or why my weekend wasn’t the fun-filled action-packed vacation I was hoping for.
My brother and sister are awesome. They purchased seasonal Universal tickets for the entire family. We drove up Sunday morning. That went pretty smoothly. Kids we OK, our stuff was packed and we got out the door and on the road by about 8:30. Rock!
We arrived around noon, parked and took our vouchers to customer service at Islands of Adventure to turn in for actual tickets. While we were there I asked for the medical assistance card and was given a red “fast pass” type card. I smiled, said thank you and went on my way.
We did a couple of things in Seuss Landing, wandered through Lost Continent and actually strolled right into Harry Potter. We did not realize how much we lucked out, more on that later. We got on line for the new ride, and since we had to do the child swap we were able to avoid the locker queue and get right on line. The line moved pretty quick. The talking painting were amazing. I am guessing they were flat screens with some sort of overlay to make it look like it was painted. Very very well done. The 3D Harry/Ron/Hermione were very well done, if not a bit rushed and then we were able to board the ride/get in the child swap area. Here is where it started to suck.
Michael, Eshiva & I went to child swap and Dad, Michael, Sara, Dorian & Malachai went to get on the ride. Within two minutes Michael was back in the child swap looking very grumpy. He was too big to fit in the seat. Not too fat mind you. Too tall. My 6’1″ not unusually tall husband was too big for the shoulder harness to lock properly. What a bitch, considering the *only* reason we did Universal and not Disney was for the Harry Potter area. I went on the ride with my brother and we split for other things. The Butter Beer was all right, tasted like a liquid Butterscotch Krimpet. The stores were cute, or what we saw of them anyway.
Then the skies opened up and we hightailed it from the back of the park to the front and left. We were soaked through. We checked into the hotel, got dried and changed and went to dinner. Michael phoned Universal and complained about the ride and was basically told “we’re sorry but there is nothing we can do for you”. No surprise, but it didn’t make anyone feel better.
Fast forward through a craptastic dinner to Monday morning. We went to the old park after breakfast. We walked right onto Twister, tried to use the medical pass at Disaster and were surprised to find out it gave us a return time for 25 minutes later. Not a huge problem except what am I supposed to do for 25 minutes? The man working disaster did call over to Jaws to see if the wait was short enough for us to ride it and come back to disaster, but it was a 60 minute wait at Jaws. If we didn’t go back to Disaster we could not use the medical pass anywhere else (it has to be validated at the last ride to mark it down before you can use it again). I got pissy at this point and walked across the park to The Simpsons ride. Michael took Dorian and Michael on The Men in Black ride, and we got on a 60 minute line. I explained to Malachai as best I could that it was an hour wait and his card wouldn’t work. He said ok so I said ok. Eshiva, Malachai & I got on a hot, slow moving line. We made it 25 minutes before we wound up back-tracking out because he was done waiting in line (this was after 10 – 15 minutes of coercion to wait it out). We met up with the rest of our group, saw a magic show, bought some stuff, saw the Horror Make Up Show and I stopped at guest servic es on the way out.
I explained what happened and explained that I wasn’t asking for a skip the line card, but that I expected better treatment. Had we gone to Disney I would have gotten a red Guest Assistance Card that let us into the fast pass line instead of the regular line. At Universal I refuse to pay, what, 20$ per person per day to bribe them to let me into the fast pass line, especially when I have a party of 8! I said that two years ago we were given complimentary fast pass tickets, they were attached to his seasonal pass and we picked them up when we went to the park. She said they no longer do that, blah blah blah but she was awesome and did attach 6 complimentary fast passes to my name along with a medical card. I just have to present my ID and the confirmation number to guest services and they will give me the passes. I said thank you and left in a much better mood.
Tuesday morning we went back to IofA, picked up my passes and had a much better day. We were able to do quite a few rides, get soaking wet on Popeye, eat at Mythos (yum!) and get out of dodge and home by bedtime 
Lesson learned? Go to Disney, they have more to do, are more accommodating when needed and I like it there better. EPCOT has the food & wine festival, the garden festival, there are more “special” things going on during the year that do not cost extra. Universal has extras, but they are all “in addition to” not “included with.” No thanks.
