Islands of Adventure

July 19, 2010





Dakota & Michael

Islands of Adventure

Universal Studios is divided into two large theme parks separated by an equally large area called City Walk which has a huge selection of clubs, restaurants, attractions and even a multiplex movie theatre. Having and annual pass we were able to cruise back and forth between the parks at will, thus increasing our opportunity to avoid long waits and to even take breaks during the day to escape the crowds and heat of central Florida afternoons.







We actually quite fortunate, as it was warm, but not excessively hot and we had no rain and less humidity and more breeze than is usual for Orlando mid-summer. The day after a very late night of concert going, we slept in a little before checking out of the hotel and heading over to Islands of Adventure to get on all the rides we might have missed the previous two days at the parks.





We had a deliberate plan to take in all the water rides, the rides with the warning signs that “You may get wet, potentially soaked on this attraction”. This includes the River ride in the Jurassic Park section, the Dudley-Do-Right waterfall ride and Bluto’s River Barges. We almost made it on them all, completing all but the final third of the Bluto ride, which got stuck with us in it just near the top of the final drop. The warning signs should just say- You will get soaked, because there is little escaping it and even with the unforeseen evacuation we experienced we were still soaked.

Stuck





Having brought a dry change of clothing, we were back to relative dryness to finish out our day riding rides like the incredibly cool Spider Man ride and the comparatively lame Dr. Doom’s Free Fall ride in the superhero section of the park.







We had a great weekend as both concerts and all our time at the theme parks went virtually flawlessly and we did everything we wanted, with very little waiting or distraction. Kathy had a great time; she loves rollercoasters from the mind shaking Incredible Hulk to the crazy excitement of the Hollywood Rip Ride Rocket to the Dualing Dragons of Harry Potter world. She rode them all with Dakota, multiple times.







I’m not so much a rollercoaster person, I loved the concerts and I really was impressed by the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The Simpsons ride, Men In Black and Spiderman are all excellent rides as well and people watching is always fun. In addition to seeing a complete cross section of America from the good, to the bad to the ugly- the place was also packed with visiting tour groups, especially from Brazil. It seemed every high school kid in Brazil must have been in Orlando this week as mobs of students dressed alike were everywhere, following around beleaguered looking chaperones holding small flags on sticks.



Kathy & Dakota



Even being exhausted, the seven hour drive back to Key West was fairly easy and Kathy is already talking about when we can go back, to take advantage of our annual pass of course. Hopefully we can meet Dakota there again sometime in the fall. We had a great time and she is an excellent traveling companion.

Counting Crows & Augustana

July 18, 2010





Augustana

Counting Crows & Augustana

I was trying to figure out exactly how many times that I have seen the Counting Crows perform live the other day and I could not come up with the exact number. I used to keep track, but I lost count and when I try to recreate some sort of list, I invariably leave some dates off. The number is probably somewhere in the upper 40s- which seems like a lot, but if you stretch the number out over the years since they began in 1993, that isn’t all that numerous.





I first saw the band in May of 1994 at a small club in Ft. Lauderdale called the Edge, which has long since closed, but I was hooked and I have tried to see at least one show of every tour since. This summer’s tour is only making a single stop in Florida, the show Saturday night at Universal Studios as part of their summer concert series, so we coordinated the show with a trip to see our friend Dakota and take her to her first Counting Crows show.

Dakota & Kathy





For the rest of the country, the Counting Crows are re-visiting the very successful Traveling Circus and Medicine Show tour from last summer, with Augustana on board again and with rapper Notar replacing Michael Franti. The show at Universal was an exception as the theme park wanted only Counting Crows, so the show became a solo gig with Counting Crows playing a full headlining set. This lead to a very different sort of show and gave the band a lot more freedom to play more of their own stuff and add songs to the set list that are not typical on the rest of the tour.

“Children in Bloom”

The open date also allowed Augustana to book their own solo gig, at a small downtown Orlando club called The Social. With a later starting time, we were able to see the entire Counting Crows show and then rush downtown to catch about half of Augustana’s set as well. It worked out perfectly.





The Counting Crows show was fantastic, mostly due to the excellent set-list and the great mood that lead singer Adam Duritz was in. The band had just enjoyed what he described as a “perfect day” off, lounging with friends and his girlfriend at Atlantic Beach in Jacksonville before heading to Orlando and spending much of the day at the theme park including riding the new Harry Potter ride which he gave an enthusiastic thumbs up.






The show opened with a stunning version of “Round Here” complete with all the alternate lyrics and variations that Adam likes to insert into his songs giving them each a unique interpretation. It is just this sort of improvisation that I love about the band, human jukeboxes they are not, often playing radically different versions of their music from night to night.

“Goodnight Elizabeth “

This night was no different and the band was really on and the set-list appealed more to the long-time fan than the casual one. If there was any disappointment in the show it was that the crowd was full of a majority of casual or even non-fans and the crowd reaction was not what I am used to at a Counting Crows show. That is to be expected at a theme park, where many of the people just happened to stumble across the show during their visit to Universal.





I was thrilled by the set-list, which included an amazing version of “Goodnight Elizabeth” with “Pale Blue Eyes” by the Velvet Underground mixed in for good measure and the rarely played classic “Raining in Baltimore”. All in all, we had a great time and made it downtown in time to see Augustana playing their own solo show.







Downtown Orlando was crazy, packed with people like Duval Street at New Year’s Eve. We made our way to The Social, a smallish music venue/bar that was the perfect setting for Augustana. We were able to see a decent portion of their show, which was excellent. They played a lot of new stuff, some cool covers including Tom Petty & Warren Zevon and even gave some of their old songs different twists. Seeing them in the small venue was great and the crowd reacted with wild appreciation. It was a great, if not late night!

Augustana-“Fire”

Links to Blog postings of the last 5 Counting Crows shows that I attended:

Miami-2009

Orlando-2009

West Palm-2008

Louisville-2007

Tampa-2006

Universal Studios

July 17, 2010

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Kathy & Dakota



Universal Studios



Just last month a new attraction opened at Universal Studios in Orlando that has garnered a ton of hype and throngs of visitors clamoring to be among the first to experience it. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a multimillion dollar expansion that includes an entire new area of Universal’s Islands of Adventure amusement park. It is just the sort of place that we tend to avoid, especially so soon after the grand opening and even moe so in this particular case since Kathy & I are two of the very few people in America who have neither read or seen a single Harry Potter book or movie.







But as fate would have it, my favorite band, the Counting Crows booked a date to play as part of Universal Studios summer concert series, the only Florida date on this year’s tour so we found ourselves headed to Orlando in the heat of the summer, where we met our friend (and Kathy’s former mentee) Dakota for a weekend at Universal and to see the show.







We stayed at the nearby Wyndham Orlando resort which is just up the street from the parks. To avoid the masses, it takes a good bit of planning and we did our research. The only way to see the new attraction and avoid total chaos, is to get there first thing in the morning. The park opens officially at 9 am, but they allow people in before that and the line forms just to get in to the new section. So there we were, bright and early and it paid off because we neither had to wait to get into the Harry Potter section (where waits can be over 2 hours) or to ride the main attractions once inside (where wait times soar to 3 hours plus at times).



Butterbeer Anyone?



With-in 45 minutes, we had ridden the incredible new Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride and the Dualing Dragons rollercoaster as well as checked out the great stores and even sampled some Butterbeer. As a non-Potter fan, I was still majorly impressed. The entire new section is as good as it gets for theme park fans and the Forbidden Journey ride is one of the best theme park rides in existence., impossible to describe, but well worth a trip to Orlando.

Kathy

Dakota

It was with great satisfaction that we were wondering out of the attraction past literally thousands of people in a long hot (2 hour plus) wait just to get in, simply because we got there early. This strategy also made for shorter lines at the other Islands of Adventure attractions, because everyone was clamoring to get into Potter-land.







When we headed over to the other Universal Studios theme park later, the crowds were even sparser and there was virtually no wait on any of the rides there. We purchased the annual Florida resident two park pass that allows for unfettered access to both parks and allowed us to jump back and forth and see more in less time.





Our early arrival also allowed us to be able to take a mid-day break and head back to the hotel to lounge about the pool during the heat of the day, before returning for the night in time to catch the firework spectacular that closes each night at the park. It was a great first day in Orlando.