A rainy Saturday at Universal

You just haven’t lived until you spend a day in the rain at an amusement park.

It was Saturday and it was raining.

But we went ALL IN and updated our pass for Universal’s two parks with the express lane fast pass for both.

So there was only one move to make.

Buy the shower curtain liner like rain ponchos from the park store and enjoy the rain!

What a day to be alive!! We jumped right into the fast lane at the Superman ride. It was another one of these indoor 3D rides where you wear the glasses and you’re surrounded by screens as you move around the track. It was pretty fun!

It was also more noticeable how many of the rides were inside, which was a great chance to dry off a bit.

We were hopping on every ride we wanted! It was AWESOME! For many of them, we didn’t even know what they were when we dove into that fast express lane. We just saw the express entrance and jumped in!

Which is how we ended up seated in a Bourne show in a theatre, thinking it was a ride. Oops! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After hours of getting pumped up to ride the VelociCoaster with our soggy paper express pass, the ride was CLOSED!! What the heck? I read these rides go rain or shine!

So we jumped back on that Jurassic Park water ride, in the rain, in our ponchos.

And it was just as fun as two days prior, except we got SOAKED! I even got a mouth full of water in that final splash! Just totally drenched! It was actually super fun and hilarious. We did nope out of the even wetter ride though, and headed towards Harry Potter.

This time the line for that butter beer was much shorter. Liz is a super big Harry Potter fan so she was super keen to try it. It was pretty good! Then we jumped onto the Harry Potter ride, where it simulates you riding alongside the characters on a broom. Really, really cool! Except when the ride stopped dead as we were getting started for some unknown reason. I was starting to think we were going to need rescuing, but it restarted!

The other new Harry Potter ride is too new to allow the express pass. And the line was a couple hours long so we decided to pass it for now and head on.

We found a restaurant that had a 20 minute or so wait to get seated, but we totally didn’t mind because we had a bench to sit on in the lobby out of the rain while we waited. Perfect to warm up a bit. We even ordered hot drinks with our lunch because we were getting pretty cold! I watched a mother buy her child an entire new set of clothes from a gift shop, even socks, to get them out of their drenched clothes!

(Speaking of drenched clothes, have you ever tried to pee while wearing a wet park poncho with wet clothes underneath where the toilet paper is thin and comes out of the dispenser like a twisted rope with your cold wet hands? It makes wiping part of the day’s adventure!)

We went around the park again and decided to take the Harry Potter train that takes you over to the Universal park, the City Walk one, and it even had an Express Pass line so we walk right on once the train pulled in.

Look! The train is coming!

The train ride was neat, even if I didn’t know any of the characters (I’ve never read the Harry Potter books or watched the movies). Jeff knew them from watching the movies, and Liz was our expert. Tim and I just sat back and enjoyed the cool train ride. The windows were covered so you were set into the story that was projected in place of the windows, on both sides. I liked it!

Before we knew it we were over in the other park with new express pass lanes for us everywhere!

We rode everything we could find! Things we didn’t even see two days ago, let alone got to ride, and we did the Transformers one again because it was so cool! The Men in Black one was neat, because you got to shoot targets from your car. And the Simpsons one in Krustyland may be the best one there! It was so well done!

I’d hate to say the Express Pass splurge was worth the money, but it really did make a DRASTIC difference in the experience.

And since we were riding everything, I wasn’t going to pass the kiddie ride either because even it had an express lane. Tim was game! But Jeff’s stomach had been turned upside down on a ride so he sat out, and Liz did too, and they both took a bunch of funny photos of us on the ride. But we weren’t the only adults! OK, maybe the only adults not riding with kids. That sounds like just a technicality.

And somehow I had walked right past the DeLorean during the day before and didn’t notice it? It’s so cool!

The rain was starting to taper off as the afternoon wore on. Bonus!

Oh, back to that Bourne show we ended up watching! It turned out to be pretty cool! We thought were were waiting for a ride, and they took a whole ton of us into a room, and the wait was just too long. It felt weird. And then we realized we were waiting to get into a theatre and there was no way out! But the show was wild. It had a movie screen and a moving stage and some real actors and some just on the screen and it was so well integrated that you couldn’t always tell what was real and what was in the background imagery. I loved it. And getting to sit for 20 minutes was nice too!

Now that I mention feet… we did well! We all wore decent shoes, and put on over 15,000 steps each day. At night we’d use the hot tub and cold pool to help our feet and we’d be fine to start the next day. I don’t know if my feet could have done this 10 years ago. Actually, I know I wouldn’t have been able to. My feet used to DIE just in a department store, and this was similar, all flat concrete. Ouch! But we did great! Especially for not wearing shoes since the fall? (It’s winter boot season!) And we only have uneven surfaces here to walk on!

Oh! I know why we did so well. We hit another bulk candy store mid-afternoon. That is vital.

As we made our way towards the exit, we even got to put away the ponchos for a bit! But while stopping to shop in the Universal stores, the rain moved back in and the sky was getting really dark. We went to our shuttle stop to wait for our ride.

Since it was pouring, we weren’t keen on spending any more time in the rain, so we tried to eat at the hotel Indian restaurant again. But all the tables were full. However, they had an adjoining bar in the hotel lobby. YES! We were able to dine on their delicious food again!

Our bartender/waitress was so fun and sweet. When I asked for something non-alcoholic, she made me the most delicious strawberry milkshake. And after we had our meals, she made us a yogurt-based drink that was amazing! What a nice place.

We knew we had to get up early for our Sunday plans, so we turned in early.

What do you think we did next!?

And while I’m wrapping up our days at the amusement parks, I had an epiphany about business while visiting these parks. It’s so easy to get stuck in charging low prices when you run a business, and be afraid to increase annual fees, and over-justifying to yourself and your colleagues why you shouldn’t charge people more, and you’ll find more ways to bundle your services and/or products for your customers, give them extras, which will end in a race to the bottom, in various ways.

You don’t see that at Universal or Disney. You pay for everything. Everything. And they know you want that Express Pass. And you’ll pay no matter how much it costs. You want the experience they offer and you’ll pay for it. And you’ll pay for the food. And the drinks. And souvenirs. You’ll even pay for a flimsy rain poncho. They aren’t throwing in souvenirs of any kind just because they already know you paid a lot of your hard-earned money for the experience and they feel bad. No. Those days of souvenir plastic cups are long gone. You want it. And you’ll pay for it. And they know it. You’ll ride the ride, and end up in the gift shop all euphoric from the experience, and you’ll spend more money to remember it. Your day pass at Universal is just a piece of paper. And your express pass. Do you want to keep it out of the rain? Because you’re going to have to take it out to scan it several times during the day. Well, you can buy a plastic holder so you can wear it around your neck! And you can pick out which design you want for the fabric lanyard. And you’ll pay for both pieces! Give the customer the experience they want, and they’ll pay any price to obtain it.