:15:15
Speaker
It's really cool.
01:15:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:19
Speaker
It definitely felt less claustrophobic to me.
01:15:21
Speaker
For sure.
01:15:22
Speaker
It opens up a little bit more.
01:15:25
Speaker
So what do we think about the ride?
01:15:26
Speaker
I just feel like that layout is interesting.
01:15:27
Speaker
Like, again, with the stairs.
01:15:29
Speaker
Like, I feel like so many kids are going to be gravitating towards this land.
01:15:33
Speaker
And, like, you're not going to have, like, a small kid running over.
01:15:36
Speaker
And then, you know, you got the stairs right there.
01:15:38
Speaker
Like, I just feel like it's a mess.
01:15:40
Speaker
Like, when it comes to, like, the layout and, like, the stairs.
01:15:43
Speaker
But, I mean, as an adult, I thought it was amazing.
01:15:45
Speaker
But I can see how it could be an issue later on for those that are in wheelchairs or the smaller children.
01:15:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:54
Speaker
Should we start with the most basic?
01:15:56
Speaker
Did anybody do Yoshi?
01:15:58
Speaker
I did do it.
01:15:59
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:16:01
Speaker
Three out of four.
01:16:03
Speaker
It was fine.
01:16:04
Speaker
Common theme.
01:16:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:07
Speaker
I mean, it was kind of like there for me.
01:16:11
Speaker
I didn't know that it had like the one dark ride section, which I appreciated, but I wish that more of it was that.
01:16:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:17
Speaker
Just out in the land.
01:16:18
Speaker
It's nice to get like a higher vantage point of the land and to see everything moving up there.
01:16:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:16:22
Speaker
But the dark ride section should have been longer.
01:16:24
Speaker
I'm curious, Kelly, like how do the kids feel about it?
01:16:28
Speaker
Um, they liked it.
01:16:30
Speaker
Ben did it twice just cause he was doing it while he, we were doing something he wasn't tall enough for.
01:16:35
Speaker
You were able to walk right on it, which I honestly think is probably the only way that we'll do it again.
01:16:40
Speaker
Like the kids liked the visual of it and they like being able to, there's like the little game incorporated where you're looking for like the different eggs and you can like push the button of the color of the eggs.
01:16:50
Speaker
And I think Ben liked it.
01:16:51
Speaker
He's four.
01:16:52
Speaker
I think it's like geared well toward the younger kiddos who maybe can't,
01:16:57
Speaker
ride some of the bigger rides or don't really understand like how to operate the, the Mario game as well.
01:17:05
Speaker
Like I think it caters to them.
01:17:07
Speaker
I would probably not, like I said, wait very long for it.
01:17:10
Speaker
It's a typical Omni mover ride and Disney knows how to do an Omni mover.
01:17:15
Speaker
They do it 500 times.
01:17:17
Speaker
And just because Nintendo world is bright and new is,
01:17:23
Speaker
is like the reason it's appealing to me, but I would probably choose any Disney Omnimover ride over that.
01:17:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:30
Speaker
It's not really special to be honest.
01:17:33
Speaker
Not at all.
01:17:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:34
Speaker
Like the first time I'm like, okay, I'll wait like 20 minutes for this.
01:17:38
Speaker
And now I'm kind of like, yeah, five to 10, which I don't think it'll ever be again, but maybe.
01:17:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:44
Speaker
It's fine.
01:17:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:46
Speaker
It's there.
01:17:47
Speaker
It exists.
01:17:48
Speaker
Bowser.
01:17:53
Speaker
That statue is great.
01:17:55
Speaker
That queue.
01:17:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:56
Speaker
That queue is amazing.
01:17:58
Speaker
It's maybe one of the best queues in the park.
01:18:00
Speaker
Not my favorite personally, but the amount of budget that went into it is very impressive.
01:18:05
Speaker
Agreed.
01:18:06
Speaker
Like you're entertained while you're walking through it.
01:18:09
Speaker
There's a lot to see, which is nice.
01:18:11
Speaker
Well, until you get to the end and you're just going down the interminable staircase, that part is kind of boring.
01:18:15
Speaker
But the rest of the queue is really nice.
01:18:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:20
Speaker
It's funny because they kind of psych you out, right?
01:18:22
Speaker
They give you your little Mario hat and you put it on and you're excited to ride.
01:18:26
Speaker
And the next thing you know, you're in a lot more queue.
01:18:28
Speaker
There's still a whole bunch.
01:18:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:30
Speaker
I was expecting to ride right after.
01:18:32
Speaker
And then I'm like, oh, okay.
01:18:33
Speaker
I'm just going to keep this on then.
01:18:34
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:35
Speaker
We went down the first flight of stairs and we were like, surely the station's right there.
01:18:38
Speaker
No second flight.
01:18:39
Speaker
No third flight.
01:18:40
Speaker
Nope.
01:18:40
Speaker
Okay.
01:18:41
Speaker
Now we're here.
01:18:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:44
Speaker
I didn't like it.
01:18:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:48
Speaker
Well, Rapha liked it better than I really liked it.
01:18:51
Speaker
So I'm too, did you play the game or did you just sort of watch the, well, I kind of did a little bit of both.
01:18:58
Speaker
Okay.
01:18:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:59
Speaker
The thing is that we were trying to get the virtual queue while we were watching the little like instructional, like video.
01:19:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:06
Speaker
So I, we didn't really pay attention as much, but I was like focused.
01:19:10
Speaker
Like sometimes I would try to like shoot the shells or whatever.
01:19:14
Speaker
But then other times, like I was kind of just like checking out the sets and like everything, like each room, which looked really cool.
01:19:21
Speaker
So I think that's why I didn't get so sick, because I did hear some people getting nauseous.
01:19:25
Speaker
Sure.
01:19:26
Speaker
Because there you go.
01:19:27
Speaker
Because of the VR.
01:19:28
Speaker
Yeah, because of the VR, everybody was a lot of people were getting sick and nauseous.
01:19:32
Speaker
But for me, I guess because I was so like concentrated on the sets.
01:19:36
Speaker
I didn't really get that sick.
01:19:38
Speaker
So I really enjoyed it.
01:19:39
Speaker
I kind of tried to do the same thing when I was writing it.
01:19:42
Speaker
Well, first of all, I was severely underhyped for this because when it opened in Hollywood, people were like, this is terrible.
01:19:49
Speaker
And I think it's because it's marketed as Mario Kart and you expect a fast kart.
01:19:53
Speaker
But because of all those reviews, I knew that it was not a fast experience.
01:19:57
Speaker
It was like a slow-moving gamified dark ride.
01:20:00
Speaker
So going with those expectations and kind of having also heard that the AR was not good,
01:20:05
Speaker
And then I wrote it and I was like, that was more impressive than I thought it would be.
01:20:09
Speaker
Like the AR was more integrated than I thought it would be.
01:20:13
Speaker
And the sets beyond the AR were also really cool, especially when you get to Rainbow Road.
01:20:18
Speaker
I feel like that was the best moment where it kind of integrated with each other.
01:20:21
Speaker
And Kelly's like, God, no.
01:20:23
Speaker
Kelly's like, I disagree.
01:20:24
Speaker
The next time I write it, I think I'm going to ignore the game.
01:20:27
Speaker
I think I might not even put the headset on because I want to watch like the sets because they looked really nice.
01:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, if I ever do it again, that's going to have to be the move.
01:20:36
Speaker
I don't get, like, nauseous on VR anything.
01:20:39
Speaker
Like, I've ridden a lot of VR coasters and been fine.
01:20:42
Speaker
This was, like, just very, again, overstimulating.
01:20:45
Speaker
Like, I didn't really know, like, where to look and what to do.
01:20:49
Speaker
I was trying to play the game, but also, like, not throw up.
01:20:52
Speaker
So...
01:20:54
Speaker
I got off and I was like, that?
01:20:56
Speaker
No, I would be fine never doing it again, which is a shame because I do like Nintendo.
01:21:00
Speaker
I played Nintendo when I was little.
01:21:03
Speaker
That was definitely in my era.
01:21:06
Speaker
That just wasn't it for me.
01:21:08
Speaker
I...
01:21:09
Speaker
don't know what was happening.
01:21:12
Speaker
I don't know where I was.
01:21:14
Speaker
I was just like hoping for it to be over.
01:21:15
Speaker
And there was like a period of time in that rainbow area where I had to like close my eyes.
01:21:19
Speaker
Cause I was like, yeah, there's a lot going on at the end of that.
01:21:23
Speaker
Right.
01:21:24
Speaker
It's pretty.
01:21:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:25
Speaker
It's just like the land.
01:21:26
Speaker
It's very frenetic.
01:21:28
Speaker
Very.
01:21:28
Speaker
And like the kids liked it a lot.
01:21:30
Speaker
They were like, Whoa.
01:21:33
Speaker
I can see that.
01:21:33
Speaker
Yes.
01:21:34
Speaker
I feel that too.
01:21:35
Speaker
But also like, I just don't want to vomit.
01:21:37
Speaker
So yeah,
01:21:40
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate it and I agree.
01:21:42
Speaker
I think the queue was really, really well done.
01:21:44
Speaker
I think the ride is well done.
01:21:45
Speaker
It's just like not for me.
01:21:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:48
Speaker
That's fair.
01:21:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:21:50
Speaker
All right.
01:21:50
Speaker
How about Mind Cart Madness?
01:21:53
Speaker
Well, what do you think of the queue, Tyler?
01:21:57
Speaker
Oh my god.
01:21:59
Speaker
We can start off with that, Tyler.
01:22:01
Speaker
I spent over two hours looking at it.
01:22:03
Speaker
It was pretty basic.
01:22:05
Speaker
We did get to the animatronic part.
01:22:07
Speaker
We got just past that, which I think is very close to the station.
01:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's close.
01:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, it's really close.
01:22:15
Speaker
So what happened was, I think it was posted at 60, which was better than the hour 20 that we saw 10 minutes after early entry started in the morning.
01:22:24
Speaker
So we're like, whatever, we'll wait 60.
01:22:27
Speaker
about 20 minutes in and went down for weather storm came through obviously not universal's fault can't help that but storm passed pretty quickly and there was about an hour in between as far as we could tell that i think they could have ran the ride at least you know based on the weather i don't know what else was going on but the announcements changed from
01:22:50
Speaker
temporarily closed for weather to just temporarily closed.
01:22:55
Speaker
So we think there was some sort of mechanical thing going on.
01:22:59
Speaker
And then about an hour into that, another storm came through and they actually went through the queue line and we're basically telling people without actually saying it, like it's not going to open again tonight.
01:23:12
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:13
Speaker
And it was like probably eight o'clock by that point.
01:23:17
Speaker
So yeah, that's rough.
01:23:20
Speaker
Yep, very rough.
01:23:21
Speaker
And that cue is grueling.
01:23:23
Speaker
I feel like it is... It's one of the worst ones there.
01:23:25
Speaker
It's not a fun one to be stuck in for that long.
01:23:28
Speaker
The same thing.
01:23:30
Speaker
The same thing over the speakers the entire time.
01:23:37
Speaker
Yeah, that's not it.
01:23:39
Speaker
What about the ride?
01:23:39
Speaker
It's cute.
01:23:43
Speaker
I think it's really well done.
01:23:45
Speaker
It is the idea of like the track jumping and like
01:23:50
Speaker
kind of like falling off parts and like going over the water really well done it is janky so janky yes it is i love that about it i mean i mean it's a fun ride now is it janky by design or i don't think so i don't think so it goes with it it goes with it but i don't think it was meant to be that
01:24:13
Speaker
There's one transition where it's intentionally janky, but the roughness that we're talking about is not that.
01:24:18
Speaker
Because there's a moment where you're like heading for another vehicle and it's like, oh, we're dodging over here.
01:24:23
Speaker
And then you dodge back.
01:24:25
Speaker
But there are other places just like going around a turn and it's like.
01:24:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:24:30
Speaker
I don't think that was intentional.
01:24:31
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:24:34
Speaker
I can't even describe another ride that's similar.
01:24:37
Speaker
Like it's very, has a distinct vibration.
01:24:42
Speaker
Did anybody get to ride in the front?
01:24:43
Speaker
Cause I heard the view was better.
01:24:45
Speaker
I only got to do it in the back row.
01:24:46
Speaker
I did both.
01:24:48
Speaker
Okay.
01:24:48
Speaker
So did you feel like the track effect worked like well or?
01:24:53
Speaker
I feel like it only worked well because I was looking for it.
01:24:57
Speaker
Like, I don't know if the general guest who gets on there is even going to notice much of that.
01:25:01
Speaker
I don't think so.
01:25:03
Speaker
I think it excels visually off ride for sure.
01:25:08
Speaker
Like with that aspect of it, because the little wheels on the outside of the mine cart roll.
01:25:13
Speaker
Did you see that?
01:25:15
Speaker
That's such a detail to like power that for the people who are watching it off ride.
01:25:19
Speaker
And then it has like a little water dive with a splash.
01:25:21
Speaker
You can't even see the splash when you're on the ride, but like off ride, it looks really cool.
01:25:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:25:25
Speaker
And I saw like it surrounds the like that area too.
01:25:30
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:25:32
Speaker
And I saw somebody on social media describe it.
01:25:35
Speaker
Like if I'm rating it as a roller coaster, it's pretty low.
01:25:39
Speaker
But if I'm rating it as a dark ride, it's much higher because there's like theming elements and like dark ride sections to it that I didn't know about at all.
01:25:49
Speaker
And like when they happened, I was surprised by and thought were cool.
01:25:52
Speaker
So yeah, I agree with that.
01:25:54
Speaker
Mm hmm.
01:25:56
Speaker
Like as a coaster, I think it's my least favorite there.
01:26:00
Speaker
Same.
01:26:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
01:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, I would agree with that.
01:26:04
Speaker
But I think for an experience overall, it's pretty cool.
01:26:07
Speaker
Like it goes with it.
01:26:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:26:09
Speaker
And, and obviously it's probably one of the worst capacity rides in terms of like what most people are going to see as an e-ticket attraction.
01:26:17
Speaker
Like this is a major attraction.
01:26:20
Speaker
So at least for me, the cheat code was the single rider line.
01:26:23
Speaker
If it's open.
01:26:24
Speaker
The first time I wrote it, waited 75 minutes.
01:26:26
Speaker
Oof.
01:26:28
Speaker
Second time it was posted 60 and we got in single rider and got on in 20 minutes.
01:26:32
Speaker
So that,
01:26:33
Speaker
worked well i don't know if that'll continue to work but that that was a nice hack yeah we ended up rope drop it we rope dropped that ride both times just because it's part of early entry and that really helped us the first time we waited probably about a half an hour but that was with downtime and yesterday we probably waited like 10 minutes like almost walked on that's nice no yeah anybody have any food nope
01:27:01
Speaker
I wanted to try that Dole Whip, like banana soft serve thing.
01:27:05
Speaker
It looks good.
01:27:06
Speaker
Greg went to go try it, but he didn't want all of this stuff.
01:27:08
Speaker
And they said, we don't make it that way.
01:27:09
Speaker
So I didn't end up trying it.
01:27:12
Speaker
I've seen a lot of like reviews of the Toadstool Cafe, which I think is going to be one of the harder places to get a table at.
01:27:19
Speaker
It's really cute inside.
01:27:21
Speaker
They actually wouldn't let us in to see it, but I went and looked at pictures of it.
01:27:23
Speaker
It's really cute inside.
01:27:24
Speaker
And there's like...
01:27:26
Speaker
like screen windows with like things evolving and sounds and stuff.
01:27:31
Speaker
And the food is all very, you know, like Instagrammable phone eats first.
01:27:36
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:37
Speaker
But I've heard that the food there is like kind of one of the more average overall in the park.
01:27:43
Speaker
I've heard the same thing.
01:27:44
Speaker
Nothing looks super appealing to me, though.
01:27:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:48
Speaker
All right.
01:27:50
Speaker
Anything else on Nintendo?
01:27:52
Speaker
Nope.
01:27:53
Speaker
Moving on to Dark Universe.
01:27:58
Speaker
Loved the vibes, especially at night.
01:28:01
Speaker
Vibes.
01:28:03
Speaker
Especially since we are a spooky podcast.
01:28:09
Speaker
I didn't see too many characters, though.
01:28:11
Speaker
Did you guys see any characters walking around?
01:28:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:28:15
Speaker
I saw Igor, but that was it.
01:28:17
Speaker
I didn't see anybody else.
01:28:19
Speaker
Oh, boo.
01:28:20
Speaker
Okay.
01:28:20
Speaker
I got to see a couple.
01:28:21
Speaker
We saw the violinist on the balcony.
01:28:24
Speaker
I saw Igor running around asking for people's limbs.
01:28:27
Speaker
And then I saw like, I was roaming around in his photo op location because I thought it was just like an alleyway to explore.
01:28:35
Speaker
And then the invisible man just popped over my shoulder and cackled in my face.
01:28:39
Speaker
It was great.
01:28:40
Speaker
But then it turned out like that's his photo spot location and a line started forming.
01:28:44
Speaker
And I was like, oh, I didn't realize that's where I was.
01:28:48
Speaker
Yeah, I did see some criticism that like, once you get past, like once you get into the back, like near where werewolf is, that like, there's a little bit of like lacking theming.
01:28:59
Speaker
I didn't really feel that way.
01:29:00
Speaker
But maybe I'm just like biased because I like love everything about yeah, I don't it changes the vibe changes a little bit over by werewolf, but not in like a
01:29:11
Speaker
neglectful way I feel.
01:29:13
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:13
Speaker
I mean, I've seen a lot of people say like criticize it in terms of the size of it and the village isn't that big and it kind of, you know, feels like quick to, to go through it, but it's the vibes.
01:29:25
Speaker
They're probably my favorite in the park.
01:29:26
Speaker
I just,
01:29:27
Speaker
love the spooky atmosphere like you said especially at night i kind of got giddy like the first the first night i was there like we did curse of werewolf at the end of night took forever to get on it and so by the time we got off it was dark and walking out in that little like kind of curved pathway you walk through to enter the land there was all the fog and the lighting with the graves and stuff i was like oh yes i can't wait this is so good it's a totally different experience at night
01:29:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:52
Speaker
And there's a, there's been a lot of discourse about the nets on werewolf.
01:29:56
Speaker
I think that's kind of one of the biggest things that people were like, this is immersion breaking and like, it looks terrible.
01:30:01
Speaker
And I don't disagree that the nets are kind of annoying to be there, but it really didn't bother me as much as it didn't bother me either.
01:30:06
Speaker
Because the main vista of the land is kind of a central village leading up to Frankenstein's manor.
01:30:11
Speaker
And that is like the view and it's not really disrupted by the nets.
01:30:17
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:17
Speaker
I agree.
01:30:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:30:20
Speaker
Monsters Unchained.
01:30:22
Speaker
I absolutely loved this ride.
01:30:24
Speaker
And I said this in Discord, and I think I stand by it.
01:30:27
Speaker
I think it is my favorite ride that I've done on Universal property in any park.
01:30:33
Speaker
I agree.
01:30:34
Speaker
I'm not mad at that take.
01:30:35
Speaker
It's what Forbidden Journey wishes it was.
01:30:39
Speaker
Yes.
01:30:40
Speaker
Like the amount...
01:30:43
Speaker
that that technology has grown in the past few years and developed was just incredible.
01:30:48
Speaker
And I guess according to what I've heard, I had really good rides on it with all the effects working, which I guess has not been true in the past few weeks.
01:30:59
Speaker
Yeah, I can kind of speak to that a little bit.
01:31:01
Speaker
But my first...
01:31:03
Speaker
Um, my first visit, we like rope dropped when the regular park opened, we did monsters right away.
01:31:10
Speaker
And I was underwhelmed mostly, I think, because like, I had heard a lot of good things about it.
01:31:16
Speaker
I tried to keep all my expectations fairly low, but there was a lot of hype.
01:31:20
Speaker
There was a lot of hype.
01:31:21
Speaker
And I, this is like my kind of thing to like.
01:31:24
Speaker
So I was like, Oh, I really, really want to like this.
01:31:27
Speaker
And I knew that the ride vehicle was like forbidden journey.
01:31:31
Speaker
I was a little worried because I can't really ride Forbidden Journey anymore.
01:31:34
Speaker
Like, I feel like I leave there and I'm kind of wrecked for part of the day, like just nausea wise and like the screens just like aren't holding up or something.
01:31:44
Speaker
It's just like not great.
01:31:44
Speaker
Yeah, that's what messes me up.
01:31:46
Speaker
So I was like, oh God, like, am I going to be able to even enjoy this?
01:31:49
Speaker
And I'm happy that
01:31:51
Speaker
It definitely doesn't make me feel nauseous at all.
01:31:53
Speaker
I think the integration, there's so much less screen use.
01:31:57
Speaker
There's screens for sure, but the practical sets almost overshadow the use of the screens in a good way.
01:32:03
Speaker
I think the mix of that is good.
01:32:07
Speaker
But my first ride, I was underwhelmed.
01:32:11
Speaker
I didn't realize, I guess, how many animatronics weren't maybe working
01:32:17
Speaker
or were onto their full potential because yesterday I was like blown away by how much was happening.
01:32:23
Speaker
I was like, wow, I like really missed a lot the first time.
01:32:25
Speaker
And I guess maybe didn't realize that just a lot of it wasn't on or working.
01:32:29
Speaker
I also had a breakdown my first ride and it restarted and everything and everything was fine.
01:32:35
Speaker
But I think that did kind of like negatively impact
01:32:38
Speaker
the whole experience because it was like the story stopped in the middle.
01:32:42
Speaker
I also had trouble with the audio the first time.
01:32:44
Speaker
Like I couldn't hear it unless I like really plastered my head back next to where the speakers were.
01:32:50
Speaker
And that was like where a lot of the story was happening.
01:32:52
Speaker
So I think I just kind of had like a disjointed experience.
01:32:55
Speaker
I still really liked it, but yesterday I was definitely more blown away and wish that that had kind of been what my first experience was like, because I think it was what, what it was supposed to be.
01:33:05
Speaker
So yeah.
01:33:07
Speaker
Can we talk about the queue?
01:33:09
Speaker
Yes.
01:33:10
Speaker
Like my favorite queue ever.
01:33:11
Speaker
It's so cool.
01:33:13
Speaker
So good.
01:33:14
Speaker
Yes.
01:33:15
Speaker
If you're like epileptic.
01:33:16
Speaker
Oh no.
01:33:18
Speaker
Yeah.
01:33:18
Speaker
But I love it.
01:33:21
Speaker
I love like that first room that you walk in where it's like the fireplace and everything.
01:33:26
Speaker
I was like, Oh my God, this is the vibe.
01:33:27
Speaker
I'm like, this is where I want to be.
01:33:29
Speaker
Can I move in?
01:33:30
Speaker
Can I live here?
01:33:31
Speaker
And then when it gets into like, there's like some medical stuff going on in the queue too that I like really like, obviously.
01:33:39
Speaker
But it's just so well done.
01:33:40
Speaker
The way that you go up the stone stairs and like then you wind your way around and you see that Frankenstein and like the x-ray thing is so cool.
01:33:47
Speaker
And then you end up on the other side of the balcony, like looking down at the stairs.
01:33:50
Speaker
That was really smart.
01:33:51
Speaker
I love the way that they did that.
01:33:54
Speaker
I want to enter that queue at nighttime.
01:33:56
Speaker
Like it just looks so cool.
01:33:59
Speaker
I can't imagine how it is at night.
01:34:01
Speaker
My favorite part, I don't know if you guys caught this or not because I did it my first time.
01:34:05
Speaker
The long hallway, the voices basically chase you down the hallway.
01:34:11
Speaker
Yes.
01:34:11
Speaker
That was incredible.
01:34:13
Speaker
I didn't notice that.
01:34:14
Speaker
UV flash on the walls.
01:34:16
Speaker
Yes.
01:34:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:17
Speaker
There's like words written on the walls that flash UV.
01:34:19
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:19
Speaker
That was super cool.
01:34:21
Speaker
Yeah, that was awesome.
01:34:22
Speaker
And then honestly, like it's part of the queue experience technically, but really kind of also the storytelling of the ride, like the two pre-shows that they have.
01:34:29
Speaker
I love them.
01:34:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:30
Speaker
Like their peak.
01:34:32
Speaker
And I think people are going to be quoting like the Igor pre-show.
01:34:35
Speaker
Because it's so ridiculous and silly.
01:34:38
Speaker
And that robot.
01:34:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:40
Speaker
The animatronic and the Frankenstein monster animatronic is insane.
01:34:46
Speaker
Both of those animatronics are fantastic.
01:34:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:48
Speaker
It's very, very cool.
01:34:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:50
Speaker
I was not expecting that.
01:34:52
Speaker
I thought the Igor part was a little corny at first, but after you ride it, you realize it actually works.
01:34:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:34:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:00
Speaker
Frankenstein animatronic is awesome.
01:35:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:04
Speaker
Yeah, like they lean into it being campy.
01:35:07
Speaker
It's like not overly so, but because they like the graphics and stuff are kind of like spooky and like a little more serious.
01:35:15
Speaker
But when you're on the ride, like some of the things that he says in the audio are like silly and that kind of thing.
01:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, there are a couple of like, I think people could legitimately get jump scared by some of the animatronics.
01:35:26
Speaker
Like, yeah.
01:35:28
Speaker
are definitely spots where like if you're not ready it's like whoa i think they're they're probably doing a disservice like advertising and is the scariest thing ever because it's not yeah i think it's cool um but i definitely could see like kids getting scared by it for sure yeah and there were yesterday there were adults that chickened out in line in front of us like there was this group of four and then he turned into a single rider we were like he was like can i come with you guys we were like sure but what happened he was like they got scared i was like what
01:35:56
Speaker
Yeah, Amelia rode yesterday and I was shocked.
01:35:59
Speaker
I like talked to her about it all day.
01:36:00
Speaker
I'm like, this is scary.
01:36:02
Speaker
It is monsters.
01:36:03
Speaker
Like they are not real, but like it's meant to be a scary ride.
01:36:06
Speaker
She's like, I can do it.
01:36:07
Speaker
I'm brave.
01:36:09
Speaker
She sat on that ride and I heard her a couple of times during the ride say,
01:36:14
Speaker
They are not real.
01:36:14
Speaker
They are not real.
01:36:15
Speaker
I was like, are you okay?
01:36:18
Speaker
Am I causing nightmares?
01:36:19
Speaker
Is this nightmare fuel for my child?
01:36:21
Speaker
She got off and she was like, that was so fun.
01:36:23
Speaker
I love it so much.
01:36:24
Speaker
She's like, I like spooky things.
01:36:26
Speaker
I was like, yes.
01:36:27
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:36:28
Speaker
Truly your daughter.
01:36:29
Speaker
Truly.
01:36:32
Speaker
The jump scare part that stuck out to me was, I think it was a creature from the Black Lagoon, where it sort of tilts you downwards suddenly.
01:36:41
Speaker
Kind of dumps you into him.
01:36:43
Speaker
That it jumps up at you, and that got me a little bit.
01:36:47
Speaker
yeah that was so good yeah i love that i love the werewolf scene where like you kind of see it on the screens like it's like chasing like you see it going like through the screens and then eventually it shows up in front of you yeah that was so cool i saw somebody say that's what the the yeti on evers was supposed to be i saw that one i was like yeah pretty much yeah
01:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, so I think much better than Forbidden Journey.
01:37:13
Speaker
I don't know if I can say it's my favorite dark ride of all time, but it's definitely up there, and I think it's very well done.
01:37:21
Speaker
And I'm excited to – I feel like it's one of those rides where I probably need to ride it like 10 more times to take everything in.
01:37:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:30
Speaker
I don't think it's better than Rise just because Rise is just so multifaceted.
01:37:35
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think so either.
01:37:38
Speaker
Not too far off.
01:37:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:41
Speaker
All right.
01:37:41
Speaker
How about werewolf?
01:37:43
Speaker
It's fun.
01:37:45
Speaker
It's really fun.
01:37:46
Speaker
It's cute.
01:37:47
Speaker
Time traveler light is what I called it.
01:37:50
Speaker
Kind of.
01:37:50
Speaker
Yeah.
01:37:50
Speaker
I was like, did you guys get to do it in the back row at all?
01:37:55
Speaker
No, I think I was in the middle.
01:37:56
Speaker
Okay, that's the place to be.
01:37:58
Speaker
So if you ride it again, go to the back row because the way that it pulls over some of the hills, it's got some gank to it.
01:38:05
Speaker
And that was like my favorite part of it.
01:38:07
Speaker
And I rode it for the first time in the back.
01:38:08
Speaker
Like we just happened to get it.
01:38:09
Speaker
We didn't ask or anything.
01:38:11
Speaker
And we were shocked.
01:38:12
Speaker
We were like, whoa, that was like better than we expected because the layout doesn't look like anything.
01:38:18
Speaker
Yeah, the layout's kind of bland.
01:38:19
Speaker
Right.
01:38:20
Speaker
And it looks so short.
01:38:21
Speaker
And it is short, but it feels longer than you think, I think.
01:38:26
Speaker
and it has a little bit more force.
01:38:27
Speaker
It's got some whip to it.
01:38:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:28
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:29
Speaker
There is force, for sure.
01:38:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:38:32
Speaker
It's fun.
01:38:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:34
Speaker
There just isn't much to it, and I feel like the ending, when you go into that... The break run.
01:38:39
Speaker
Like, the break right at the very end, and you have that, like, banner, that was kind of awkward.
01:38:44
Speaker
I don't know if you noticed that.
01:38:44
Speaker
It had, like, a banner and, like, a mannequin.
01:38:47
Speaker
I don't know if you guys saw that.
01:38:49
Speaker
That's bad, but that's not the most egregious part of the theming.
01:38:52
Speaker
Because it's like a static thing here.
01:38:54
Speaker
No, no, no.
01:38:54
Speaker
It's the right before that, right before you go into the tent, like there's just a fence that you can see right over into a construction area.
01:39:03
Speaker
Oh, I didn't even notice that.
01:39:04
Speaker
Oh, it's bad.
01:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that too.
01:39:07
Speaker
And I'm like, they need to put a wall up or something here.
01:39:09
Speaker
Oh, no.
01:39:11
Speaker
Do we think that's still a work in progress?
01:39:13
Speaker
Or did they just run out of budget?
01:39:16
Speaker
I hope so because there have been minor things that they've been adding.
01:39:18
Speaker
Like they painted a side of the monster show building that they had always planned to do.
01:39:23
Speaker
They just hadn't done it yet.
01:39:24
Speaker
So I feel like they'll add a wall there eventually because it's kind of egregious.
01:39:27
Speaker
Like you literally see like lifts and construction equipment right there.
01:39:31
Speaker
It completely breaks the immersion.
01:39:34
Speaker
Gotcha.
01:39:36
Speaker
All right, dude, I went to the burning blade, which was awesome.
01:39:43
Speaker
I had a crossbow.
01:39:45
Speaker
I think that's what it was.
01:39:48
Speaker
What was it?
01:39:48
Speaker
A mix between mead and cider or something like that?
01:39:52
Speaker
I think so.
01:39:52
Speaker
Yeah.
01:39:52
Speaker
It actually was so good.
01:39:53
Speaker
The...
01:39:59
Speaker
sweetness of the cider and then the dryness of the meat or I guess the other way around sweetness of the meat dryness of the cider went so well together it was delicious I had the garlic pretzel which was very garlicky yes it was like a garlic butter dipping I think that's what the dipping sauce was very garlicky but not overpowering I actually really enjoyed it
01:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, we really liked that.
01:40:23
Speaker
It was good.
01:40:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:40:24
Speaker
And then I tried the little cheddar cheese bites or whatever they were, which were pretty basic and fun.
01:40:32
Speaker
The setup there is interesting because you can get drinks from the bar, but you can't get food.
01:40:36
Speaker
Yeah, you have to go outside.
01:40:37
Speaker
Oh, really?
01:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, we made that mistake.
01:40:41
Speaker
Yeah, because you can see them handing the food out.
01:40:43
Speaker
We even asked the guy like, hey, we ordered this.
01:40:45
Speaker
Can we just like get it from here?
01:40:47
Speaker
He's like, no, you got to go around.
01:40:49
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
01:40:49
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:40:51
Speaker
And the vibe of the bar is very cool, but I agree with a lot of people that say it's too small for the park.
01:40:58
Speaker
Oh, it's definitely too small.
01:40:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:00
Speaker
Like that's good.
01:41:01
Speaker
There's going to be a line out the door to, to get in, I feel.
01:41:04
Speaker
And even outside, they made the food window outdoor.
01:41:07
Speaker
So that way it's just, you know, but even outside there's only, I think three or four tables.
01:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, there's not tables, but at least they can, like, if you're getting food, kind of push you over there and then have the bar just be for the bar.
01:41:19
Speaker
But yeah, it's going to be a mess.
01:41:20
Speaker
It's going to be a mess.
01:41:22
Speaker
Did anybody see the fire go off?
01:41:26
Speaker
I never saw it while we were in there.
01:41:28
Speaker
We were waiting around and we never saw it.
01:41:30
Speaker
And then we went at nighttime to see if we would catch it.
01:41:31
Speaker
And of course, once we walked out, that's when it was lit on fire.
01:41:36
Speaker
But we saw from a distance.
01:41:37
Speaker
It looked really cool.
01:41:38
Speaker
I saw it twice to the fire.
01:41:42
Speaker
I didn't know it was a thing, so I had to look up the video afterwards.
01:41:47
Speaker
It's way overhyped as a thing.
01:41:48
Speaker
Like, it's very cool that there's fire, but like, okay.
01:41:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:55
Speaker
Okay.
01:41:56
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:56
Speaker
I mean, it's just like an immersion element.
01:41:58
Speaker
It's not a show.
01:41:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:41:59
Speaker
Right.
01:42:00
Speaker
Yeah.
01:42:00
Speaker
I think it's supposed to happen every 15 minutes.
01:42:02
Speaker
Like, you know, once the park's fully open.
01:42:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:42:07
Speaker
And I went to Dawes Steakhouse, which I tried the blood orange chicken sandwich with the black bun.
01:42:15
Speaker
I was not a fan.
01:42:19
Speaker
One, it was a very basic chicken sandwich to me.
01:42:22
Speaker
And what's really weird is that they give you the orange sauce on a little cup separately.
01:42:28
Speaker
So I'm over here thinking that that's ketchup.
01:42:30
Speaker
So I'm like, oh, okay, where's the blood orange on the chicken sandwich?
01:42:32
Speaker
And I guess it's because I had to pour it onto it.
01:42:36
Speaker
But then the black bun, I mean, many people have complained about it, myself included.
01:42:41
Speaker
Some weird stuff goes down in the toilet the next day.
01:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, that bun will have you pooping blue and teal and it's the weirdest thing.
01:42:51
Speaker
I was like, what is going on?
01:42:53
Speaker
I was like, this is really weird.
01:42:55
Speaker
I'm never getting that again.
01:42:56
Speaker
Unless you want to poop blue, don't get that.
01:43:01
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:02
Speaker
I want to eat there next time, but like I, we walked through it and I love the atmosphere in there.
01:43:08
Speaker
Yes.
01:43:09
Speaker
It's super cool.
01:43:10
Speaker
It's super cool in there.
01:43:11
Speaker
I enjoyed it.
01:43:12
Speaker
It was really nice in there, but the food was, I mean, what I got wasn't great.
01:43:17
Speaker
I mean, yeah.
01:43:18
Speaker
who got, I think Bethany had gotten like a salad there, which was a huge salad and it looked really good.
01:43:24
Speaker
And then some people got the chicken skewer and that looked really good.
01:43:29
Speaker
So I think it was just, just don't get the sandwiches there.
01:43:32
Speaker
They're pretty basic, but everything else looks pretty good.
01:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, just avoid the black one.
01:43:38
Speaker
Good to know.
01:43:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:43:40
Speaker
All right.
01:43:41
Speaker
Any final thoughts on Dark Universe?
01:43:44
Speaker
Great land.
01:43:45
Speaker
I think it's awesome.
01:43:47
Speaker
Let's move on to Harry Potter, Paris, Ministry of Magic.
01:43:53
Speaker
So I'm a big Harry Potter fan, but I think in the past few years, Hogsmeade Diagon Alley has gotten a little outdated, a little old for me.
01:44:03
Speaker
I loved this reimagined land.
01:44:07
Speaker
The magic wasn't in your face, but it was there.
01:44:11
Speaker
What about you guys?
01:44:13
Speaker
I kind of felt the opposite.
01:44:14
Speaker
Really?
01:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know.
01:44:16
Speaker
I kind of felt like it felt kind of lifeless compared to the other lands.
01:44:23
Speaker
Well, not only the lands in the park, but the other Potter lands as well.
01:44:28
Speaker
I don't know.
01:44:29
Speaker
This was the first time going into this land.
01:44:31
Speaker
It was the first time where I kind of felt like, did we need another Potter area?
01:44:35
Speaker
Was this necessary?
01:44:37
Speaker
I just feel like everything, all the other lands are so...
01:44:41
Speaker
I mean, obviously this is still pretty fictional.
01:44:43
Speaker
It's the wizarding world, but I don't know.
01:44:44
Speaker
I feel like you have Burke, which is so like, it's a very loud theme as well as Super Nintendo and dark universe as well as pretty loud.
01:44:53
Speaker
And it's theming as well.
01:44:54
Speaker
This kind of felt very like it looks grand.
01:44:56
Speaker
It looks incredible, but I just feel like it didn't, to me, it didn't live up to the other lands of the park, in my opinion, and compared to the other Potter lands.
01:45:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair.
01:45:09
Speaker
I just, I enjoyed the fresh perspective on it.
01:45:13
Speaker
And the forced perspective in the background with the, I don't know, the Capitol building or whatever it was, that was super impressive to me.
01:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's the whole man's insane though.
01:45:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:25
Speaker
Yeah, that's the cathedral at Montmartre and it looks great for sure.
01:45:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:31
Speaker
I've been to Paris before, so I'm like, oh, I know what that is.
01:45:34
Speaker
But I think that's also part of the reason why I felt like Rafa like maybe a little underwhelmed by it.
01:45:40
Speaker
Not underwhelmed by the like construction or details of it because it's very impressive in that way.
01:45:46
Speaker
But maybe just the feeling there or like my level of interest in it personally wasn't super high.
01:45:53
Speaker
Yeah.
01:45:54
Speaker
It felt like a Parisian street.
01:45:57
Speaker
And like there are lots of cool details.
01:45:59
Speaker
Like you said, you kind of have to look for the magic.
01:46:00
Speaker
It's in the windows like it's in some of the details there.
01:46:04
Speaker
So I thought it was very impressive, but still didn't not in a way that like blew me away or got me overly excited.
01:46:11
Speaker
That's fair.
01:46:14
Speaker
Kelly.
01:46:16
Speaker
I really liked it.
01:46:17
Speaker
Potter like doesn't get old for me.
01:46:19
Speaker
Like I think I'm just one of those people who will like it in any way that they reimagine it.
01:46:23
Speaker
And I think a lot of people do and that's how they're able to keep doing it.
01:46:26
Speaker
Like that area draws a ton of people.
01:46:28
Speaker
I think of anywhere I was even though like Nintendo was much more geographically like spatially limited.
01:46:34
Speaker
I felt like every time I went to the Potter area it was like always crowded.
01:46:40
Speaker
The most crowded.
01:46:42
Speaker
Like the most volume of people was it were in there.
01:46:46
Speaker
I liked the reveal of like kind of coming around the corner.
01:46:49
Speaker
That's kind of what they typically do in those areas.
01:46:51
Speaker
I feel like, and I don't know.
01:46:55
Speaker
I, I think it's like really beautiful.
01:46:57
Speaker
Like I think I love Hogsmeade, but it's like very like drab and it's colors.
01:47:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:47:03
Speaker
It makes sense, but this was much more just like colorful and beautiful.
01:47:09
Speaker
Like I,
01:47:11
Speaker
I can appreciate it outside of it being like a Harry Potter theme.
01:47:14
Speaker
It's just like, Oh, this is really well done and really pretty.
01:47:18
Speaker
I love the theming around the show and we can talk about that.
01:47:22
Speaker
Like, I just feel like I love a good, like, I don't know.
01:47:26
Speaker
It almost borders on creepy a little bit, like the music and like the circ area.
01:47:31
Speaker
And like, I don't know.
01:47:32
Speaker
I just, and it obviously it was like Parisian circus theme and it just, I love that.
01:47:39
Speaker
And I loved,
01:47:40
Speaker
I didn't get to explore like a ton of the rest of the area.
01:47:43
Speaker
We didn't spend a lot of time in there yesterday with the kids because Battle wasn't open.
01:47:48
Speaker
And even the first time I went, like the most time I spent in that area was standing outside of Battle, like hoping for them to like open the virtual queue and let me in before I got one.
01:47:59
Speaker
I'm like, please let me in.
01:48:02
Speaker
But yeah, I think it was really well done.
01:48:05
Speaker
Maybe not my favorite just because it's not...
01:48:08
Speaker
super unique to what we've seen them do before but I still really liked it I think it's beautiful yeah I don't know I think just the way it looks you can appreciate it it looks incredible yeah it looks really well done did anybody try food here yes I had the butterbeer crepe duh it was a crepe so Kelly got it did you have it again or just that first visit
01:48:36
Speaker
I did want it yesterday.
01:48:37
Speaker
We just ran out of time.
01:48:38
Speaker
I had it the first time I went.
01:48:41
Speaker
Um, not an elite crepe.
01:48:43
Speaker
It was good.
01:48:44
Speaker
Um, I feel like there's too much of the butterbeer like filling in there and not enough crepe.
01:48:50
Speaker
Like a crepe is so thin that I feel like the contents inside has to be balanced to the actual crepe itself.
01:48:57
Speaker
And it was not balanced.
01:48:58
Speaker
I think that's what bothered me.
01:48:59
Speaker
That probably comes out different every time.
01:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, probably every time.
01:49:03
Speaker
I didn't even get to try it because it was fully sold out and not even showing in the mobile app.
01:49:07
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
01:49:08
Speaker
All day.
01:49:08
Speaker
Like they didn't sell it all day.
01:49:09
Speaker
So next time.
01:49:12
Speaker
But I did eat it at, what's that called?
01:49:14
Speaker
La Serene, that same cafe that has the butterbeer.
01:49:17
Speaker
And I got a French onion soup with a salad side instead.
01:49:21
Speaker
And it was quite delicious, I have to say.
01:49:23
Speaker
Yeah, it was cute in there.
01:49:26
Speaker
I did like the vibes of that walking by.
01:49:28
Speaker
It did look just like a Parisian cafe where people would sit outside.
01:49:32
Speaker
It's really nice.
01:49:32
Speaker
It's nice.
01:49:35
Speaker
Yeah.
01:49:37
Speaker
So battle, um, it was open for me.
01:49:41
Speaker
I just didn't get a virtual queue.
01:49:43
Speaker
We, uh, my group was four people and three of us tried at both.
01:49:49
Speaker
There wasn't an 11 o'clock drop cause it opened late.
01:49:51
Speaker
Um, so we, all three of us tried for the three and the six and we never even saw a time pop up at all.
01:50:00
Speaker
So, um,
01:50:01
Speaker
I had a different experience.
01:50:03
Speaker
It wasn't open for me yesterday.
01:50:04
Speaker
My first time we tried at 11 and three and we got in and saw multiple time slots.
01:50:12
Speaker
But when I was clicking the time slots, it said this is no longer available.
01:50:15
Speaker
This is no longer available.
01:50:17
Speaker
It was so frustrating.
01:50:19
Speaker
It's so different than how it works for Disney.
01:50:22
Speaker
I hate a virtual queue.
01:50:23
Speaker
I'm really good at Disney's virtual queue system.
01:50:25
Speaker
Like I'm pretty well versed in how to do a virtual queue.
01:50:28
Speaker
It just like was not happening for us.
01:50:30
Speaker
We were lucky enough to ride only because somebody that we know had one and sent it to us.
01:50:36
Speaker
We did not actually get a virtual queue when we were there, but I did get to ride it once.
01:50:42
Speaker
Yeah, we got lucky and we had a group of seven.
01:50:44
Speaker
So we, you know, we had more chances to, you know, get the virtual queue, but it,
01:50:51
Speaker
It was kind of hard to get.
01:50:52
Speaker
I got to the time little area and it didn't do anything once it got there.
01:50:57
Speaker
I tried clicking on a time.
01:50:58
Speaker
It kept saying unavailable over and over and over again.
01:51:02
Speaker
And funny enough, the only two people that use the universal Wi-Fi were the ones that got the virtual queue.
01:51:09
Speaker
Oh, interesting.
01:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, which we weren't expecting that.
01:51:11
Speaker
That's why most of us didn't use the Wi-Fi.
01:51:13
Speaker
At Disney, they tell you to get off.
01:51:15
Speaker
Disney, you want to be on your cellular.
01:51:17
Speaker
They've been saying the same thing.
01:51:18
Speaker
Like, the Universal team members have been saying, get off the Universal Wi-Fi because it's slow to try to get one.
01:51:23
Speaker
It worked for us.
01:51:24
Speaker
Like, Javi and Caleb were the ones that got it, and they both scored it.
01:51:28
Speaker
Nice.
01:51:29
Speaker
Yeah.
01:51:30
Speaker
I don't know what happened.
01:51:31
Speaker
Like...
01:51:32
Speaker
I was so stressed out.
01:51:34
Speaker
We were both like clicking ferociously.
01:51:36
Speaker
Like it was doing the same thing where you click the time window and then it's like it just says they're all gone.
01:51:42
Speaker
And that was the first experience of the drop.
01:51:44
Speaker
And then the second drop.
01:51:46
Speaker
It like froze my phone because it actually was almost going through.
01:51:49
Speaker
It didn't do the thing where it said it was all out, but it's just said loading, loading.
01:51:52
Speaker
That happened to me.
01:51:53
Speaker
That happened to me.
01:51:54
Speaker
And then it was gone.
01:51:55
Speaker
So I, so Craig's was doing the same thing and we were both in the loading thing.
01:51:59
Speaker
And I was like, hold on, I'm going to kill the app.
01:52:01
Speaker
So I killed it because I thought it was not going through.
01:52:03
Speaker
It was just loading.
01:52:04
Speaker
And then I went back in and I got one doing it that way.
01:52:07
Speaker
And his just kept saying loading, like it never went through and actually picked it up.
01:52:10
Speaker
So we got lucky to get one.
01:52:13
Speaker
And like contextually that day, I am like 80% sure they were only running four to six ride vehicles.
01:52:22
Speaker
Only on one side of the station platform.
01:52:24
Speaker
So that's like highly reduced capacity.
01:52:28
Speaker
Recently, they were running up to 11 and they were running both sides of the platform.
01:52:32
Speaker
So they have been like spooling up, but they are not at full capacity.
01:52:37
Speaker
And that's the reason for the virtual queue.
01:52:38
Speaker
Like they were just not even close to being like at full capacity with all the vehicles that they need.
01:52:44
Speaker
Because in theory, it's supposed to be a people eater with the number of vehicles it has.
01:52:47
Speaker
But...
01:52:48
Speaker
they've been struggling to get there with the programming and everything.
01:52:53
Speaker
It's terrible.
01:52:55
Speaker
No, it's not terrible.
01:52:57
Speaker
It's not terrible.
01:52:58
Speaker
I just, I just, I don't, I, it was very, probably the most, I felt like this was the most screens that we got in the park.
01:53:05
Speaker
I don't know.
01:53:06
Speaker
Maybe Mario Kart is close to that, but this one, I don't know.
01:53:10
Speaker
I guess it was a combination of all of the screens and the jolty movements.
01:53:14
Speaker
I don't know if you guys have,
01:53:16
Speaker
had felt it that way too but i don't know there were times where like it kind of felt awkward jumping from like scene to scene and then the screens felt kind of close like almost in a forbidden journey kind of way and i don't know it just i kind of got like nauseous halfway through i'm like what is going on here kind of felt a little too similar to forbidden forbidden journey for me um the animatronics were insane though yeah the
01:53:40
Speaker
That was incredible.
01:53:42
Speaker
Like that was, I'll give them that.
01:53:44
Speaker
That was mind blowing, but I don't know.
01:53:47
Speaker
I just felt like it was too screen based for me.
01:53:50
Speaker
I think that's why I didn't like it too much, but the queue is incredible.
01:53:53
Speaker
There's so much to look at when you're in there.
01:53:55
Speaker
I did hear, I think, I think Kelly, I think you had said that it's like an hour after, like once you go into the queue, it's like an hour wait.
01:54:03
Speaker
We actually had a, we walked straight onto the ride.
01:54:06
Speaker
Like, whoa.
01:54:07
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:07
Speaker
So we went in and we went straight onto the ride.
01:54:10
Speaker
It was just a lot of walking because it's like a massive queue.
01:54:12
Speaker
But we were lucky enough to just go straight onto the ride.
01:54:15
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen a lot of people with UQ have that experience, like just depending on how the flow of the day is going.
01:54:22
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:22
Speaker
They purposefully like limited it in case it broke down.
01:54:25
Speaker
So if it was actually running the line, I was pretty sure.
01:54:28
Speaker
I think it was like 25 minutes for us, maybe, maybe 30, something like that.
01:54:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:33
Speaker
Yeah.
01:54:33
Speaker
But the I I want to caution about the queue because when we say that it's actually the part before the queue or before the main queue.
01:54:43
Speaker
That's the best part.
01:54:44
Speaker
You like enter through the network.
01:54:47
Speaker
Right.
01:54:48
Speaker
And that is the coolest like part and a big reveal.
01:54:50
Speaker
And it's very, very well executed.
01:54:54
Speaker
On par with the Stormtrooper room.
01:54:58
Speaker
It's just the scale and the grandeur of walking through that space and the atrium is very, very cool.
01:55:04
Speaker
But the actual queue itself, while it does have nice details, is not as impressive until you get to Umbridge's office.
01:55:09
Speaker
That's about the only other big scale, nice element of that queue.
01:55:15
Speaker
And Tyler, you got to see that, right?
01:55:17
Speaker
I did see the queue, yeah.
01:55:19
Speaker
I thought the Flu Network part was awesome.
01:55:22
Speaker
And then, yeah, the grand entry there was really cool.
01:55:27
Speaker
There were a lot of people in there just hanging out and taking pictures.
01:55:30
Speaker
One lady actually walked up to us.
01:55:31
Speaker
She was like, do you guys happen to have an extra virtual queue?
01:55:35
Speaker
I'm like, lady, do you think I'd be standing here?
01:55:39
Speaker
Let me know if you find one.
01:55:41
Speaker
You're like, no, do you have one?
01:55:44
Speaker
Right.
01:55:46
Speaker
But yeah, I'm excited to actually try it out, hopefully, in September.
01:55:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm more up on it than Rafa is.
01:55:54
Speaker
I don't think it's the best thing in the world, but I I mean, I've only written it once and I feel like it's going to have diminishing returns like but my first ride, I was very, very impressed with it.
01:56:05
Speaker
I am not prone to motion sickness.
01:56:06
Speaker
I like never really get motion sick.
01:56:08
Speaker
So that's not a problem for me with the screens.
01:56:10
Speaker
And I was like, I think it took me like, I don't know, maybe more than half of the ride before I figured out
01:56:17
Speaker
what was screens and what was real, like how that was working, because it's very well integrated.
01:56:23
Speaker
I feel like there are physical set pieces that interact with multiple screens to kind of produce a very realistic effect compared to other rides that Universal has done.
01:56:35
Speaker
Like there's these massive OLED screens that are very convincing at times.
01:56:41
Speaker
And I'm like, what's what's going on here?
01:56:43
Speaker
And then, like you said, the animatronics
01:56:46
Speaker
Some of those are just, yeah, very impressively realistic in the way that they move and all of that.
01:56:52
Speaker
And I got to see like some like lights on footage of it, which I didn't mind watching after having written it.
01:56:59
Speaker
And like you kind of see even more like seeing that with the lights on explained to me why I felt that way, because there are more physical set pieces than you think.
01:57:09
Speaker
I think like and the way that it integrates with the screens is very interesting.
01:57:14
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely want to see like, I definitely want to ride it again.
01:57:18
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like maybe I just didn't get it at its full potential.
01:57:20
Speaker
Maybe it was very possible to Yeah, yeah.
01:57:23
Speaker
So it's just my first ride.
01:57:24
Speaker
So but I mean, there were a lot of things that were impressive about it.
01:57:29
Speaker
So yeah, definitely.
01:57:30
Speaker
I'm definitely curious to see how my future rides will be on it.
01:57:33
Speaker
I was a fan of the ride motion, though, to be honest.
01:57:36
Speaker
Really?
01:57:36
Speaker
That was one of them I didn't like.
01:57:38
Speaker
I love that.
01:57:39
Speaker
I wasn't expecting it to be as dynamic as it was.
01:57:43
Speaker
It unfortunately doesn't have a big drop sensation, which I wish it did because those ride vehicles are capable of that.
01:57:49
Speaker
I wish it had more of a Tower of Terror moment to it.
01:57:52
Speaker
I was kind of waiting for that.
01:57:53
Speaker
I know.
01:57:54
Speaker
Me too.
01:57:55
Speaker
Some of the lateral motion.
01:57:56
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:57:57
Speaker
like the way that it kind of was jerky made me feel just like the way that the elevators look like in the movie.
01:58:03
Speaker
And I was kind of being a piece of spaghetti and I was just letting it like jerk me around and that made it more fun to me.
01:58:08
Speaker
I don't know.
01:58:08
Speaker
What do you think Kelly?
01:58:12
Speaker
I think I probably fall somewhere in between there.
01:58:15
Speaker
Like I definitely was impressed with the technology of it.
01:58:19
Speaker
I, I,
01:58:20
Speaker
was kind of like, like you said, you get in the ride vehicle, it feels like Tower of Terror.
01:58:25
Speaker
So you're like, kind of like, oh, what's gonna happen?
01:58:27
Speaker
And then I was like waiting for like the moment of like, where's like the thrilling part of the physical, like part of this ride.
01:58:36
Speaker
And I agree that like dynamic movements were interesting and not what I expected out of that kind of ride vehicle.
01:58:42
Speaker
But I was hoping for like a climactic moment that didn't happen, I think.
01:58:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:48
Speaker
Did you get emotion sickness at all?
01:58:50
Speaker
Because I know you and I are kind of similar with that.
01:58:53
Speaker
Yeah, I did not on that one feel sick.
01:58:58
Speaker
Yeah.
01:58:59
Speaker
But I know other people did.
01:59:01
Speaker
I know other people have been.
01:59:03
Speaker
So it's interesting.
01:59:04
Speaker
I, you know, this has kind of been, I feel like this has been getting more hype, but part of that seems to me exclusivity bias and the people that have been able to ride it.
01:59:14
Speaker
And I think it's starting to migrate towards monsters being the preferred ride in the park in terms of the two dark rides.
01:59:21
Speaker
Cause I'm seeing a lot of mixed reviews about screens and like it not being what people expected for ministry.
01:59:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:27
Speaker
I feel like I definitely need another ride or two on ministry to like make that judgment call, but yeah,
01:59:33
Speaker
I think I probably prefer monsters.
01:59:35
Speaker
I prefer it thematically easily.
01:59:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:38
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:59:38
Speaker
Thematically, 100%.
01:59:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:40
Speaker
But, yeah.
01:59:43
Speaker
I think so.
01:59:45
Speaker
All right.
01:59:45
Speaker
How about Cirque Arcanue?
01:59:47
Speaker
Did you guys see that?
01:59:49
Speaker
I did not.
01:59:50
Speaker
I missed it by two minutes.
01:59:51
Speaker
Yeah.
01:59:52
Speaker
Oh, no.
01:59:54
Speaker
I saw it.
01:59:54
Speaker
We saw it basically because there was...
01:59:57
Speaker
nothing else to do.
02:00:01
Speaker
So we got there like 45 minutes before showtime just to make sure we got in.
02:00:06
Speaker
I really enjoyed it.
02:00:08
Speaker
I think the, the pre-show was great, but it was too long.
02:00:12
Speaker
I would have liked five minutes off of the pre-show and five minutes more onto the actual show, mostly because it was very crowded in that standing room only pre-show area.
02:00:24
Speaker
But yeah,
02:00:25
Speaker
I think the story was great.
02:00:27
Speaker
The characters were awesome.
02:00:30
Speaker
Some of the effects were very surprising, but I really enjoyed it.
02:00:35
Speaker
I agree.
02:00:35
Speaker
I thought it was really well done.
02:00:37
Speaker
I didn't know that it was a pre-show when we went into that first room.
02:00:40
Speaker
I was like, are you freaking kidding me?
02:00:41
Speaker
Is this a standing show?
02:00:43
Speaker
I'm like, I'm about to stand after I just stood in this freaking queue.
02:00:48
Speaker
I know.
02:00:48
Speaker
I was thinking the same thing.
02:00:49
Speaker
I was so mad.
02:00:50
Speaker
But I was glad to see that it opened into a theater.
02:00:53
Speaker
Very glad.
02:00:54
Speaker
Especially because I was holding my giant child during all of this.
02:00:59
Speaker
I wish there was a little bit more musical element to it.
02:01:03
Speaker
There are definitely...
02:01:06
Speaker
And I guess I'll compare it to the show in Burke then like there was less, it was more about like the story.
02:01:12
Speaker
It was a very story driven show, which was very good.
02:01:14
Speaker
And the special effects were awesome.
02:01:17
Speaker
And like even something as simple as like the way that the curtain closed, um, it was just like so beautiful and well done.
02:01:25
Speaker
And, and some of the beasts that were in the show, like the way they moved was just like, wow, they've really come a long way in what they can like accomplish in, in these types of shows.
02:01:34
Speaker
Um,
02:01:35
Speaker
I'm just a dance girly, so I like my musical elements to shows, but it was really well done.
02:01:42
Speaker
I loved it, and the kids really enjoyed it too.
02:01:45
Speaker
Well, Ben was kind of sleeping, but he enjoyed what he saw of it, and Amelia really liked it.
02:01:51
Speaker
Yeah.
02:01:52
Speaker
All the beasts were so cute.
02:01:54
Speaker
So cute.
02:01:56
Speaker
I wasn't sure when it first started because at first I was like, is this a circus show?
02:02:02
Speaker
Because they do a couple acts.
02:02:05
Speaker
to sort of just further the plot, but I'm like, is this the circus?
02:02:10
Speaker
Because if this is a circus show, this is the lamest circus ever, but then it kind of railroads into like the actual plot of the show.
02:02:18
Speaker
So I thought it was unique how they did that.
02:02:22
Speaker
And then the way you enter, it looks like you're entering through the real circus tent.
02:02:26
Speaker
Obviously, you know, you're entering into a big theater show building area, but yeah.
02:02:31
Speaker
Yeah, I enjoyed it.
02:02:32
Speaker
I think some of the circus acts might vary between performances because I'm trying to remember the number that he told me, but somebody who works there said it's between like 12 and 16 performances a day.
02:02:45
Speaker
And so they have to have multiple casts to manage that.
02:02:48
Speaker
And I think some of them have different Cirque skills that might be used in that.
02:02:51
Speaker
I think I only saw three circus acts.
02:02:54
Speaker
So that's very interesting.
02:02:57
Speaker
Yeah.
02:02:59
Speaker
That was my favorite part of the show, but.
02:03:01
Speaker
Really?
02:03:03
Speaker
Yeah.
02:03:03
Speaker
I just, I mean, I thought, like I said, I thought like the beasts were really cool and well done.
02:03:08
Speaker
I just like, I just like to see people dancing.
02:03:14
Speaker
I was like, I couldn't stop watching like the two girls, the dance.
02:03:18
Speaker
I don't know if you had that too, if it was like two girls and like two, two outfits doing a lot of the dancing in the beginning.
02:03:24
Speaker
Yeah.
02:03:25
Speaker
It was like very stylistic, like a very like,
02:03:30
Speaker
specific genre of musical theater like dancing that they were doing that like only I would probably know and maybe Joey but I really liked it yeah it was like borderline Fosse a little bit theater nerds out there don't even know what that means yeah it's fine jazz hands alright any final thoughts on Ministry of Magic Paris I really liked it I mean I wonder if they're gonna add like what else they can add there
02:04:03
Speaker
We have a guest question on that.
02:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious to see where that goes.
02:04:07
Speaker
Yeah.
02:04:08
Speaker
All right.
02:04:08
Speaker
Last, but definitely not least, is How to Train Your Dragon Isle of Berk.
02:04:16
Speaker
This.
02:04:16
Speaker
Love it.
02:04:18
Speaker
So I did not see the movie.
02:04:20
Speaker
I told myself I had to see the movie before I come.
02:04:23
Speaker
I never did.
02:04:24
Speaker
But what I did do was I watched the three minute summary on YouTube.
02:04:29
Speaker
So I at least.
02:04:32
Speaker
So, you know, everything that you need to know.
02:04:34
Speaker
Pretty much.
02:04:36
Speaker
I will say it's a beautiful land.
02:04:38
Speaker
The entry is not as grand as I was expecting it to be.
02:04:43
Speaker
It's one of those lands that you really have to walk around and observe to really appreciate the detail that they put into it.
02:04:51
Speaker
Yeah.
02:04:52
Speaker
I think it's still a pretty great reveal, though.
02:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's I mean, it's got the water.
02:04:57
Speaker
It's got the forced perspective, like mountain.
02:05:00
Speaker
It's it's pretty good.
02:05:02
Speaker
It looks great at night too.
02:05:04
Speaker
Like with the lighting.
02:05:05
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:05
Speaker
It was really cool at night.
02:05:07
Speaker
I wish I saw it at night.
02:05:08
Speaker
I think this is out of all of the lands, the most complete.
02:05:12
Speaker
Yes.
02:05:13
Speaker
Like it has the most attractions.
02:05:14
Speaker
It feels large.
02:05:16
Speaker
It feels like there's lots to explore.
02:05:18
Speaker
Lots of dining locations, a show, like so many things to do.
02:05:21
Speaker
Character.
02:05:22
Speaker
Yeah.
02:05:23
Speaker
So much to do.
02:05:24
Speaker
It feels like they don't need to add anything.
02:05:27
Speaker
Whereas like everywhere else, I feel like maybe there could be something, you know,
02:05:32
Speaker
yep um the colors are beautiful like i just feel like the color palette is like so well done and matches the movie so well i've only seen the movie once and very recently because i was like i guess i should probably watch this now but um yeah i think also like the use of the water is beautiful i'm just i like that so that gets points for me but
02:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, I just think it's really pretty and really like it's a place that I like gravitate to like not being a How to Drain Your Dragon fan at all.
02:06:07
Speaker
I'm not going to dislike it.
02:06:09
Speaker
I just like it's not my it's not an IP that I like really like resonates with me and I find myself like wanting to keep going back in there.
02:06:18
Speaker
Yeah.
02:06:18
Speaker
Like even as a IP that you're not familiar with, it holds up as a fantasy land.
02:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, definitely.
02:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, I watched all the movies prior to going in and I was like
02:06:30
Speaker
so excited going into it it kind of changed everything i feel like it wouldn't have been the same experience had i not watched the movies prior to going um i think this like we were saying it's it's the most complete land like it doesn't need anything else it i feel like this one is for lack of better words the perfect land out of all of them there i feel like there's you have the right amount of things to do you have all the restaurants and
02:06:54
Speaker
You have the characters walking around, which were pretty great.
02:06:57
Speaker
I noticed that a lot.
02:06:58
Speaker
They would interact with everybody all the time.
02:07:02
Speaker
And I feel like the rides, although they may not be the greatest in the park, I feel like they are pretty solid.
02:07:09
Speaker
Like, I enjoyed all of them pretty much.
02:07:13
Speaker
It was just a very cute land.
02:07:15
Speaker
And all the characters, even though I didn't even know their names or anything, I just wanted to cuddle all of them.
02:07:19
Speaker
They're adorable.
02:07:22
Speaker
Yeah, I saw Toothless from a distance.
02:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, did anybody meet Toothless?
02:07:27
Speaker
I know Tom did, but... No, he did not.
02:07:30
Speaker
Oh, he didn't?
02:07:31
Speaker
How long was the wait?
02:07:33
Speaker
It was like 90 minutes, I think.
02:07:35
Speaker
Oh, please.
02:07:37
Speaker
Well, he at least met a baby dragon.
02:07:41
Speaker
He's very unhappy about the not meeting Toothless.
02:07:44
Speaker
Yeah.
02:07:45
Speaker
I'll just say that.
02:07:46
Speaker
It's a very popular experience, that's for sure.
02:07:50
Speaker
And I get it, like,
02:07:52
Speaker
I get that if that's something that is like, if you really love that IP, like that's a really cool thing to do.
02:07:58
Speaker
And I think like seeing videos of it now that I've watched them, like Toothless is very cool.
02:08:04
Speaker
It's just like when you have limited hours at a park and you're going to spend 90 minutes waiting to like,
02:08:11
Speaker
meet an inanimate object i don't know yeah it's not for me it's definitely for people that have an emotional like attachment to the movies that's that's who it's for and like for those people like credit to universal they love it it's got one of those things and that's part of the reason why the queue is so long because they don't rush you through it like they spend time like the characters are very in character and they're doing their interactions and you spend time with
02:08:39
Speaker
with the dragon and like take the pictures and like they're talking to you about your day and yeah that's great except for when you get in the queue and you're like oh this doesn't look that long like at disney this would probably take like a half an hour and then you like see a group go and they're interacting with toothless for like seven minutes you're like oh okay that was not gonna happen for me yeah so if you're a casual fan you can see it from the sidewalk
02:09:05
Speaker
Yeah.
02:09:06
Speaker
Yes.
02:09:06
Speaker
And that's what I did.
02:09:07
Speaker
I said, hi.
02:09:10
Speaker
And now we're going to go.
02:09:11
Speaker
Like, I really want to do it, but I think that's like something I would do after several visits.
02:09:16
Speaker
Like, let me get my fix.
02:09:18
Speaker
Let me get everything done.
02:09:19
Speaker
You know, everything that I want to do, like as many times as I want.
02:09:22
Speaker
And then I'll, you know, I'll be able to spare some time to wait for that.
02:09:27
Speaker
One thing I did want to hit... Oh, go ahead.
02:09:30
Speaker
I was just going to say, I was offered to go do other things while other people in my party waited to meet Toothless, and I felt like a bad mom, so I didn't do it.
02:09:38
Speaker
But I considered it.
02:09:42
Speaker
I did want to hit that this land, out of all of them, has the most...
02:09:47
Speaker
like animatronic well actually that's not true because super mario was full of like moving components but this in terms of like animatronics that are just in the land there's like dragons everywhere and moving things and all of that stuff like there's a central little village area that has a forge and the dragons are over there and i don't know if he's working yet but eventually that one of those dragons is going to breathe fire into the forge which is pretty cool all right how about hiccups
02:10:13
Speaker
Loved hiccups.
02:10:15
Speaker
Love it.
02:10:16
Speaker
It's almost so cute.
02:10:18
Speaker
It's like a mini Hagrid's.
02:10:19
Speaker
It is.
02:10:20
Speaker
Yep.
02:10:21
Speaker
That's, yeah, that's the best description.
02:10:23
Speaker
Exactly what it is.
02:10:25
Speaker
There were a couple of, like, surprisingly forceful, like, that, like, half helix is, like, kind of forceful.
02:10:31
Speaker
Yeah.
02:10:32
Speaker
You know what I'm talking about?
02:10:33
Speaker
Like, before, I think it was...
02:10:36
Speaker
After you dive into the water, right?
02:10:37
Speaker
Right after that.
02:10:38
Speaker
Right after you dive into the water.
02:10:39
Speaker
Yeah.
02:10:40
Speaker
I was like, whoa.
02:10:42
Speaker
I'm either dehydrated or like that's kind of a lot.
02:10:45
Speaker
It's like I thought it was going to be Big Bear, but it's a little it's a little above that force wise.
02:10:52
Speaker
You know what I mean?
02:10:53
Speaker
Yeah.
02:10:54
Speaker
Yeah.
02:10:56
Speaker
The queue is horrible though.
02:10:59
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:00
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:00
Speaker
Rope switchbacks.
02:11:01
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:02
Speaker
That's rough.
02:11:03
Speaker
With very little shade except for in the one part.
02:11:07
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:07
Speaker
At least they have water fountains throughout it though.
02:11:10
Speaker
That was all of the queues actually.
02:11:11
Speaker
I noticed that that was nice that they did that.
02:11:13
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:13
Speaker
That was a good thing.
02:11:14
Speaker
I wrote it three times yesterday.
02:11:17
Speaker
The first time we waited about a half hour.
02:11:18
Speaker
The other times we walked right on or else I don't know if we would have done it again.
02:11:22
Speaker
We just like saw that it said like 10 minutes.
02:11:23
Speaker
It's like, okay, let's go.
02:11:25
Speaker
Yeah.
02:11:26
Speaker
yeah um were they running both sides loved it yes the kids loved it so much ben says it's his new favorite coaster i get like not even being a how to train your dragon person like the onboard audio and like the story is so well done yeah that's the part that like out of all of the rides i think the audio storytelling on that is the best in the park yeah yeah and just like the music at the end it's like yeah this is the most
02:11:53
Speaker
It made me wish that it was a little bit longer.
02:11:55
Speaker
I was like, just get a little bit more, but it was still great.
02:11:58
Speaker
It was definitely short, especially because I waited two hours and ten minutes for it.
02:12:03
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
02:12:09
Speaker
It's okay to laugh at my misfortune.
02:12:11
Speaker
It's allowed.
02:12:12
Speaker
You're going to be shook when you have, well, we don't know how it's going to be with normal.
02:12:17
Speaker
yeah i hope i think your next experience will be so great it will yeah it has shockingly like i mean it's designed to run five trains and when i heard that i was like what hell but when you see it running where are the block zones exactly yeah well one of them's completely hidden like the middle part of the ride i had no idea that that was there so when it happened i was like oh this is cool yeah it was cool
02:12:43
Speaker
Not Hagrid's level cool.
02:12:44
Speaker
No.
02:12:46
Speaker
Cool.
02:12:47
Speaker
Yeah.
02:12:49
Speaker
Did you guys ride anything else?
02:12:52
Speaker
Nope.
02:12:53
Speaker
I did a fire drill.
02:12:54
Speaker
Yeah.
02:12:55
Speaker
Did you get soaked?
02:12:58
Speaker
That was actually pretty fun, but it was a pretty short line for us.
02:13:01
Speaker
It was like 20 minutes.
02:13:03
Speaker
And we were able to get a whole boat to ourselves.
02:13:06
Speaker
Yeah.
02:13:07
Speaker
And Javi kept shooting at the targets that would get us soaked the entire time.
02:13:13
Speaker
He was doing it on purpose.
02:13:14
Speaker
He was like, let's keep going.
02:13:15
Speaker
He's like, I'm going to keep hitting it.
02:13:17
Speaker
And so, I mean, my side didn't get wet, but I like, I think it was the side that it was Javi and,
02:13:24
Speaker
I think it was Nate and Caleb.
02:13:26
Speaker
They were drenched.
02:13:28
Speaker
And Shay as well.
02:13:29
Speaker
The four of them were drenched after they got in.
02:13:31
Speaker
Oh, no.
02:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, I was pretty dry, but the rest of them were soaked, and it was because Javi just kept hitting their own targets.
02:13:38
Speaker
But it was a pretty... Did the targets do anything, or... What was that?
02:13:41
Speaker
Did the other targets, like the normal ones, do they do anything, or... I still don't understand how that is.
02:13:48
Speaker
Like, I know you hit some targets, and then it hits, like...
02:13:52
Speaker
certain parts i what i thought was that you were shooting targets to get the people on the other side of your boat like wet oh okay that's what i thought it was it might be i'm not entirely sure well i know that like what there is the thing where like you're not supposed to hit certain ones and then if you do you get wet so that's what hobby was doing
02:14:10
Speaker
So he was definitely hitting those then.
02:14:12
Speaker
Oh, he was doing that on purpose.
02:14:13
Speaker
Yeah.
02:14:13
Speaker
So yeah, he was definitely doing it on purpose.
02:14:15
Speaker
You're supposed to hit the red ones with the flame on it because you're like putting the fire out.
02:14:19
Speaker
Right.
02:14:20
Speaker
Maybe they like made a sound or like a little animatronic on some of them, something like that.
02:14:26
Speaker
And then the blue ones trigger some sort of water effect that gets you wet.
02:14:31
Speaker
I don't know.
02:14:31
Speaker
That's the first, what is it called?
02:14:34
Speaker
Splash battle or water battle?
02:14:36
Speaker
Splash battle.
02:14:38
Speaker
It's the first one of those I've done.
02:14:40
Speaker
I kind of thought the point was to get like other boats wet, but there wasn't a ton of opportunity on this ride.
02:14:48
Speaker
Yeah.
02:14:49
Speaker
I don't know.
02:14:49
Speaker
We were just walking past and surprise, it was closed.
02:14:52
Speaker
But it looked like they were about to open it, so we hung out for about 10 minutes and watched him open the queue back up, so we got straight on it.
02:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, I wouldn't wait more than 20 minutes for it.
02:15:05
Speaker
Fun little ride on a hot day.
02:15:08
Speaker
Yeah.
02:15:09
Speaker
It looks nice, too, like in the land.
02:15:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
02:15:13
Speaker
It looks pretty cool.
02:15:16
Speaker
I also rode the...
02:15:19
Speaker
The racer rally, I think is what it was called.
02:15:22
Speaker
I forget what that clone is, but it was just a basic clone with a very short ride cycle.
02:15:29
Speaker
Yeah.
02:15:29
Speaker
It's like 20 or 30 seconds, right?
02:15:31
Speaker
Extremely short.
02:15:33
Speaker
We were just, uh,
02:15:36
Speaker
Pretty much, yeah.
02:15:36
Speaker
It was like three or four turns once you get up to speed.
02:15:40
Speaker
So there's no time to get any flips in or anything.
02:15:43
Speaker
But this was at like 8.59.
02:15:46
Speaker
We just came to see Berk at night after we struck out on Minecart Madness.
02:15:54
Speaker
And the op was like, come ride, come ride.
02:15:57
Speaker
There's nobody here.
02:15:57
Speaker
And we walked right on it.
02:15:59
Speaker
Oh, that's good.
02:16:01
Speaker
Yeah, but it's it's absolutely skippable unless it's a walk on, especially if you've done the one that, you know, Mall of America.
02:16:09
Speaker
Right.
02:16:10
Speaker
That's the you know, it's it's a clone of a ride, a flat ride that's at other parks.
02:16:15
Speaker
So it's even less unique, in my opinion, than the carousel.
02:16:18
Speaker
Oh, definitely.
02:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, like it's themed well, but it's, you know, it's in other parks.
02:16:24
Speaker
On the day that we were there, it was never shorter than a 45-minute wait.
02:16:27
Speaker
Yeah.
02:16:28
Speaker
I'm not waiting that.
02:16:29
Speaker
It's 12 people per thing, and there's only two of them, so it's going to be slow.
02:16:37
Speaker
That might be the lowest point of that land, actually.
02:16:41
Speaker
Is that right?
02:16:43
Speaker
I think so.
02:16:45
Speaker
Food?
02:16:46
Speaker
Any food in Burke?
02:16:49
Speaker
We yesterday shared one of the mac and cheese in the bread cone things.
02:16:54
Speaker
I only had like one bite of it, but it was very good.
02:16:56
Speaker
How long did you wait for that?
02:17:00
Speaker
We didn't.
02:17:01
Speaker
Oh, right.
02:17:01
Speaker
You had an empty day.
02:17:02
Speaker
Yeah.
02:17:03
Speaker
I was going to say, I wanted one because I've heard the hype, but the queue for that stand was like probably half an hour.
02:17:10
Speaker
We literally mobile ordered and walked right up.
02:17:13
Speaker
Okay.
02:17:13
Speaker
So that's a trick that maybe we shouldn't tell people about, but you can mobile order it from the, what's that place called?
02:17:21
Speaker
There's like a different, there's a stand for it.
02:17:22
Speaker
Spitfire.
02:17:24
Speaker
Spitfire.
02:17:24
Speaker
Yeah.
02:17:25
Speaker
You can mobile order it from there.
02:17:27
Speaker
And there's a separate snack stand where you can't mobile order it.
02:17:31
Speaker
You have to wait in the line.
02:17:33
Speaker
So I think mobile ordering it is kind of the way to go.
02:17:35
Speaker
Did anybody go in the Great Hall?
02:17:39
Speaker
Like Mead Hall thing?
02:17:41
Speaker
Yeah.
02:17:41
Speaker
That's pretty cool in there.
02:17:43
Speaker
The Mead was good.
02:17:44
Speaker
I liked it.
02:17:47
Speaker
Tasted like... It tasted like a mix between...
02:17:53
Speaker
like, wine and, like, boysenberry juice from Knott's.
02:17:58
Speaker
Okay.
02:18:00
Speaker
Is that the first time you've had mead?
02:18:04
Speaker
Uh, no.
02:18:06
Speaker
I had it somewhere else once before.
02:18:10
Speaker
Like, a long time ago, though.
02:18:11
Speaker
Probably college.
02:18:13
Speaker
Sounds like a college drink.
02:18:17
Speaker
Mead.
02:18:17
Speaker
Yeah.
02:18:19
Speaker
Um, and then...
02:18:22
Speaker
I know, Kelly, you saw Untrainable Dragon.
02:18:25
Speaker
I think, Joey, you did too.
02:18:26
Speaker
Yeah.
02:18:26
Speaker
I did not see it.
02:18:27
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't see it either.
02:18:30
Speaker
It was really, really good.
02:18:31
Speaker
I preferred it to the Harry Potter show, and we didn't even have Toothless.
02:18:36
Speaker
They made an announcement beforehand that Toothless was on an adventure, and I was like, are you kidding me?
02:18:43
Speaker
I was texting Joey.
02:18:44
Speaker
I almost said, do we get up and leave?
02:18:46
Speaker
Because obviously...
02:18:48
Speaker
We're going to have to watch it again when Toothless is like, you know, there and working.
02:18:53
Speaker
But it was still really good.
02:18:54
Speaker
There was a lot more.
02:18:56
Speaker
There was like singing in this one and like not really dancing, but.
02:19:00
Speaker
It was a little bit.
02:19:01
Speaker
It was really cute.
02:19:02
Speaker
A little bit of dancing.
02:19:04
Speaker
The dragon that the show is featured on is so well done.
02:19:09
Speaker
So cool.
02:19:10
Speaker
And there was like a little mommy moment in the storyline and it actually made me cry.
02:19:16
Speaker
I was like not on Mother's Day.
02:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, it was really cute.
02:19:23
Speaker
I enjoyed it and I got to see Toothless flying around and that was very cool.
02:19:28
Speaker
I probably undersold that that's the highlight of the show.
02:19:30
Speaker
Like I think the rest of the show is very well done.
02:19:32
Speaker
Like the puppetry and the special effects and the way that the stage design and the lighting all works together is really well done.
02:19:39
Speaker
And I wasn't expecting live singers.
02:19:41
Speaker
I saw them come out and I was like, oh, okay.
02:19:43
Speaker
They came out right with the mics and I was like, okay.
02:19:48
Speaker
They didn't have, yeah, I think maybe it would look better if they didn't have Intel.
02:19:54
Speaker
Universal was like, we're making sure you know this is live.
02:19:57
Speaker
They were good.
02:19:59
Speaker
They were, yeah, they were.
02:20:00
Speaker
They could sing.
02:20:03
Speaker
Yeah, we tried to see it.
02:20:05
Speaker
We got there like two minutes before showtime and apparently it was already full.
02:20:10
Speaker
So we didn't get to it.
02:20:12
Speaker
Oh my God.
02:20:12
Speaker
Geez.
02:20:14
Speaker
I feel like that's going to be a recurring theme with the shows because the theaters, you know, they only fit so many people.
02:20:18
Speaker
You do have to get there early for sure.
02:20:20
Speaker
Yeah.
02:20:21
Speaker
All right.
02:20:24
Speaker
Anything else on Burke?
02:20:26
Speaker
Nope.
02:20:28
Speaker
Cool.
02:20:28
Speaker
Hotels.
02:20:29
Speaker
Let's do that real quick.
02:20:31
Speaker
What'd you guys think of the epic hotels?
02:20:35
Speaker
No review.
02:20:36
Speaker
Yeah.
02:20:37
Speaker
No review.
02:20:39
Speaker
Yeah.
02:20:40
Speaker
I see that Tara Luna twice.
02:20:42
Speaker
Now it is very basic, but like really well done, very clean.
02:20:50
Speaker
The rooms are pretty, like it's very minimalistic theming, but I think that's done on purpose and I think it serves its purpose.
02:20:57
Speaker
Price point for me was great both times.
02:20:59
Speaker
I know it's dynamic pricing, but it was great for me.
02:21:03
Speaker
The only other place I've stayed on Universal property actually is Cabana Bay, which I actually think I preferred Terra Luna, even though I think technically is like underneath, like as far as like the tiers or like the price range.
02:21:17
Speaker
I will also be staying at Stellanova for one night in June prior to our epic day.
02:21:23
Speaker
So that's its like sister resort.
02:21:25
Speaker
Did you take the bus or like how did you, did you drive to the park?
Transportation and Park Logistics
02:21:28
Speaker
No, sir.
02:21:30
Speaker
The first time we heard that the bus was only operating an hour before early entry and we were like, that's not enough time to be at the gate.
02:21:38
Speaker
So we walked, which was far.
02:21:40
Speaker
Yeah.
02:21:41
Speaker
And not accessible.
02:21:42
Speaker
Like it's clearly not meant to be walked.
02:21:46
Speaker
It's a highway.
02:21:46
Speaker
That's what you can walk on.
02:21:49
Speaker
And then yesterday we drove and parked and ended up
02:21:55
Speaker
I got a little panicky because we parked the car and then the gate to the parking lot into like the Epic Plaza was closed and there was already a line at that, but people were coming from the resorts like as they were opening.
02:22:07
Speaker
I was like, no, no, no, no.
02:22:10
Speaker
I was here early.
02:22:11
Speaker
Yeah.
02:22:12
Speaker
But it all worked out.
02:22:13
Speaker
I think definitely the buses are like working and running frequently.
02:22:18
Speaker
They just weren't,
02:22:18
Speaker
I think they need to do that a little earlier.
02:22:20
Speaker
If you're going to be transporting people for early entry, like do it.
02:22:23
Speaker
That's why I asked because I've seen some stuff about people saying the Terra Luna buses specifically have been problematic and not like showing up at frequencies that they would expect and not like getting backed up with people trying to get to the park.
02:22:36
Speaker
Now I know that like Stellanova is the one that's designed to be walkable to Epic.
02:22:40
Speaker
And I've seen a lot of people say, oh yeah, it's like a five to seven minute walk.
02:22:43
Speaker
It's really easy.
02:22:45
Speaker
Yeah.
02:22:46
Speaker
Yes, it is walkable.
02:22:48
Speaker
I actually ran to Stella.
02:22:50
Speaker
It's a whole thing.
02:22:53
Speaker
Yes, Stellanova is closer.
02:22:54
Speaker
Terra Luna is further away.
02:22:56
Speaker
I'm not sure if there's a price differential.
02:22:58
Speaker
I never really looked.
02:22:59
Speaker
We just did Terra Luna because I knew that we booked the Stellanova one earlier, and I was like, oh, let's stay at the other one and see how they compare.
02:23:09
Speaker
But yeah.
02:23:11
Speaker
Yeah, they're pretty.
02:23:12
Speaker
They're definitely basic hotels.
02:23:14
Speaker
They accomplish what you need, which is for me to sleep and get early entry.
Park Operations and Capacity Concerns
02:23:21
Speaker
All right.
02:23:23
Speaker
That is our conclusion for Epic.
02:23:26
Speaker
We do have some questions this week.
02:23:29
Speaker
I think we're going to roll through these because we are two hours and 24 minutes in.
02:23:34
Speaker
Remember when I said be under three hours?
02:23:36
Speaker
How did that happen?
02:23:37
Speaker
I really didn't think people had that much to say.
02:23:40
Speaker
Okay, we're going to roll.
02:23:41
Speaker
Let's roll.
02:23:42
Speaker
Some of us have bedtime.
02:23:45
Speaker
From Nate.
02:23:46
Speaker
I'm not sure which Nate, but which part of your epic experience surprised you the most, both positive and negative?
02:23:53
Speaker
This is Hipster Nate.
02:23:56
Speaker
Hipster Nate.
02:23:56
Speaker
Okay.
02:23:57
Speaker
I know who that is.
02:24:00
Speaker
So the negative that I have is... Are you surprised I have a negative?
02:24:08
Speaker
So I was surprised how much of the park shut down in inclement weather.
02:24:13
Speaker
From what I could tell just based on the app, the only things open were Bowser and monsters during a thunderstorm, which...
02:24:20
Speaker
That's not good.
02:24:22
Speaker
Not good.
02:24:23
Speaker
So we will see.
02:24:25
Speaker
That kind of plays into the crowd control and how that's going to look once the regular season opens up.
02:24:32
Speaker
But in a state like Florida where you get a thunderstorm six days a week, that's... Yikes.
02:24:39
Speaker
Yeah.
02:24:41
Speaker
You guys have any positives or negatives?
02:24:44
Speaker
Yeah, I have one of each, I think.
02:24:45
Speaker
Negative for me is how I feel.
02:24:48
Speaker
Like we talked about it a little bit with the food.
02:24:52
Speaker
I just worry about when there's increased capacity in a park, it's going to be difficult to get food when you like really just need to grab and get something.
02:25:01
Speaker
And then positive, call me a basic coaster girly.
02:25:07
Speaker
But I was just very surprised at how much I like Stardust Racers.
02:25:14
Speaker
I think for me, a lot of stuff sort of like was where I expected it to be.
02:25:19
Speaker
So weirdly, like Mario Kart was one of my positives because I thought it was better than I expected.
02:25:24
Speaker
Same thing with Werewolf.
02:25:26
Speaker
Both of those surprised me and like exceeding my expectations.
02:25:31
Speaker
I agree like the food did in both ways.
02:25:34
Speaker
The food tasted better than I would expect for a theme park.
02:25:37
Speaker
But then that was also probably like my most negative surprise in that it took an hour to get it.
02:25:42
Speaker
at a quick service restaurant which should have taken like i don't know 15 so yeah not good
02:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like after hearing a bunch of mixed reviews, I went into it a lot more neutral than I probably would have prior to hearing those reviews.
02:25:57
Speaker
So I mean, so yeah, so positive wise, I mean, everything was pretty great for me.
02:26:05
Speaker
Monsters, I was worried that it wasn't going to like it as much just because there was so much hype behind it and I did end up loving it.
02:26:12
Speaker
As for the negatives, it's, I mean,
02:26:15
Speaker
the shade i feel like the park isn't very shaded um and i know it's going to be brutal during the summer because with the crowds and and everything in the summer heat and the rain it's there's not much shade going on there so that was the only negative yeah i agree i'm interested to see it in a few years to see how the trees grow in and what that's yeah 100 percent
02:26:38
Speaker
All right, John from New York.
02:26:40
Speaker
What was the best food or drink item that you
Food, Drink, and Future Attractions
02:26:43
Speaker
had?
02:26:43
Speaker
I'm going to say a drink was the crossbow because it's the only drink I had.
02:26:48
Speaker
And I really liked the garlic pretzel.
02:26:52
Speaker
Anything but the black burger.
02:26:58
Speaker
I think my favorite food was actually that French onion soup.
02:27:00
Speaker
It was quite delicious.
02:27:02
Speaker
And like the garlic steak is just under that.
02:27:06
Speaker
For me, it was Pizza Moon when it was good.
02:27:10
Speaker
Pizza Moon the first time.
02:27:13
Speaker
Yeah.
02:27:15
Speaker
Good.
02:27:16
Speaker
All right.
02:27:17
Speaker
From Fitz.
02:27:19
Speaker
Better fire effect, Burning Blade or Gringotts Dragon?
02:27:24
Speaker
Dragon 100%.
02:27:24
Speaker
Yeah.
02:27:27
Speaker
yeah i think it's a windmill with flames see i i had a little more nuanced answer i think that okay go i think that the gringotts dragon is better during the day and burning blade is better at night okay that's my yeah fair fair yeah i would love to see it i didn't see burning blade in person but the video looked awesome and i love the lighting effects too that makes it look like the
02:27:53
Speaker
That's part of it.
02:27:53
Speaker
The fire is spreading.
02:27:55
Speaker
I'm going to say burning blade is better.
02:27:58
Speaker
Just because dragon, it's just one second of fire and there's not really any nuance to it.
02:28:05
Speaker
I am shocked at that answer from you.
02:28:09
Speaker
Really?
02:28:09
Speaker
Yeah.
02:28:13
Speaker
All right.
02:28:16
Speaker
From decks, rank the areas one through five.
02:28:19
Speaker
I think we all wrote these down beforehand, right?
02:28:23
Speaker
Do we want to go backwards up or just go one by one?
02:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, backwards.
02:28:27
Speaker
Okay.
02:28:27
Speaker
All right, I'll go first.
02:28:32
Speaker
And this is tough.
02:28:34
Speaker
I'm sure it'll change.
02:28:35
Speaker
It's actually really hard.
02:28:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard.
02:28:38
Speaker
There's no bad area.
02:28:40
Speaker
It's all pretty good.
02:28:40
Speaker
There's not a bad area.
02:28:42
Speaker
So I went from five to one.
02:28:45
Speaker
We'll just do five.
02:28:46
Speaker
We'll go around for five.
02:28:47
Speaker
Okay, my five.
02:28:48
Speaker
Fair.
02:28:51
Speaker
Fair.
02:28:53
Speaker
Wait, you said five was what?
02:28:55
Speaker
Celestial Park.
02:28:56
Speaker
Oh, Celestial.
02:28:57
Speaker
Okay.
02:28:59
Speaker
Yeah.
02:28:59
Speaker
Okay, my five right now is Nintendo.
02:29:06
Speaker
What?
02:29:08
Speaker
Yeah.
02:29:12
Speaker
I think the reveal is so good and it's like so colorful and cool, but just like not really for me.
02:29:20
Speaker
It's just like over, it's too much.
02:29:21
Speaker
It's too much for me.
02:29:24
Speaker
Okay.
02:29:25
Speaker
My five is Ministry.
02:29:28
Speaker
Oh, man.
02:29:29
Speaker
Okay.
02:29:30
Speaker
I was torn between Ministry and Celestial.
02:29:32
Speaker
So I've been, I think I'll go with Ministry, but I was between that and Celestial part.
02:29:37
Speaker
I think we're going to be very, very different here.
02:29:40
Speaker
This is interesting.
02:29:41
Speaker
I think, yeah.
02:29:42
Speaker
You know what?
02:29:42
Speaker
Yeah.
02:29:42
Speaker
Ministry five for sure for me.
02:29:44
Speaker
Wow.
02:29:45
Speaker
Okay.
02:29:48
Speaker
My four is Super Mario.
02:29:51
Speaker
my four even though i love it is celestial park my four is also mario oh my god mario hey okay my my number four celestial park okay all right my three is paris ministry magic
02:30:19
Speaker
My three is Dark Universe.
02:30:21
Speaker
Okay.
02:30:23
Speaker
Yeah.
02:30:24
Speaker
I kind of knew that was coming.
02:30:28
Speaker
Yeah.
02:30:28
Speaker
My three is Celestial, and to be honest, it's only three because it would be five because of nighttime.
02:30:34
Speaker
Yeah.
02:30:35
Speaker
Okay.
02:30:36
Speaker
I'll like it more at night.
02:30:37
Speaker
I know that.
02:30:38
Speaker
All right.
02:30:39
Speaker
My two is Dark Universe.
02:30:45
Speaker
Same.
02:30:45
Speaker
Same.
02:30:46
Speaker
It just...
02:30:50
Speaker
My two Super Nintendo.
02:30:56
Speaker
So we all have Burke one.
02:30:58
Speaker
I was going to say, I think we can all say our number one at the same time.
02:31:01
Speaker
But we all do.
02:31:02
Speaker
Yeah.
02:31:03
Speaker
I was like teetering with Dark, but I was like, it's just a more complete land.
02:31:08
Speaker
Yeah.
02:31:08
Speaker
After my first visit, it was Burke for sure.
02:31:10
Speaker
But yesterday I was like, oh yeah, I do love the vibes here.
02:31:14
Speaker
Dark.
02:31:15
Speaker
Dark, it's just, I love the vibes.
02:31:17
Speaker
It's just, it's missing something.
02:31:18
Speaker
It's not.
02:31:19
Speaker
That's how I feel about it.
02:31:21
Speaker
It needs another attraction and then it might.
02:31:23
Speaker
Yeah.
02:31:23
Speaker
Yeah.
02:31:25
Speaker
Or like a show.
02:31:27
Speaker
Bring me a show.
02:31:28
Speaker
Yeah.
02:31:29
Speaker
Which originally was supposed to be Curse of the Werewolf and then it got cut and replaced.
02:31:34
Speaker
That would have been so sick.
02:31:36
Speaker
Or just put an HHN house in there permanently.
02:31:39
Speaker
Yup.
02:31:41
Speaker
I mean.
02:31:42
Speaker
Yeah.
02:31:44
Speaker
Alright.
02:31:44
Speaker
Next question from Murph.
02:31:46
Speaker
What kind of coaster would help Epic's lineup?
02:31:50
Speaker
They need another thrill coaster.
02:31:53
Speaker
Just saying.
02:31:54
Speaker
They have, I mean, if you count Stardust as one, because it's basically one effectively, they have one thrill coaster and three family coasters.
02:32:03
Speaker
So I, I think if they want to put it like on the level of islands, they need another thrill coaster.
02:32:11
Speaker
Yeah.
02:32:12
Speaker
And there's so many other like family attractions that are accessible for kids.
02:32:15
Speaker
I think that they should do that, but we'll see.
02:32:19
Speaker
I can agree with that.
02:32:20
Speaker
I'm not picky.
02:32:21
Speaker
I'm just going to say one that's open.
02:32:24
Speaker
That works.
02:32:29
Speaker
I will say maybe B&M Invert.
02:32:37
Speaker
Okay.
02:32:40
Speaker
Never.
02:32:42
Speaker
We're getting sleepy ha ha.
02:32:44
Speaker
We are.
02:32:47
Speaker
What really could like, I don't know though, because what they have already, like if you were to put a thrill coaster in, it would have to be unique.
02:32:55
Speaker
Yeah.
02:32:56
Speaker
I don't know.
02:32:57
Speaker
And what land would it go into?
02:32:59
Speaker
Well, Harry Potter needs another ride.
02:33:01
Speaker
And I think a fly style roller coaster would be amazing.
02:33:04
Speaker
Yes.
02:33:05
Speaker
That'd be awesome.
02:33:06
Speaker
But like fully indoors or like fully immersed in the land.
02:33:09
Speaker
Like that would be.
02:33:10
Speaker
Yeah.
02:33:10
Speaker
Yes.
02:33:11
Speaker
That'd be incredible.
02:33:11
Speaker
Yes.
02:33:13
Speaker
All right.
02:33:14
Speaker
That kind of brings us to the next question.
02:33:15
Speaker
What would be the next addition to each universe if you were responsible for deciding how they expand?
02:33:21
Speaker
I don't think we can do each universe, but anything pop up immediately?
02:33:27
Speaker
I mean, I want them to do the Black Lagoon boat ride.
02:33:30
Speaker
Water ride?
02:33:30
Speaker
For monsters.
02:33:31
Speaker
I think that sounds like a good fit.
02:33:33
Speaker
Yeah.
02:33:34
Speaker
They're definitely missing some sort of water ride, a log flume or something.
02:33:42
Speaker
I want them to put like a walkthrough style haunted attraction in Dark Universe.
02:33:49
Speaker
That would be great.
02:33:49
Speaker
I think that would fulfill like it's not a ride.
02:33:51
Speaker
It's not a show.
02:33:52
Speaker
It's kind of an in-between.
02:33:53
Speaker
It could eat up a lot of people if you make it conga line style.
02:33:57
Speaker
I think if they put it in the back behind the castle kind of or like back like where it starts to feel dead after Werewolf back there.
02:34:07
Speaker
That would be cool.
02:34:10
Speaker
Yeah, I would love that.
02:34:11
Speaker
And I feel like it would do really well.
02:34:14
Speaker
Yeah.
02:34:14
Speaker
And I feel like the park, like that area, they're trying not, they're trying to still make it family friendly, but at least you could still have that element of like HHN, like in the area.
02:34:23
Speaker
Yeah.
02:34:26
Speaker
There needs to be something else in Harry Potter.
02:34:28
Speaker
We were saying.
02:34:29
Speaker
Yeah.
02:34:30
Speaker
It was planned and it got cut.
02:34:32
Speaker
I think it was supposed to be like a broomstick ride of some sort.
02:34:36
Speaker
I don't know whether that was going to be like the, what's the Pandora ride?
02:34:41
Speaker
Flight of Passage.
02:34:43
Speaker
It might have been like that type of thing or it might have been like a suspended coaster type system or something of that nature.
02:34:50
Speaker
I don't know.
02:34:50
Speaker
But I mean, that sounds like it would fit.
02:34:52
Speaker
It would be another weird one to like make it work in Paris to like go to a Quidditch game.
02:34:58
Speaker
But I don't know.
02:34:59
Speaker
Yeah.
02:35:00
Speaker
They need something.
02:35:02
Speaker
Yeah.
02:35:03
Speaker
And it honestly, it kind of needs to be indoor.
02:35:06
Speaker
Like just with Tyler said.
02:35:09
Speaker
It does need to be indoor for sure.
02:35:12
Speaker
And I know that there's been like a rumor for Super Mario because I think they need a little bit more space in that land to like about Luigi's Mansion.
02:35:19
Speaker
I'm not sure if that's the right fit, given it would probably be another dark ride similar to Super Mario or Mario Kart, like minus the game aspect.
02:35:29
Speaker
And it's too close to Dark Universe.
02:35:30
Speaker
Like I would rather they do the Zelda thing that people have been speculating about.
02:35:35
Speaker
But then with Zelda, I'm thinking like how much space are they really going to use for that?
02:35:39
Speaker
I feel like that needs more than like Donkey Kong.
02:35:41
Speaker
It might.
02:35:42
Speaker
Yeah.
02:35:43
Speaker
I don't know anything about Zelda.
02:35:44
Speaker
I'm not going to lie.
02:35:48
Speaker
So I don't know, but they need something.
02:35:51
Speaker
That question was from Caleb, by the way.
02:35:53
Speaker
Shout out, Caleb.
02:35:54
Speaker
What a good looking guy.
02:35:58
Speaker
Next question.
02:35:59
Speaker
Ryan M. These are all pretty similar.
02:36:02
Speaker
What theme do you want to see for one of the future expansion plots?
02:36:06
Speaker
I guess that could be a whole new universe.
02:36:09
Speaker
Let's say it's a new portal.
02:36:12
Speaker
Emerald City!
02:36:14
Speaker
Yeah.
02:36:16
Speaker
Yeah.
02:36:17
Speaker
I would like to do that.
02:36:21
Speaker
Yeah, that would be cool.
02:36:22
Speaker
Emerald City is just like one of those places I always wish existed every time I've seen Wizard of Oz and Wicked.
02:36:28
Speaker
That would just be so good.
02:36:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think it depends on how this next movie goes.
02:36:34
Speaker
Yeah.
02:36:35
Speaker
For the Wicked series.
02:36:37
Speaker
Because obviously, well, and, you know, some people are mentioning Lord of the Rings, which I don't really know anything about that series, but I know that it could create an interesting land.
02:36:48
Speaker
But I don't, I mean, if they're doing it in the UK, I don't know if they'll do it at Epic.
02:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, keep it over there.
02:36:55
Speaker
Back to the future land.
02:36:56
Speaker
That would be cool.
02:36:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
02:37:02
Speaker
All right.
02:37:03
Speaker
And last question, unless we have some last minute add ons, not sure, but from Tim, what do you see as a realistic next step for Epic universe?
02:37:13
Speaker
And what would be a wild and never going to happen thing that you'd like to see them do?
02:37:18
Speaker
Never going to happen.
02:37:19
Speaker
I would love for them to go hard on the scare actors in dark universe, but they'll never do that.
02:37:24
Speaker
Like just like everywhere in there, but that's not going to happen.
02:37:26
Speaker
Hmm.
02:37:28
Speaker
What if they like after a certain time said like, okay, now Dark Universe is like spooky, beware.
02:37:34
Speaker
13 and over, just like HHN.
02:37:36
Speaker
The last hour and a half of Park Operation is like, okay, it's like next level here now.
02:37:43
Speaker
I would love that.
02:37:43
Speaker
I could see them doing like an upcharge special event doing something like that back there.
02:37:49
Speaker
And you would see me there in a second.
02:37:51
Speaker
Right.
02:37:54
Speaker
I think realistic next steps we kind of just talked about.
02:37:57
Speaker
I mean, Potter needs another ride.
02:37:58
Speaker
We know it's coming.
02:37:59
Speaker
There's a plot for it.
02:38:00
Speaker
That's what they need to do next.
02:38:02
Speaker
I think that's probably first on their agenda, just like capacity-wise for that land.
02:38:06
Speaker
They need another ride.
02:38:07
Speaker
Then they can go for monsters.
02:38:09
Speaker
Exactly.
02:38:10
Speaker
My wild, never-going-to-happen thing that I would love is if...
02:38:14
Speaker
they didn't add another portal and they expanded celestial park and like even dived deeper into the theming and like lore of that.
02:38:23
Speaker
Cause I think you could create more really interesting attractions with that theme.
02:38:27
Speaker
Yeah.
02:38:28
Speaker
Hmm.
02:38:30
Speaker
But they'll never do it.
02:38:30
Speaker
Cause it's not an IP.
02:38:32
Speaker
Yeah.
02:38:32
Speaker
All right.
02:38:35
Speaker
Let me see what happened on Twitter while we were recording.
02:38:37
Speaker
Well, we already did one of Wallens.
02:38:39
Speaker
We ranked the five lands.
02:38:41
Speaker
We didn't rank the portal entrances, which are they that different to rank?
02:38:45
Speaker
I don't know.
02:38:47
Speaker
I think like the strongest reveal might be Nintendo.
02:38:51
Speaker
Yeah.
02:38:52
Speaker
Like you're going up that escalator in the green tunnel and then all of a sudden it's there.
02:38:56
Speaker
It's like, oh my God, that's Nintendo.
02:38:58
Speaker
And then dark for me.
02:39:00
Speaker
Cause I love that little windy pathway into dark more.
02:39:03
Speaker
Yeah.
02:39:05
Speaker
Agreed.
02:39:07
Speaker
We're not going to rank.
02:39:07
Speaker
I'm sorry, Wallen.
02:39:08
Speaker
We got to get through it.
02:39:09
Speaker
He says, real quick, okay, this or that, mac and cheese cones or butterbeer crepe?
02:39:16
Speaker
I did not have any more.
02:39:16
Speaker
I didn't try either one, but I'm just going to go based off of what I think I would like more.
02:39:20
Speaker
They look good, though, with the goldfish in them.
02:39:23
Speaker
I'm going to have to try that next time.
02:39:25
Speaker
The PB&J one looks pretty good.
02:39:27
Speaker
I've had both of them.
02:39:28
Speaker
Honestly, I think I'm going to go with the mac and cheese.
02:39:32
Speaker
Okay.
02:39:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
02:39:35
Speaker
Mac and cheese cone versus Zadra stall.
02:39:42
Speaker
Zadra stall.
02:39:43
Speaker
Mac and cheese cone versus magic gate.
02:39:46
Speaker
Magic gate.
02:39:47
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
02:39:48
Speaker
Roland's not going to listen to this podcast anyway.
02:39:51
Speaker
Not having to walk around.
02:39:54
Speaker
And then he said mac and cheese cone versus the concept of happiness itself.
02:39:58
Speaker
calm down sir oh this is the audio loud enough on the ride did you see this he complained well he complained on twitter about every single audio in the park and i was like are you deaf no i was on board with him i felt the same i wasn't fully on board because i thought the audio i validate you some of the rides was good but okay the only ride that it's loud enough is hiccup
02:40:23
Speaker
Hiccup's the best.
02:40:24
Speaker
Yeah.
02:40:24
Speaker
I mean, I thought it was great on Donkey Kong and Mario Kart as well.
02:40:29
Speaker
I thought the audio on both of those rides was good.
02:40:31
Speaker
Yeah.
02:40:34
Speaker
Does Celestial Park need more shade or does it need more buildings?
02:40:37
Speaker
It needs more shade, Wallen.
02:40:40
Speaker
Shade.
02:40:41
Speaker
We need trees.
02:40:42
Speaker
We need them to grow.
02:40:43
Speaker
Guess what?
02:40:43
Speaker
When the park's at capacity, you won't be able to get into the buildings with AC because they're all going to have weights for tables.
02:40:49
Speaker
True.
02:40:50
Speaker
True, true.
02:40:52
Speaker
Why did it take Epic Universe for Mach to learn how to make a good coaster launch?
02:40:56
Speaker
False.
02:40:58
Speaker
That's not true.
02:40:59
Speaker
Not true.
02:40:59
Speaker
Also, one thing I will say that Stardust Racers did was it made me more hyped for Hyperia.
02:41:10
Speaker
Fair.
02:41:11
Speaker
Yeah.
02:41:14
Speaker
Will we see a mock renaissance in America now?
02:41:17
Speaker
Stop acting.
02:41:17
Speaker
Since Stardust is such a success.
02:41:19
Speaker
Stop acting like this is Mock's big thing.
02:41:22
Speaker
Oh my god.
02:41:24
Speaker
This makes me so upset.
02:41:25
Speaker
I think they're all Wallin's questions.
02:41:27
Speaker
He's not even going to listen to this.
02:41:29
Speaker
No kidding.
02:41:30
Speaker
That's it.
02:41:31
Speaker
That's it.
02:41:32
Speaker
And then Keith said, since we're doing leading questions, Ministry of Magic as a polarizing ride, politics aside, why is the reaction so strongly varied?
02:41:41
Speaker
Screens.
02:41:43
Speaker
yeah because of the screens yep he also says what's up with the lack of reception for donkey kong across the community it's such a fun ride ditto on werewolf as half an extreme spinner i think it's because donkey kong is rough yeah it's always down he also said he said side note if y'all don't love werewolf i probably overhyped enzo
02:42:08
Speaker
This is Keith still.
02:42:09
Speaker
Interesting.
02:42:10
Speaker
Okay.
02:42:10
Speaker
I feel like Enso would be more intense, but maybe not.
02:42:13
Speaker
Yeah, we'll see.
02:42:15
Speaker
I mean, I enjoyed the Weakest Coaster.
02:42:15
Speaker
Yeah, the Weakest Coaster is getting all the love on IP.
Listener Questions and Park Opinions
02:42:19
Speaker
We are not coaster enthusiasts.
02:42:21
Speaker
What carries a ride?
02:42:22
Speaker
Can thread Velocicoaster Stardust into this?
02:42:26
Speaker
Finally, where do you go from here next to get the same kind of epic experience again, if you ever think you will?
02:42:33
Speaker
I think you have all been to Fantasialand, but you can't talk about that.
02:42:38
Speaker
I would say Disney Sea.
02:42:39
Speaker
Yeah, Disney Sea is probably it for me.
02:42:41
Speaker
That's the only thing I can think of.
02:42:44
Speaker
Maybe.
02:42:45
Speaker
I keep hearing negative reviews about Disney Sea, and I'm like, I don't know now.
02:42:50
Speaker
Yeah, I only heard that from Bed Home, though.
02:42:56
Speaker
That really probably is, though.
02:42:58
Speaker
Now they're just fighting with each other.
02:42:59
Speaker
I thought we got more questions, but now it's just people fighting with Wallen, so that's all.
02:43:03
Speaker
Typical.
02:43:04
Speaker
Typical.
02:43:05
Speaker
Yeah.
02:43:05
Speaker
Any review that's not perfect for ministry is not sincere.
02:43:08
Speaker
So.
02:43:09
Speaker
Not sincere.
02:43:10
Speaker
Sorry, Rafa.
02:43:11
Speaker
No, he's going to have a field day with my day.
02:43:12
Speaker
You made it up.
02:43:14
Speaker
He won't ever hear.
02:43:14
Speaker
It's actually perfect.
02:43:16
Speaker
Yeah.
02:43:17
Speaker
Well, he knows the episodes about Epic, so maybe he'll listen.
02:43:20
Speaker
Wallen, if you're listening, please let us know on the Twitter machine that you love so much.
02:43:26
Speaker
Let us know if you listened.
02:43:27
Speaker
If you made it this far, send.
02:43:29
Speaker
Wallen, if you're listening, tweet out, this isn't concept art.
02:43:32
Speaker
This is thrills, chills, and spills.
02:43:35
Speaker
I will die.
02:43:36
Speaker
Love you, Wallen.
02:43:36
Speaker
You do you.
02:43:45
Speaker
We did it.
02:43:46
Speaker
Oh my God.
02:43:46
Speaker
What about wraps it up?
02:43:48
Speaker
Any final thoughts on any Epic stuff?
02:43:51
Speaker
I think we covered everything pretty well.
02:43:55
Speaker
Cool.
02:43:57
Speaker
I think so.
02:43:57
Speaker
We do have a couple events coming up.
02:44:00
Speaker
It is too late to sign up for them, so we'll just brag about them.
02:44:05
Speaker
We'll talk about it next time.
02:44:07
Speaker
We'll talk about Virginia.
02:44:09
Speaker
Our Virginia is for Stumbles event coming up in less than two weeks.
02:44:14
Speaker
Wow, that's crazy.
02:44:17
Speaker
I think we're going to record right after that, I think is the plan.
02:44:23
Speaker
We'll have some
02:44:25
Speaker
Some new parks, some new info for you guys.
02:44:27
Speaker
Potentially some food and wine reviews.
02:44:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
02:44:34
Speaker
A terrible movie review.
02:44:35
Speaker
Hopefully an EJFN announcement.
02:44:37
Speaker
My God.
02:44:39
Speaker
There better be one.
02:44:41
Speaker
I keep hearing June 6th, so we shall see.
02:44:44
Speaker
Really?
02:44:44
Speaker
Yes.
02:44:46
Speaker
Okay.
02:44:47
Speaker
Because they need to wait until after Epic opens, but then, yeah.
02:44:51
Speaker
So we'll see.
02:44:51
Speaker
Okay.
02:44:54
Speaker
So soon, hopefully.
02:44:55
Speaker
Soon.
02:44:57
Speaker
It's been real.
02:44:58
Speaker
It's been epic.
02:44:59
Speaker
Goodbye.
02:45:00
Speaker
Bye.
02:45:00
Speaker
Bye.