Inside Florida: A look at Universal and Seaworld

After just coming back from three weeks in the United States of double cheeseburgers, I thought it would be a good idea to fill you in on some of the happenings whilst I was out there. Firstly, Transformers the ride at universal orlando. My god, have they advertised this thing to death. Even outside SeaWorld they have billboards for this thing. Initial opinions? Not good. The building it is in is ugly and doesn't fit in where they've put it, amongst all of the classic buildings. Maybe if they tore down Fear Factor live (which they never seem to use anyway) it would be better there, or even in between that and Men In Black alien attack. Or maybe put the Hogwarts express where fear factor live is  and keep Jaws and have transformers the ride between that and men in black alien attack? No? Anyway, one positive about the building is the big statue of optimus prime on the outside, which I thought was mightily impressive. Inside, the same 3D glasses are used here as Despicable me minion mayhem and the amazing adventures of spiderman, but that isn't the only resemblance to the amazing adventures of spiderman. Once through the building (WATCH THE VIDEOS) you will have to go back for the glasses that you inevitably forgot if you were in the fastpass line because A) they aren't well signposted and B) youre busy watching the videos because otherwise you have no idea what the bloody hell is going on. I should know, the first time I went on, I had no idea what was happening. After that, you enter your EVAC car (yes, the only difference is the paint job, otherwise it's the SCOOP car from Spiderman) and set off, only for the allspark to be stolen, which is the cue for lots of fighting. Jolly good. The whole experience feels very spiderman-esque and extremely expensive, but each time I left the ride and entered the gift shop (holy cow there's expensive stuff in there) i felt a bit disappointed. It is very similar to Spiderman, yet not as good if you ask me. It just feels too short, too sudden and there is too much happening at once so you can't really work it out. Add to that the lack of a storyline in comparison to Spiderman and you get what I mean. It's just Super Smash Brothers Brawl where Mario has mutated a bit. That's all. It gets 3 and a half stars from me. Could have done better, but OK. Just don't bother waiting hours for it.

Moving on to something more controversial now, the destruction of JAWS at Universal Orlando. Many people complained and moaned, and the replacement is the hogwarts express, a cue for more wailing and gnashing of teeth. I managed to track down a fairly senior member of staff and, after asking him about what beaches are good near Tampa, quizzed him about JAWS. He revealed that they had messed up the Harry Potter World by building it far too small for the number of guests that visited (hence having to close Islands of Adventure for the first time ever due to the maximum capacity being reached in winter 2010. As a result of it being uncomfortably busy ever since it opened (with queues of HALF AN HOUR FOR THE SHOPS) Universal had no choice but to expand into the Studios. This meant that Jaws had to close to allow the attraction to get somewhere near accessible by the public, although he declined to comment on my suggestion of removing Fear Factor Live. Hmmmmm

Next up, SeaWorld's health and safety nightmare continues, with allegations of a cover up in the film Blackfish, which accuses SeaWorld of neglect regarding their killer whales. When a trainer was killed in 2010, SeaWorld said that it was after a show, when she was petting the whale, which then grabbed her ponytail and pulled her down under the water after it had tickled the whale's nose. However, the film states that the incident occurred during a show, in front of a packed stadium containing hundreds of children. It also claims that the trainer was scalped and had an arm bitten off. Slight difference there, I'm sure you will go on to see. The film goes on to show amateur footage of what looks like electrodes being used in the training process. SeaWorld's problems weren't helped by constant news coverage by local media, who lapped up the story, resulting in a 6% drop in attendances over the summer which equates to 600,000 people, costing them 56.2 million US dollars. SeaWorld, as you would expect, deny absolutely everything.