We spent our first of two Universal days at Islands of Adventure. The park has 6 main lands – Marvel Super Hero Island, Toon Lagoon, Skull Island, Jurassic Park, Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Hogsmeade), and Seuss Landing.
I loved the layout of the park, as everything was oriented in a circle around a lake. I don’t like when parks are sprawling with multiple offshoots because you can easily get lost in the different paths or miss an entire section of the park. With a circular layout, you really just needed to decide which direction to head in and go from there.
The Hulk ride was beckoning so we decided to head to Marvel Super Hero Island first and follow a clockwise path through the park. We rode The Incredible Hulk Coaster and The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, two very different but fun rides. The Hulk is a traditional launched roller coaster, while Spider-Man is a 3-D motion simulator ride. Both were great rides and your preference will likely depend on your overall preference for ride type. I find traditional (moving) rides much better, but my boys loved the simulation and effects of Spider-Man.
Next up was Toon Lagoon, which is primarily shops and restaurants. This area is like a trip down memory lane for parents, as it features comics like Popeye, Hagar the Horrible, and Beetle Bailey. We loved walking around and ducking into the various shops. There are two rides here – Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges and Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls. Both are water rides so we opted to save them for the end so we wouldn’t be soaked for the entire day.
Next up was Skull Island: Reign of Kong. This isn’t so much a “land” as a single ride, but it gets its own call-out on the map. This ride both actually moves (although it a slow-moving truck and not a roller coaster) and has motion simulation. Your truck moves through the jungle, starting outdoors and then heading into a temple. Once inside, bats, dinosaurs, and other creatures surround – and threaten – you on all sides. Ultimately King Kong enters and a battle rages all around. I loved the effect of King Kong jumping over the truck, moving seamlessly from one screen to the other. This was a great ride – I enjoyed the mix of actual and simulated motion/action.
Next we headed into Jurassic Park and went straight to Jurassic World VelociCoaster. This was hands-down everyone’s favorite ride in all of Universal. This traditional roller coaster has unbelievable twists, turns, inversions, and high-speed maneuvers. Despite all its intense moves, it is super-smooth, making it one of the most comfortable but thrilling rides I’ve ever been on. This is the only ride we went on twice and we would have happily done it more times if we had the time (and the two park ticket!).
Fresh off the excitement of VelociCoaster, we headed to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. This was probably the most visually impressive land in Islands of Adventure. The snow-capped roofs lining the village created a magical feeling as we walked past the Hogwarts Express (but didn’t ride it because we didn’t have the two park pass) and headed to the (very long) line for Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure.
Hagrid’s Magical Motorbike Adventure was the only ride in the park that didn’t accept Express Passes at the time of our visit. We waited about an hour and a half for this ride – a fair amount of it outside in the sun and heat. A unique take on a traditional roller coaster, passengers take a seat in either a motorbike or its side car for a high speed exploration of the Forbidden Forest. The roller coaster features 7 different launches, meaning that there’s a lot of stopping and starting. This would have been fine if it had been a cohesive experience but we ended up stopping and waiting at several of the launches because the ride was backed up. It made for a very disjointed experience. At one point we waited at a launch for more than 2 minutes, almost doubling the ride time and leading us to wonder if the ride was broken. Reading about it afterwards, it sounds like this is a common occurrence, as the ride loads slowly and backs up. I’d rather be held at the initial launch to account for expected slowness than be stopped mid-ride. The coaster was fun, but to us it was not worth the long wait in line. The multiple long mid-ride pauses broke up the ride into several short spurts instead of one thrilling ride.
Following that disappointment, we soothed our souls with some Butter Beer, grabbed some lunch, and re-rode VelociCoaster before returning to Hogsmeade to ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. This is a combined real and simulated motion ride and a really well done one at that. Similar to King Kong, you do actually move through this ride (seated on a bench mounted to a robotic arm) but the action around you is mostly on a screen. The technology is really cool on this ride, as the benches pivot, swoop, and lay you flat, all while the screens stay fixed in front of you during each scene. This was definitely among the family favorites.
We completed our loop around the park by walking through Seuss Landing. Aimed at younger kids, we didn’t do any rides here but did enjoy the wonderful re-creation of Dr. Seuss’ classics. From Mulberry Street to the Street of the Lifted Lorax, it was like walking through the pages of some of our favorite childhood books. I really enjoyed our stroll through Seuss Landing.
Having done the complete loop around the lake, my husband headed back to the hotel for some down time, while the boys and I headed back around to do the water rides. We rode Jurassic Park River Adventure, Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls, and Popeye and Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges. Both River Adventure and Ripsaw Falls feature big drops (with big splashes), reminiscent of Disney’s Splash Mountain. The Bilge-Rat Barges is a whitewater-raft ride similar to Animal Kingdom’s Kali River Rapids, but it is longer, rougher, and wetter. That was our last ride of the day and we got completely soaked.
Overall, we absolutely loved Islands of Adventure. There were so many great rides – the traditional coasters were thrilling, the motion simulator rides were visually stunning, and the ones that crossed over between the two were technological marvels. Except for the snafu with the mid-ride waits on Hagrid’s Motorbike, we couldn’t have asked for a better day.
