Day 4 of the theme park marathon! Once again after little sleep, we entered Universals ‘Islands of Adventure’ theme park to look for some thrills to boost our energy!
As we entered right on opening at 9am – we felt as though we were the only ones in the park, heading first for the ‘kids’ area of Dr Suess’s 
Landing. This area got a fan immediately in the form of Jax! WE loved the theming of the area, and especially the holiday decorations! The area was decorated to look like ‘Whoville’ from book and movie ‘When the Grinch Stole Christmas’! We had the chance to ride all the rides without a kid in sight – and also got to meet the Grinch himself before he took the stage for the Grinch show. It was a funny retelling of the classic book!
Soon enough we needed some thrills – so got wet on the Jurassic Park boat ride, jumped on BOTH versions of the ‘Duelling Dragons’ rollercoaster’s which come scarily close to hitting each other (by the way we like Ice better), got shot straight in the air on the Fear Fall, shot out of a cannon into a loop on the Hulk Rollercoaster, and fighting baddies with Spiderman in an amazing 4D ride! It was fair to say that we were starting to get some great thrills!
To calm down we took in the stunt show which revolved around a pirate setting, and saw the evil character set on fire in the finale and sent falling off a cliff! And then decided to cool off from the hot Florida sun – good idea or bad idea??
Universal is home to two of the wettest rides in town that we are sure should have been designed for an actual Water Park! The first was the ‘Rip Saw Falls’ which was a classic log ride – the difference being the amazing drop at the end which saw the track go 10 feet below the water line! The next was the Popeye river rapids – where you boarded circular rafts. We were joined by two families – who we became fast friends with as the competition begun of who got the most soaked! Not only did you get wet by the rapids – but water was literally poured on you form the characters on the banks of the river! The banter between us and the families got so serious we ended up going around 3 times without hopping off – hoping to get each other wet! It’s fair to say we were SOAKED after this - it’s amazing how much water we could ruing out of our socks!
We spent the rest of the day chasing the sun and riding the rides in wet clothes until the sun went down. Instead of going out for dinner we had to get takeaway – a hot shower was needed after this epic day!
