Islands of Adventure : Review Part Two

Part One |  Part Two  |  Part Three

After leaving The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, we continued to make our way round the park in an anti-clockwise direction, which brought us into the land of Jurassic Park. It was a land that I remembered fondly from my previous visit to the park 10 years ago, mainly because I was 10 years old and either loved, or was scared of the Dinosaurs.

After a quick stop off for some of us to get food, we made our way to the biggest ride of the land… actually the only attraction in the land we went on, Jurassic Park River Adventure.

We boarded the boats after a fairly short queue, and began our relaxing river adventure around the land of Jurassic Park, seeing many different Dinosaurs on our route. One section of the ride was closed off which I suspect was part of the rides story, but either way the boat changed course, and the part of the ride I remembered from 10 years ago began.

We entered a restricted area of Jurassic Park, and with Dinosaurs on the lose we entered the Environmental Systems Building and started to climb upwards looking for safety. The darkness inside the building and Dinosaur noises were not as terrifying as I remembered, probably because I was 10 years old when I last went on it, but I have to say it was still pretty scary. As we got to the top of the building we turn a corner to see the terrifying T-Rex we were being warned about and just as we thought the ginormous Dinosaur was going to have us for lunch, we plummeted 85-feet and exited the building with a mighty splash!

The first part of the ride plays it’s part in the story for the younger riders, but I was just waiting for the building and the drop the whole ride and it did not disappoint. One downside to the ride when we were on it was the fact that the T-Rex actually wasn’t moving at all, which did ruin the feeling that it’s a really dinosaur, especially as I remembered it being scary with all the noises and smoke from 10 years ago, seeing a still T-Rex before the drop did not have the same effect.

It was nice to get a bit of a splash though to cool us down on this 30°C day, in fact I felt quite wet stepping out of the boat!

After realising the other kiddy flying coaster attraction of the land required you to be under a certain height, we made our way out of Jurassic Park and into the very different land of Toon Lagoon.

Amazingly well themed area for cartoon lovers, with the centre point of the land clearly being the Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls, a log flume with an amazing cartoon look and added element that makes it unique among flume style rides.

We joined the queue and after walking around what seemed to be an empty queue line for quite a while and not knowing whether we were in the right line or not, we eventually found the back of a queue, which we then stayed in for 40 minutes. I’m not sure whether it was the annoying ride music in the background of the queue or just the bright colours of the queue, but it seemed to make it take a very long time, but eventually we got to the front and was ready to board the flumes.

On this ride I was in a boat with my girlfriend and three youngest cousins, aged 8, 9 and 10, which sounds like it could have been a recipe for an annoying ride, but in fact made the ride so much more fun! The kids screaming and shouting in the front of the boat had me crying with laughter throughout the ride, still managing to admire the amazing attention to detail in the theming of the ride. It was like we were travelling through a cartoon, and after many small teasing drops, we finally got to the highest point of the ride and dropped all of the 75 feet down through an exploding dynamite shack, even dropping below the water level and back up again, the unique part of the ride I mentioned earlier.

Once again, we were soaked, as much as Jurassic Park River Adventure, or maybe more. Overall the ride is a fantastic log flume ride, with excellent theming and the main drop of the ride is a real thrill especially the thought of you being below water level!

So feeling a bit damp still it seemed to make sense to jump straight into the queue for the other wet attraction in Toon Lagoon, Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges.

If we thought we got wet from the previous two rides, we were about to be shown how Florida do there rapids rides… very, very wet!

Popeye & Bluto’s Blige-Rat-Barges had people coming off of it absolutely drenched, so whilst queuing in the sun and drying off from Ripsaw Falls I began to get nervous about just how wet I was going to get on this ride. When we approached the end of the queue I noticed that each boat had a compartment in the middle to put your belongings that would be covered up so they wouldn’t get wet. The first time I have ever seen something like that on a water ride. If you need to put your belongings in a covered compartment in the middle, we were definitely in for a soaking.

The ride began and already after the first small drop the speed the boat picked up was faster than any rapids ride from the UK, and this made every small drop during the ride pretty much send half the boat under a wave of water drenching the unlucky few on that side of the boat. These small drops which normally you would not worry about on every other rapids ride were suddenly the most scary moments of the ride as if you were going down these drops backwards you knew you was getting soaked.

This along with people shooting water at you and waterfalls along the ride ended up with everyone on my boat drenched to the bone. In the gorgeous Orlando sunshine it was a great way to refresh ourselves and with someone else being soaked every couple of seconds on the ride it made it a very funny and entertaining ride for everyone. Without a doubt the best rapids ride I have ever been on, and 110% the wettest.

It was time to dry off, so after a few minutes of rest in the sun, it was time to head over to Marvel Super Hero Island and go on what was up till going on Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey, my favourite theme park ride, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man.

Part One |  Part Two  |  Part Three