The Shrek ride was good, tho.  I forget what it replaced (heck, it'd been a good seven or eight years since i'd been there), but it was one of those motions sims that doesn't actually move around.  Think "Days of Thunder" at Carowinds as opposed to the aforementioned Spider-Man.  But with 3-D glasses.  (Universal's got a thing for 3-D glasses, lemmetellya.)  Seth didn't seem all that impressed with it, but i think it was mostly because of the ridiculous wait.  It was at least an hour (as opposed to the 40 minutes advertised by the sign at the entrance), and it wasn't one of those, you're standing for an hour, but the line keeps moving so it doesn't seem all that bad.  It was, move up a couple of feet, sit on your haunches for 20 minutes.  Move up a couple more feet, sit on your haunches for 20 minutes.  Luckily, they had a video playing clips from the movie (gads what a funny movie) to keep us occupied, along with posted newspaper-looking signs with giant headlines spelling out the basic plot of the ride, and fine print for dorks like me to read.  (The "Sports Section" of the newspaper featured a slightly different take on the Goldilocks story, telling the first part of the story like a sports announcer, and ending the story with the sentence, "And then Baby Bear mauled the pretentious little punk.")

Another reason i think Seth wasn't too impressed with Shrek is that it was simply one-upped by the ride we hit before it: Terminator.  It starts off like you're on a tour of the Dyna-corp (or whatever it's called) facility, and then you go into this screening room where they show you this nice "babies and puppies and buy our crap 'cause we already own you" video, but halfway through the video, Sarah Connor "interrupts" the feed to tell you, basically, "Hey, my son and i are going to blow this place to sh*t, you might wanna get out."  And so the cheery-chickie-hostess-whatever-girl comes out and says it was all a joke and directs you into this other room where you throw on some 3-D glasses (see?), and they start this demonstration of these giant robots that are supposedly built to protect all the babies and puppies and whatnot.  Anywho, the Connors show up (live actors on stage), and start shooting stuff (interacting with the giant robots and the liquid metal guy who are on the screen, but in 3-D), and then they walk into the screen, and it's the real actors on the screen, and then Schwarzy shows up, and then they step out of the screen, and ... idunno.  Like Spider-Man, i can't really do it justice.  It's just cool.

Other attractions ... Twister was cool.  I didn't like that they kept insisting that "this is a simulation of a Hollywood simulation of a pretend tornado that isn't real" and crap like that.  I mean, i know it is, but don't beat me over the head with it.  At least let me pretend i'm in a real tornado or somethin'.  It was the same crap with Earthquake.  Jaws was fun.  It didn't do the same crap the aforementioned two did -- they played it up in the guise of a boat tour of -- dangitiforgetthename, and then the shark shows up, and the guy blows its face off with a grenade launcher.  Groovies.  King Kong ... wasn't.  They shut it down to make some kind of Mummy ride.  Which sounds cool ... but i chickened out of riding KK the last time i was in, so i was hoping to get a piece of that action this time around.  Sigh.  Ah vell.

And then there were the old favorites: E.T. and Back to the Future.  BTF wasn't as good as i remembered it being, but it was fun nonetheless.  And E.T. ... still good.  =)   I told Seth that when i grow up to be rich (heh), i was going to have one giant room in my house made up like the entry room in E.T., complete with the fake giant trees, ambient noise (crickets chirping and all that), and that really cool "forest smell" they've got going on in there.  Oh yeah.  I might pass on the creepy guys in space suits and the old ET guy that pops out of the ground from time to time ... but the rest, i'd keep.

Men in Black was fun, too.  It was like a videogame on crack.  You move through the thing in this little moving car thing, but you've got this zapper that you use to shoot hostile animatronic aliens.  And the more you shoot, the higher your score.  Tres fun.

So yeah, did all that, shot some "Star Cars" (got a pic of the Ghostbuster car to replace the one from Gatlinburg that i erased -- man, we need to go back there sometime -- and a few pics of various cars from "The Fast and the Furious").  They had a sign up for the Mini Cooper from "Bourne Identity", and a couple other cars that weren't there that were supposed to be.  Not sure where they were.  They also had the bus from The Mummy Returns, but i didn't get around to shooting it, cuz there were too many people standing around it.  Spooty tourists.  (Oh wait ... i'm a tourist, too.  =P )

~ Too Fast, Too Furious ... ~

Diesel's "Muscle Car"

One of Walker's Cars

I think this was one of Diesel's, too.

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