(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 29)

I have settled on a format in which to tell you about everything I loved about our vacation.

I’m just going to quickly run through what we did and what I (or everybody) thought about it.

I’ll go in chronological order, so a reminder - we started with a day and a half of Universal Studios, and then 4 days in Disney World.

I’ll get to Disney World next week.

And I know last week I promised more of a pictorial recap, so I’ll sprinkle in some photographs along the way.

Universal Studios

There are three parts of the Universal Studios theme park - we only did the one called Universal Studios and the Islands of Adventure. (The third is Volcano Bay.) So if you’re looking for a Volcano Bay review…sorry. You’ve come to the wrong place.

And, listen…if you’re looking for a thorough recap of these theme parks, there are plenty of places you can go and get in-depth details. This is the park through my narrow lens.

I think it’s also important to note here that I’m not much of a thrill seeker. I can be peer pressured into going on a roller coaster but I don’t love them, specifically the slow incline on big roller coasters.

OK. All of that said, I did go on rides. Consider that part of the post the slow incline. Now it gets good:

We started with the Jimmy Fallon Race Through New York ride because it’s right by the entrance and it was a short line and it was inside and air conditioned. For an indoor simulated ride…more of a roller coaster sensation than I was expecting right off the bat. Not a bad little ride.

We didn’t spend a lot of time at Moe’s but it’s a little eating area set up exactly like the Tavern on The Simpsons.

After that we started walking over to the Simpsons area and wondered where the Harry Potter area was. If you haven’t been I won’t spoil it but it was very cool how they designed the Harry Potter area. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time. We pit-stopped in Diagon Alley, had butterbeer, we walked through some shops, and then continued on to The Simpsons. We did Kang & Kodos’ Twirl n’ Hurl (family friendly ride) and popped our heads into Moe’s Tavern.

While we were in the area we snuck in the ET ride because it had a short wait. (Very family friendly). Then we hopped on the Hogwarts Express to go over to Islands of Adventure. (Our park pass was a 2-park pass, which is why we never made it to Volcano Bay. When we planned the trip we figured we would want to take the train ride between Universal and Islands of Adventure.) (Bonus feature: I didn’t expect the train ride to be an attraction in itself. It had some Harry Potter video content. Pretty good.)

Islands of Adventure is segmented into more distinct areas - more Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Marvel, Dr. Seuss, cartoons, and King Kong I think? We didn’t spend any time with King Kong or Jurassic Park…though we did grab an ice cream lunch in Jurassic. (Also, side note: There’s an overhead ride through Jurassic Park that my daughter wanted to do with Kathy and as it turned out they were too tall for it. That was a first.)

Flight of the Hippogriff was a gentle-enough roller coaster - very much my speed. We did that before we moved into the other worlds. I came so close to doing the Hulk ride in Marvel but I chickened out. If I had a friend making me do it I would have done it. (The incline is covered, so I think I would have been OK.) We did do Spider-Man, which was a fun little ride (I don’t even know what to call those? Virtual rides?), and we had a nice dinner at Captain America’s Diner. Came at the exact right moment of the day. I can’t remember if we rode it before or after dinner, but Kathy, our youngest, and I tried the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride because there was hardly a wait time and that was a lot more intense than I expected. At some point in the afternoon we also spent time in Dr. Seuss land and that was very family-friendly across the board. There was a little overhead train ride through the whole area, and a couple of other gentle rides that we sat in and enjoyed. (Or sat outside and waited for the girls while they took them.)

Kathy snagged this picture of me riding the log flume with another family.

When we went back on Wednesday we made sure to hit the Minions ride first - a long wait time, but it was fun. We didn't want to do the wait on Tuesday so it was a priority on Wednesday. It was another video screen ride. (What are they called!?) I regretted not doing some of the water rides in cartoon land the day before, so I did the Flume ride (Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls) and got pretty soaked. I did it once by myself as a test run to tell my daughter how it was and then she rode it with me the second time. The wait wasn’t more than 5 or 10 minutes so that was do-able. (Dudley do-able, haha.) I was disappointed to find that the Popeye raft rides were down on Wednesday so that was the extent of our water rides.

On Wednesday we reversed our day - we started at Islands of Adventure and took the train back to Universal Studios, and as I told you last week the goal was to catch what we missed the first day, so Kathy and I had a Duff beer at The Simpsons before we left. (If this was twenty years ago I would have spent so much money in The Simpsons World.)

We didn’t put any pressure on ourselves to do anything in particular - it was a nice way to spend a couple of days at Universal. We all had something we wanted to check out and we got to those things. This was a very different vacation for us in that it’s not like we sat around and relaxed - according to my family’s step-tracking devices we walked anywhere between 6 and 9 miles a day around these parks. But we didn’t plan everything down to the second and it worked out well for us.

Again, as I told you last week, I enjoyed Universal more than I thought I was going to. It was kind of an afterthought to me with the Disney trip, but it was a good time. My only wish might have been that there was more in the Marvel section, but I guess we made the most of what was there.

I would go back.

And maybe next time I’ll even ride The Hulk.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

I told you when I announced my “Running Every Street In Framingham” challenge last month that I was hoping to find a better map to track the experience. I lucked into one this week. I went to get my new sticker to use the city’s recycling/yard waste center, and when I walked into the Department of Public Works I saw a street map hanging on the wall.

On a whim I asked the woman helping me if they sold them. She wasn’t sure, but she said she’d find out and told me to e-mail. I did later that day and within two days (and for a mere $4) I had my own copy of the map.

It’s a little bit smaller, so I need to be a little more careful with my highlighting, but it is exactly what I was looking for with this project. It’s so nice I almost don’t want to mark it up.

Maybe I’ll have to get myself a second one.

Notes

*After Saturday’s long run (9 miles) I am officially one third of the way through Chicago Marathon training. Six weeks down, 12 to go. Saturday was another hot and sweaty run. The heat has been the hardest part of this training so far…the legs feel pretty good. I do not think when I trained in the summer of 2021 for that Boston Marathon that it was anywhere near this hot and/or humid. Here’s hoping the next twelve weeks are a little less humid.

*I am running the Chicago Marathon with Team RMHC, and fundraising for Ronald McDonald House Charities, a great organization doing important work. Please consider donating and helping me reach my fundraising goal - you can do so at this link.

*I was all excited to see the Mets tear it up post-All Star break and make a post-season run…and then they came out and managed just a single hit on Friday night. So I think they're done. I’d love to be wrong but I don’t see this team showing any fight. I still have some games to go to, though. This Wednesday is my next one.

*If you followed the social media feeds you would have been the first to know about things like the new map…you can find the links below. I have Threads now too but I’m still trying to figure that out. Thanks for following along!