Monday 12 July 1993 saw us driving to Universal Studios, Florida.
After the fantastic landscaped gardens of Sea World and the Disney parks, Universal in 1993 came as a bit of a culture shock. Based on street scenes and cityscapes, the closest to landscaping it got was the harbour base for the stunt show.
We found lots to do though. This was just before the Jaws ride opened but the old wee beastie was there, all strung up and rather less smelly than the one in the film, which was a real and very dead shark with it's guts piling up due to gravity just behind its throat!
The big ride of the year was Kong. Unfortunately having started to queue, the queue came to a stop as the ride had broken down. Forty five minutes later the technicians had to make the decision they couldn't fix the ride quickly and we had to leave the queue disappointed. Round the corner was the Ghostbusters fire station.
Then a siren sounded and they drove past in their distinctive car!
We were impressed by the number of look-alikes posing and giving autographs, some of them were really like the originals. Laurel and Hardy were driving about in an old car; Elvis, Marilyn and a host of others were waiting to hug and be hugged by adoring fans. I didn't choose Elvis... I can't find the Marilyn photo... We rode the Back To The Future simulator and the E.T. ride where E.T. himself spoke our names to the car in front... oops, bad timing! I braved the Earthquake ride which was very good if a little similar to Disney's Disaster Canyon ride a couple of days before.
The diner was based on the one from George Lucas's film American Graffiti. It was as functional as it was decorative and we went in and ordered burgers - what else?
A Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox was belting out American fifties and sixties hits and our table had this Seeburg selector unit which we duly fed with coins even though it was quite obvious the jukebox would not be allowed to go silent!
As we left the diner an acapella group were singing the old Herman's Hermits hit Silhouettes and we stayed to listen as they were really superb. We only caught the end of the Blues Brothers show and there was a Rocky and Bullwinkle show, one of two horrendous films that year based on superb cartoons, that were desperately being pushed in the parks. I've already mentioned the Tom and Jerry film and here was a show trying to convince people that the Rocky and Bullwinkle film would be worth going to.
The one cartoon-related exhibition that was worth seeing was this homage to Hanna-Barbera. The Flintstones segment included this car that you could sit in. There were reminders to other Hanna-Barbera characters too, mostly now forgotten by later generations. Huckleberry Hound, Pixie and Dixie and Mr Jinks, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw. Yogi and Booboo might still be remembered...
We had our evening meal at a Ponderosa Steak House - what an experience! We paid for our meals and were given empty plates. These were for the vegetable bar. Every sort of vegetable you could think of - and a few we had never thought of - were there and you could take your plate back as many times as you wanted to fill up. Some people were gorging - the only apt word - on plates stacked into pyramids. We waited until the main course came but when the steak arrived it filled the plate it was on...
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