This portion of my review is highly biased. I can't say why. Maybe it is because I am secretly Shigeru Miyamoto. You'll never know...
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| Photo credit: Universal. ©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved. |
Super Nintendo World ★★★★
Super Nintendo World
looks great! The experience of going through the portal into the land is
almost overwhelming.
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Photo credit: Universal. ©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved. |
Everywhere you look, there is something moving.
Everything is so bright and colorful you don't care that you are getting
sunburned. I have reasons to believe that this land will continue to look pretty good even after a few years of baking in the sun. But it is hard to believe that something this colorful can exist in the real world.
This is not a place to relax. But it is a rare thing in
theme parks for something to be everything you imagined it could be. I think that the land of Super Nintendo World achieves this goal.
If I have one complaint about this land, it would be that there is only one restroom for the entire land. The restroom itself is pretty good, with an underwater level theme. But it is very far away from the Toadstool Cafe and the queue for Mario Kart. And finding it is not so easy. I would not want to be a team member in this land who has to try to explain how to get to this restroom to a guest who needs it urgently.
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| Good luck describing how to find the restrooms to someone in Toadstool Cafe and the queue for Mario Kart... Photo credit: Theme Park Worldwide |
I did not get an opportunity to play any of the games that are accessible with the purchase of a Power Up Band. I may write a review of that experience after I get an opportunity to play with it some, especially if I feel like I have something insightful to say (HA!). But for now, we will continue on to the rides...
Mine-Cart Madness ★★★½
The
first attraction I experienced at EU was Donkey Kong's rollercoaster,
Mine-Cart Madness. This is a first of its kind "boom coaster", which utilizes a real track hidden by a faux track and ride vehicles that hold the passenger compartment at the end of a long boom to simulate jumps. This ride goes through the list of everything
you could ever want a coaster that appears to jump the track to do. It's pretty great.
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| Photo credit: Universal. ©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved. |
The ride is short and a little bumpy. And the
jumping effect isn't completely convincing (a subwoofer built into the
seat like what is in use over at Monsters Unchained would go a long way
towards giving the riders a more convincing effect of riding on the faux track. Turning off such an effect at the jump points would really sell the illusion). On each of my first two rides, the effect towards the beginning where Donkey Kong and
Diddy Kong have a near miss with your vehicle was not working.
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| Photo credit: Universal. ©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved. |
And
yet, this ride delivers. It looks incredible, it is fun, and it is
suitable for a pretty wide audience. The near miss effect was working when I visited the park in a more recent visit as well. This is a great effect!
This is a really fun ride. I am happy to
have spent almost five years of my life working on this thing.
Yoshi’s Adventure ★★☆☆
This
ride takes you around the second level of Super Nintendo World looking
for colorful eggs in the back of an endless chain of Yoshi ride vehicles. It is
really simple and gives the rider a chance to see everything from a
different vantage point. It is the Nintendo equivalent of Tomorrowland
Transit Authority Peoplemover at Magic Kingdom.
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| Photo credit: @bioreconstruct |
But
what keeps this ride from getting a better score from me is the low
speed, long stretches in the hot sun, and the somewhat puzzling use of
individually-ratcheting lap bars on this ride that would otherwise be
suitable for infants.
Animatronics tend to get pretty baked in the Florida sun, and Universal doesn't have a particularly great track record of keeping this sort of thing looking well maintained (I'm looking at you, High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride!) So I worry about how well this will hold up.
Finally, the configuration of the exit is a little strange. One gets the feeling that you must walk against the rotation of the turntable to exit. I am not aware of any other ride that makes you feel like that when you get off. The turntables at most rides have the load/unload near the halfway point on the circle, and this does too, but something about it seems off.
Overall, it is a charming ride. But not as much of a stand out.
Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge ★★½☆
My
rating for this is based on a single ride through. On my second visit
to EU, the line ended up stalling for over an hour, so we bailed on it.
So it is possible that it improves with re-rides.
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| Photo credit: Universal. ©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved. |
The
scale and detail in the queue is great, but the ride itself is very
reliant on augmented reality, which I didn't particularly care for. The
overwhelming sense of the ride is that it is a game where you have to
shoot things. And the actual video game versions of Mario Kart
definitely have that aspect to them. But they are also racing games
where you feel like you are going places fast, and this ride doesn't
ever really give that feeling.
There is a lot of
great stuff here, and the technology was definitely ambitious. But I
don't really think this is what I want out of a Mario Kart attraction.
Don't
take my word for it, though. It seems to always have a pretty sizable
line, despite a very respectable hourly capacity. So it must be doing
something right. It probably just isn't for me.
Series Directory
Review of Epic Universe Part 3: Super Nintendo World
Review of Epic Universe Part 5: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter — Ministry of Magic
Review of Epic Universe Part 6: How to Train Your Dragon — Isle of Berk
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