Universal Studios, Orlando

Our decision to do Universal was a bit of a dim moment on my part, as I somehow had it in my head that it would have more proper film stuff in it - I was of course thinking of Universal Studios Hollywood, not Orlando!  But still, we are happy that we did it.

There are two parts to the park here, and you can buy a ticket to cover either one or both. We opted to do both in one day. We started with the Islands of Adventure part, because they advised that the queues here were bigger later, and did the Universal Studios bit afterwards.

Now you may recall from a previous posting in Germany that I like roller coasters and other rides that generally throw you every which way all at the same time, but Nic doesn't. So here we were at a park that has a lot of rides. Nic had been building himself up to this and was steeling himself to go on at least some of them. We decided best to do those before we ate, just in case.

So we rolled up at the first rollercoaster, which was the Hulk. They don't allow bags on the rides, but they have a good system of free lockers available. They are self service lockers that are accessed via your fingerprint, and you get an allotted period of time that is enough to queue for and go on the ride, based on their current queue times. We found it worked very well.

Being off season and a weekday, the queues weren't bad, so we were soon at the roller coaster. Nic looked a bit anxious, but he got on and we were off. For ride fans, this wasn't the best one around, but it was OK.

Nic was quite happy with it not throwing you in too many different ways. He said afterwards that he found this easier than the waltzers, because the the cars on those spin as well as the ride going up and down and around. It appears he can cope with the speed of the ride as long as it is mostly going in just one direction at once.

Our next ride was a bit less hairy as it was a simulator 3D Spiderman ride. In this you only feel like you are being thrown everywhere. It was quite effective, especially the part where you are plummeting to the ground.

We passed through Toon Lagoon into Jurassic Park, where Nic was happy to have his photo taken with a model dinosaur and we had a slightly disappointing look at some dinosaur information and fossils.

Then we were into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Have to say that this section looks fabulous, with it's recreation of Hogmeade (with I think a smattering of Diagon Alley) and Hogwarts.But even on a slow day like today, you couldn't move if you went into the wand shop, and the queue for the Harry Potter ride was ninety minutes - yes, that's right, an hour and a half! Sod that!

We did queue forty minutes for another roller coaster in this section, which was a very fast one.

This whole queuing thing is a bit mad really. I can't envisage standing there for that long to go on a three minute ride. I think if you are bothered about going on all the rides, and especially if you are there in the peak times, you would have to get the fast track pass that speeds you through the queues. But even then, that only sometimes gets you right to the front of the queue; other times you just bypass a large section of it and then still have to queue for a while.

We didn't find anything of interest in the Lost Continent or Seuss Landing areas, so headed out to City Walk, the between the parks area, for something to eat.

Of course that meant that when we went into the Universal Studios park, we had to skip the Rockit roller coaster, as we weren't sure Nic's stomach would cope with that immediately after a big meal.

We did the Shrek 4D 'ride', which was cinema style seating and just not nearly as effective as the Spiderman one earlier.  But it was OK.

We were a little disappointed with 'Twister' the tornado experience.  We had initially expected that it was going to include a ride but realised it didn't when we didn't have to drop off bags.  Then we thought that it would have a simulator. But in fact you just stood at a barrier and watched the scene unfurl in front of you with a bit of wind and rain effects thrown in.  It was OK, and we did rather like the flying cow, but they could do so much more with this one I think.

It was quite nice wandering though the USA street 'set' and listening to a bit of the live music, but it felt like there wasn't quite enough going on.  I wondered whether perhaps they don't have some entertainment or activities that might have been happening in peak season.  Or it could just be that the streets were empty without the summer hordes and that it what felt strange.

We passed the Back to the Future DeLorean and made our way to the thirty minute queue for the Men in Black ride.  The fast trackers on this did get pretty much straight on, so it was a bit frustrating watching them walk in and get on while we waited - another reason to get the pass in peak times. But we got on eventually and the ride wasn't bad.

This wasn't a roller coaster.  It was styled as MiB training and was a 'shoot at the aliens' ride.  It was OK once you realised how the scoring worked.  My score wasn't bad compared to some, though the guy next to us was way ahead.  Nic, it appears, never really worked out what he was supposed to be doing and had a pitifully low score a the end.

We did plan to go back to the Rockit roller coaster at this stage, but it started to rain heavily so we gave it a miss.  I think Nic was secretly quite pleased actually.

So we enjoyed our day at Universal, though personally we don't quite get what all the hype is about, and just don't have the patience to queue for as long as you would have to to go on everything.

Margate and the Shell Grotto

Along the coast from where our parents live is the Kentish seaside town of Margate.  Made not quite famous by those cockney knees up singers Chas'n'Dave, Margate is one of those towns that used to be the place to go, with its Victorian Royal Sea Bathing Hospital from 1706, but that now has seen better days.  I have some family in the area, so remember going there as a child.
 

Unlike most of the coastline here, it does have sand rather than pebbles, which always helps to draw in those looking for a bit of UK beach time, and it still has the children's swing boats which I remember being somewhat bigger than it turns out they actually are.

Of course the real draw of Margate for me was Dreamland.  Tame by today's standards, Dreamland was the place to go for fairground rides.  It's Scenic Railway ride was quite basic really, but as one of the first wooden roller coasters built in 1920 and possibly the only remaining ride that has no brakes on the track and so still needs a brake man to ride on the train, it is now a grade 2 listed site.  There is a project to reopen it as a heritage fairground, but that seems some way off yet.

Like many of these seaside towns, Margate lost some of its appeal when people started to head further afield to be sure of some sun with their sea and sand.  It got a bit down at heel, with shops closing up and a reputation of being a bit of a trouble spot.  They are working on that now, but again there is some way to go.
 

 

Retro shops have started popping up close to the seafront, and Mary Portas has chosen it as one of the towns where she will help rejuvenate the high street.  It even has its own art gallery now, the Turner Contemporary, perhaps in part at least because that Tracey Emin hails from round here.

 

But we visited Margate on this occasion to check out one of its older attractions - The Shell Grotto.  No one really knows who built this underground grotto, when or why, but it was discovered underneath someone's house back in 1835 and opened to the public three years later.

 

Venturing under the cellars of this very normal looking property in the back streets of Margate, you find a passage that goes around in a circle, and then along a short corridor to a little chamber.  It is only 104 foot long in total, but all along the route, the walls are covered in shell mosaics.  Whoever put them there must have had incredible patience as there are around 4.6 million shells stuck to these walls.

They are put on in a panel design, with each panel having a different central pattern.  With some of them it is fairly clear what they depict, such as fleur de lis, a tree, or flowers; others require a little more imagination.  Someone at some stage has had a go at interpreting the panels, coming up with skeletons, phalluses, turtles, canoes, and gods amongst other things.  We could see how they got to some of them, but struggled with a few.

 

So what was this place?  One suggestion is that the end chamber was a chapel, and that this was some kind of secret place of worship.  Another idea is that this was a smugglers passage, though that seems a bit unlikely as it is quite a way inland, has no apparent connection into other passages, and you would think that the smugglers would have little need of such elaborate decoration!

 

Personally, I think my mum might be on to something with her theory that someone had a relative with a mental illness and an artistic leaning, perhaps a form of autism.  Being that the done thing back then was to lock such people away in institutions, they may instead have hidden them down in the cellars and given them barrow loads of shells to keep them occupied.

 

Whoever did it, and whatever their reasons, it is certainly very impressive.  It has become rather dirty over time, largely due to the use of oil/gas lamps to light it up years ago, but that doesn't really matter.  It is quite nice though that they have created a replica panel using the same type of shells to show what the colours would have looked like originally.

It is not somewhere that anyone is likely to travel that far to see, but it is worth a visit if you are in the area.  And there is a very friendly cat in the shop and tearooms upstairs.

Since drafting this blogpost, it has been reported that Margate has made the Rough Guide top ten 'must see' worldwide destinations for 2013, alongside places like Dubrovnic.  Much as I can see that Margate is working to improve itself, I had to laugh.  I do think that Margate has something to offer, but there is still a long way to go before I would actively recommend it as a 'world destination', let alone a 'must see'.  Quite honestly if I turned up in Margate on that basis, I would feel pretty let down.  I'm not saying don't visit it, but let's be realistic about what it has to offer please!  It does rather put me off trusting a recommendation from Rough Guide in the future.