Back to Day 8

Today and tomorrow are two of our "Tried and Tested Days" we head to RPR, we have one days in the parks (our Wet Ride Day) and then head to HHN both nights and tomorrow we do the "Behind the Screams Tour". BUt we have an extra special treat today, we are trying the new "Dine with Scareactor" meal Universal is offering.

We booked in at 9am, the room as available so we took our bags up before coming down to sort our the FOLP passes and our tickets for the Scareactor Dining that evening. Universal make it so easy to sort everything out. And I do like their on site transport.




We dropped a bag off in the lockers in Universal before heading out to do the wet rides in IoA. We love both Bilge Rats and Jurassic Park and the advantage of being onsite is that we can get changed, so we try and to all the wet rides in the morning of our on-site visit.

But first there was the all important ride on Minions, we don't try to do that ride without FOLP and even with them we still queued about 20 minutes.




We travelled to IoA via the Hogwarts Express (still love that ride) and then grabbed a drink before walking around to Jurassic Park




Again even with FOLP we were surprised at how busy the ride was, I wonder if its something to do with the new film. But it was worth the wait. We were in the middle of the back row so didn't get too wet but we did notice when we came off the queue was just getting longer.

We love Bilge Rats ana am still amazed at how wet you can get, I think its one of the best water rides out there.



We grabbed another drink and squelched around to the entrance wating some of the acts and entertainment on the way. We grabbed an Icee drink at the Port of Entry and mooched around some of the shops (we have got to the drip dry stage by now)



It was about 2pm by now so we walked around to the hotel, which took us about 10 minutes to get changed and dress for HHN and our Scareactor Meal. This was something that was new this year and we were looking forward to it.

We caught the river boat back to Universal at 3pm for another quick Minion Mayhem, our excuse was that we needed to be at the Monster Cafe for 5pm so it made sense for us to stay around the area.



As we still had plenty of time we decided to do Shrek too. I think the Cast Member doing the safety notice makes this show and todays was very very good, he really made up squish up close :-)

... And we still had time for a quick shop and a nose around the Betty Boo shop, not bad for about 90 minutes!

Although Universal has had Character Dining for years, Scareactor Dinining is new.



We had a great range of food and there were lots of the (tamer) actors coming around (so no bloody walkers!) as well as some of the bigger names who organise the event. It was brilliant and we loved all the interactions.






I really hope they carry on doing this, as it was great and a perfect start to the evening.

HHN Tip No 3 - Take a camera, although the scareactors can't touch you, they are great at interacting with public and will enjoy posing for shots

Today's Scare Zone was one of my favourites for detail although I owuld only give it a 1/5 for scares and that was Drive-In. They had two sets of teams, traditional horror (in black and white, werewolves, Norman Bate's mum, Vampire, mummies) and Modern Horror (Freddie, Jason, Pinhead in glorious technicolour) and depending on the time you saw on set or another. We were lucky one day to see a cross over and catch all of them.




I want to talk about two houses today. Firstly Insidious which gets a 5/5 for one particular stretch and - Run - Blood, Sweat and Tears which gets a 4/5 for the sheer number of scareactors.

If you have not seen Insidious, the film is about a young boy who falls into a terrifying coma and the house follows the his journey... until you don't know what is real!




Now the reason the house was so talked about was one corridor that you went down where, well it looks like Universal break their own rules and let the scareactors touch you... I won't tell you how its done - but its brilliant! and I think they will use it again.

I don't have any pictures of the second house, but the idea is that you are a "Running Man/Hunger Games" type game, whilst you are queuing you hear clips from futuristic radio programmes where it is clear that society has broken down and you need to fight for everything. Its a great maze which relies heavily on the actors who do a great job. They also have a ticker tape running through the maze so you can see how you are doing against others.

As we were on site, we did all the houses before heading back to room having had a brilliant day

Days Spends
Parking for two days at Universal Hotel - 21.93
4 lots of drinks at Universal - 40.00
1 Popcorn at HHN - 10

Total Daily Spend - 71.93
Running Total - 1,267.68
Average Daily Spend - 134.03

On to Day 10

Bilge Rats is such a fun ride, I really hate water rides but I do love this. I wish the one at AK was more similar.

Your dinner looks terrifying!

Dine with the Scareactor looks great!

We are really hoping they bring it back - it was so much fun