I spent one day at Universal Resort. It was my first time back to the place since I went once as a child in the early 90’s. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. In my mind, the entire place must have changed from top to bottom in the last 25 years. Much to my surprise, it turns out that isn’t entirely true. Also to my surprise was the fact that Universal is a very weird place, and not a very good theme park experience.
I want to do this review by tracing my path through the resort grounds. I feel like this will be a good way of capturing everything of note without having to classify everything under labels of good/bad/whatever.
Parking Garage
When you get into Universal, you are ferried into a massive parking Garage structure. I can’t imagine how much this cost to build, but it might actually be brilliant. It allows them to have lots of parking in a limited space, and it keeps everyone’s car away from direct Florida sunlight. This did not exist when I came here as a kid, but I wish it did.
Security
The garage takes you directly into their security area, in which your bags go through an X-Ray machine, and individuals go through a metal detector. It was fast and efficient, far more so than Disney’s current approach of hand examining every single bag. I cannot say which approach is more likely to find contraband; I feel like both are effective if the staff are well trained, and ineffective if they are not. I will say that the way Universal’s checkpoint is configured, there is little chance of anyone slipping by the metal detectors to go in unexamined. That definitely happens at WDW, and it is a bit scary when you see it with your own eyes. Good job Universal.
CityWalk
After security you are directed into the Universal CityWalk. This is basically their version of Disney Springs. It has shops, restaurants, and live entertainment. If you ask me, all of it feels like the kind of stuff that Disney considered to not be good enough for them. I had zero interest in examining any of it. Also, the architecture can be best described as “impressive but tacky”.
Once the CityWalk ends, the path branches in two directions. One takes you to Universal Studios, and the other to Island of Adventure. We choose to hit the Studios first.
Universal Studios
The original Universal Studios and Disney’s MGM Studios/Hollywood Studios parks were built at around the same time, and one may or may not have copied the another. This is abundantly clear once you step foot into Universal, as the similarities are extremely striking. For one, it is extremely small, at about 108 acres (Hollywood Studios is supposedly around 135, though I’m not sure which parts of the park that measurement takes into account). From certain vantage points, you can see just about the entire thing, since most of it is centered around a single lake. Furthermore, any building that isn’t themed after an Intellectual Property is made to look like a real or imagined piece of Golden Era Hollywood architecture. This is exactly the same as the entrance to Hollywood Studios, and the similarities in size, shape and style are extreme.
What surprised me most about this fact is not that they were similar, but that Universal hadn’t ditched this aesthetic long ago. Disney gets away with it because they are good at partitioning off different parts of their parks - the “Old Hollywood” stuff doesn’t bleed into the Star Wars stuff or the Toy Story stuff. This is exactly what does happen in Universal, and I wonder why they didn’t make greater efforts to retool the park’s overall theming. By having the “Hollywood film studio” design intermingled with buildings themed after movie properties, the whole park takes on a jumbled, confused vibe, as if they threw a bunch of shit at the wall without caring about whether it stuck.
There are two exceptions to this statement. One is the Simpsons area, which is not large, perse, but large enough that it stands out pretty well as its own thing. The second, far greater exception is Diagon Alley, which is hidden from view of the rest of the park (aside from that Dragon, which kind of sticks out).
The only reason I’m not sure if you could do Universal Studios in a single day is due to the ride wait times. If you can either avoid them, or find a way to strategically minimize them, then this is definitely doable from open to close. Considering that I rode pretty much all the rides that were here back when I was a kid, I should have realized that would be the case. Regardless, it means that Universal Studios is not as impressive as my memory told me.
Springfield
The Simpsons area is nice. Not as large as I expected, but the detail is nice, and there are a lot of deep references to obscure episodes. I also appreciate that the folks behind it were allowed to continue Simpsons tradition of making fun of everything, including their masters. The Simpsons Ride itself has potshots for Disney, Sea World, and Universal itself.
Diagon Alley
This place is impressive from a technical standpoint. I can see why people made such a big fuss for so many years. But Diagon Alley sacrifices accessibility for immersion. It is too small, too narrow, and too confusing to navigate. I lost count of the number of times I got in the way of a kid trying to use their new magic wand to activate some special effect somewhere in the Alley. I’m not one to get claustrophobic, but I felt like my animal instincts were kicking in and telling me to get out. Eventually we took the train ride over to Hogsmeade, and thus the Islands of Adventure.
Train Ride
This was very cute and very well done. If I was a Harry Potter fan, and I was a certain age, I would be transfixed. A good idea all around.
Hogsmeade
This area is more open than the Alley, but I don’t know if it is much bigger, or appreciably different. Aside from the unique rides, it seems like all the shops are the same kind of stuff as before. I’m also not sure if they really figured out how to sell the idea of a snow-covered town effectively in the middle of Orlando. Overall, I’d say Hogsmeade isn’t bad, but Diagon Alley is a bit more clever and immersive (for better or for worse).
The Rest of the Islands of Adventure
These can all go sink as far as I am concerned. There are two types of areas in this park - those that are themed entirely based on an existing IP, and those that are not. The themed areas include a kid’s section based on Dr. Seuss, which isn’t bad, perse, but it looks like the kind of thing that you could hand off to Busch Gardens or Cedar Parks without having them screw it up. There is an area of kid’s rides based on classic cartoons such as Popeye, Dudley Do-right, and Rocky and Bullwinkle. You know, those classic mainstays that kids not only recognize, but adore (end sarcasm). Then there is some Jurassic Park stuff in the back that I never got to see. I’m sure it is fine for what it is.
The most bizzare section is the one based on Marvel Superheroes. This part was built before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing, and so it is styled in that late 90’s, pre-MCU aesthetic in which all the characters are ugly and poorly proportioned, and everything is covered with a level of cheesiness and disdain that matches the contempt that most people had for superheroes in that era. It feels like a time capsule more than a theme park attraction. It gets even weirder when you see them selling MCU-based merch in the shops. It’s like they want to modernize, but legally they can’t (I’m not sure what the legal standing is anymore in regards to Disney, Universal, and the use of Marvel characters, but I am sure it is messy). The best part of this island was the arcade, and the fact that they had characters dressed as Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, and Captain America exactly as I remembered seeing them in all of my favorite 90’s cartoons.
There are two other areas not based on an IP - Port of Entry, and the Lost Continent. These are the most saddest, most laughable parts of the entire Universal Resort. This is where the park was tasked with coming up with their own original theming, and the result is so generic it hurts. It’s just a bunch of cliches tossed together, without any sort of narrative cohesion. There is no story going on here, nothing to to explain what these locations are any why they exist. They are fine in terms of production quality, but are extremely lifeless. If you have been to any other theme park, you’ve probably seen some small section of it that looks like the Lost Continent.
Usage of Screens
People hate how Universal relies so much on screens. Personally, I tend to agree with Robert Niles of themeparkinsider.com - screens themselves aren’t necessarily a problem, and they aren’t going to go away, as even Disney is relying on them more and more. The problem is more that Universal’s rides are all simulators, in which you sit in a ride car, optionally put on some 3D glasses, and get shaken around in order to simulate real movement. As Niles points out, these rides are inaccessible to a lot of people, either due to physical disability, an inability to see 3D, or due to the psychological fact that some people get more sick on these rides due to their inability to predict what’s coming next. What’s more, the “Simulator in a box” type of ride is susceptible to lazy tropes and tricks, and can easily become repetitive.
I didn’t end up riding all that many rides, so I can’t say how good or bad all of Universal’s specific screen-based rides are. I did enjoy the Simpsons simulator, mostly because it is long enough to tell a bit of a story and for the characters to make some jokes. The Despicable Me ride, on the other hand, had a well made line queue, but the ride itself was basically “watch Minions get hurt for the upteenth time”, which got old by the end of the first DM film.
I’d say the problem is less to do with screens, and all to do with Universal’s lack of storytelling chops, which is what I would like to round out this post discussing.
Universal’s Future
For literal years, I have been hearing people say that Universal had Disney’s number based solely on the strength of the Harry Potter stuff. I now think these people are crazy.
For one, the HP stuff is impressive, but it is small. Small enough that you cannot even make a whole day out of it. That isn’t enough content to beat out Disney’s massive array of older (but still great) rides and attractions. And as I mentioned earlier, if they cannot match the immersion with better accessibility in the future, people are going to eventually notice and take issue.
But to me, the greater problem at play is that Universal doesn’t know how to tell a story. Give them an existing IP, with an established aesthetic and characters and stories, and they can do good work in replicating it. This is why the HP stuff, the Despicable Me ride queue, and the Simpsons stuff is all great. But leave them to their own devices, and you get stuff like Islands of Adventure, or the new Jimmy Fallon ride that many people have a hate boner for.
What people forget is that Disney adds a narrative hook and a theme into everything they make. This is extremely important, as it helps the immerse guests into the world they are trying to portray. Without that extra bit of care and detail, there is nothing there to spark the imagination of your guests. What you get is a bunch of impressive looking technology without any reason to care about it.
At Universal, you only get that sense of narrative when it is has already been established by an existing film/show/whatever. Without that, there is nothing but empty, cliched theme park BS.
If I were Disney, I would have no fear right now. They made a park out of the film Avatar, which no one remembers, and in 2019 it is still seeing 2+ hour wait times on those rides. They know how to take an idea and spin it into magic, even if it takes them a while.
Universal, on the other hand, I’d be worried about. I left with the feeling that they have no idea what they want to do, want to be, or what plans they have in store. My day was a lot of fun, since I spent it with family, but my observation of Universal as a theme park destination is that it is sad, pathetic, and directionless.