Updates! Islands of Adventure ~ Surprised and Amazed!

Hey, what's going on everybody? Rick here just finishing up my day at Universal's Islands of Adventure, giving you updates, trying some new food that knocked my socks off. It was stupendous. I can't wait for you to see it, but before I get too far ahead of myself, let's go back to the start of my day and see how it all went down. I think we'll have some elevated crowd levels and wait times today as Spring Break or Easter Break, whatever you want to call it, is in full effect. And judging by the blue skies and sunshine, this is the Spring Break weather visitors expect. Look what they're giving out at the pass holder line today, a Mario Galaxy movie button. The family restroom here at the Port of Entry Waterworks, it's been like out of order forever. As far as express passes are concerned today, every type of express pass is sold out for Islands of Adventure today. Some are still available for studios though. Here at Expedition Photograph, I just sent a photograph to my kids. Took a picture of this shirt and said, hmm, looks like a good Father's Day gift to me. I looked online, that shirt is not available on Universal's shopping website. I did a Google search and it is for sale by someone on eBay, but for $50. So you kind of have to be here in the park to get that t-shirt. So the question is, if I bought it for myself here, would my kids reimburse me? Probably not. I should just like buy it for myself anyway, just to wear on Father's Day. That's kind of as a joke. My oldest daughter, Caitlin, is not a fan of Jaws. She's afraid of sharks. So I would get some entertainment value out of wearing the shirt. Port of Entry Starbucks update, it is still closed. The big Port of Entry wait time sign board and map and everything is consistently inconsistent. Today it's not working so well. I think we'll start in Seuss Landing today and end in Seuss Landing today as I do, I think I want to try some new food in Seuss Landing. So it's a little early for lunch for me right now, but that's sort of the plan. We'll start here, Seuss Landing, and we'll end with a lunch in Seuss Landing. Unless some other food catches my eye as we journey around the park. As you recall from the last Islands of Adventure update video, there's tons of new menu items at Islands of Adventure and I'm anxious to try some of them. Despite the crowd today, right now Cat and Hat's just a five minute wait, whereas One Fish Two Fish is a 15 minute wait. The new food I want to try today is here at the Circus McGurkis. Not open yet, plus not even hungry yet. Stay tuned and see what it is, or if I do end up changing my mind. Ten o'clock in the morning and High in the Sky Trolley, just like One Fish Two Fish, a 15 minute wait. The Karasu sale's not bad at five minutes though. The Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookie has returned to Moose Juice Goose Juice. The transformation of the Lost Continent into a newly themed land continues at a snail's pace. Whether it's being changed to Zelda or Pokemon or whatever, I think Universal has taken a page out of Disney's playbook and decided to do the project really really slowly. So I think some uh some demolition is about to start very soon. I think their strategy with Mythos is going to be, I think this is safe to be open for all of this year, 2026, because Finnegan's over at Studios is closed most of this year. And I don't think they want two full service restaurants here at Islands and Studios to be closed at the same time. But once Finnegan's reopens, I would be on guard. See if anything happens with Mythos. BTW, FYI, the chicken stingers have been removed from the menu at Fire Eater's Grill. That's gonna make my wife Nikki very upset. She loved those chicken stingers. But I do understand maybe Universal's pacing a little bit. I mean it's hard to shut down an entire land. So they've just been chipping at it bit by bit, slowly by slowly. But I think eventually you want to start seeing some major changes. Let's go back here to Sinbad Stadium. Since this is way back here, kind of tucked in a corner where like hardly any guests come anyway, it would make sense to start some demolition here as it wouldn't be very visible at all to regular daytime guests. We have some stuff being dug up here though. See the dirt mounds and things chopped down. And inside of the actual theater, there's like orange tape in different places. So we'll be checking on this regularly now to see what's gonna happen. They're gonna demo this very very soon. But like I said just a moment ago, due to its isolated location, seems like this would be the best start for real demo and renovation to start. A slight little update for you regarding Delicious Kebabs, I would say. Since they've taken away the psychic readings and the henna tattoos over here, this is where it was, they've added some tables and chairs so you can walk your Delicious Kebabs over here and have a seat at a table under, you know, with some shade and with ceiling fans. So a nice temporary use of this space. Into Hogsmeade, which will be jam-packed today. As usual, this side for Butterbeer, longer line than that side though. It's not as a dramatic difference today as it usually is. In between Dogweed and Death Cap and the restrooms, right through there, you can go watch the Velocicoaster. It's the patio to the Three Broomsticks. Still breakfast hour back here. Well, technically it's breakfast hour everywhere, but here comes the Velocicoaster. Also from back here, we can get a better look at the construction of the bridge from Hogsmeade to Jurassic Park. They're still working on it. When we were on the patio, I noticed a lot of people having the Butterbeer Waffle, which is available not just for breakfast, but all day long. Long lines for the Magical Wand spots. That's the line right there for Spent Witches. And speaking of long waits, Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure. 165 minutes at 10 a.m. in the morning. Where's the other one? We should have had another one coming. Oh, here it comes. Okay. A big crowd watching the Triwizard Pep Rally today. Look at that. A lot of scrim surrounding Hogwarts Castle now. Flight of the Hippogriff, a 55-minute wait. They just changed the wait time for Forbidden Journey. It was 60. They just knocked it down to 45. We are going to go to Jurassic Park. We're going to take our little bypass. We'll go by the castle here and by the lockers for the ride, and we should end up in Jurassic Park. They don't have any signs directing you that you can do this, but obviously you can. Here we are in Jurassic Park. And of course, we have to do that because the bridge from Hogsmeade, as we saw earlier, blocked off. It's being reconstructed. There's a wall here, for crying out loud. I could show you the wait time for Velocicoaster right now, but what fun is that? I'll tell you with an action shot. An inverted zero-g stall, a good place, a good action shot to tell you. 80-minute wait time for Velocicoaster. And if you ever want to know the stats, the key stats for that roller coaster, you don't have to memorize them. You don't have to go to a website. Just go into the Discovery Center and look at the back of this $30 t-shirt. It gives you all the important stats. 80-degree, 140-foot drop with that top hat, 90-degree bank turn. I mentioned the inverted zero-gravity stall, 70-mph boost in 2.4 seconds, reverse airtime wave, 53-mph barrel roll, zero to 50 in three seconds, 12 airtime moments, 1g max acceleration, s-curve airtime hill, track length is 1,436 meters. I think you UK folks understand that one a little better than I do. It would be better for me to know how many feet long the track is versus the meters. Almost lunchtime. I am getting hungry, but I said I was going to eat at Circus McGurkis. Can I wait till we get all the way back to Circus McGurkis? We're only like halfway around the park. Stay tuned and find out. I may be tempted by something else. Here in the Jurassic Park's games, there is a new prize. Not often they have new prizes, but over here at Hammond's Hot Shots, look at these monkeys in banana peels. Yep, that's what they are. Let's pop into Jurassic Outfitters for a moment. Interesting, they've added the Jeep Gladiator as a Jurassic World, Jurassic Park toy. Personally, I'm a fan of the more classic two-door Jeeps or better yet, a Jeep with no doors. They've added some new bitty chompers I haven't seen before. I used to have some of these or at least one of these. You can clip them on like your hat or like your collar or whatever you want them to bike down on. There's one. Is this a Mosasaurus? Yes. They have added the Mosasaurus as well. For $90, there's a newish Jurassic Park lounge fly bag. It's got the arch there or the gateway with the big doors that opens to reveal. I said to reveal. It's hard with one hand. Give me a break. There we go. To reveal the T-Rex. Those are some heavy doors man, you know. I thought they had King Kong in there or something. I'll do my best to show you the inside of the bag. Lesson learned from my wife Nikki. There's the inside of it and you saw the front already. There's that side. There's the other side. There is the back side right there and the straps. Pretty cool looking bag. In Camp Jurassic, Pteranodon flyers still closed. Kong is down but it says just a brief delay on the sign and what do we have here? Things Universal has tried to capture but it escaped from there. Whatever they had in this one also escaped. These are not very good containment units. This happens quite often with Universal. Just kidding. They're doing some flooring work. I tell you what, you Spring Break visitors better be doing the water rides. It's a Spring Break miracle. Wimpy's is open on a Wednesday midweek. Not just the weekend as is Blondie's. Finally not just open on the weekend. There's Popeye. How are you? Not just the man in the past but dare I say present and future is Popeye and Olive Oil. I'm right here right now. There you are. Go to the shade though. It's nice. Into the shade. They need the shade. It's warm out here. That was an inside joke between me and Popeye. Into the Pass Holder Lounge to show you that the 70% off wall has changed to Jurassic Park merchandise. They have also added a handsome devil. The Mardi Gras merchandise in here also reduced. It's reduced down to 50% off. I still say they need to add a bathroom to this Pass Holder Lounge. Even though Wimpy's is open today, Comic Strip Cafe offering a Wellington. A double Wellington. I do love the Wellington burger and I have never had it as a double but I think I have my heart set on the hot dog. Oops, I should have said that. I have my heart set on the new offering at Circus McGurgus. We're going to save the double Wellington for another day. New signage has been added for Spring Break I assume by the stadium over here. Actually three new signs. I mean they're the same thing but they're three spots. This post here has a Do Not Climb and then a big sandwich board Do Not Climb and then another pole with Do Not Climb. Now I said I thought maybe for the Spring Break crowd to keep them behaved but I don't know maybe it was you know we had a lot of cheerleader competitions here recently. Maybe the cheerleaders were doing flips off of this. I don't know but something did cause Universal to put up three signs to say Do Not Climb. They're not doing that out of the blue. Something happened to cause them to add those signs. Into Marvel Super Hero Island and did I time it right? I did. Look at that. Hot dog. Marvel merch of the week. Let's go expensive with this one. For $2,200 autographed collectible Wolverine claws. Has the X there and everything. I'm assuming Hugh Jackman signature. I can't make it out but I mean one would one would think so right? There goes my heroes. Watch them as they go. They don't do the team meeting anymore. Holy guacamole Spider-Man. Triple digits. A 100 minute wait and the single rider line is currently closed at least for right now. I feel so bad for some of my viewers who are visiting right now. They watch my videos and live streams and I go by Spider-Man and it's like a 10-15 minute wait but when they finally get here it's 100 minutes. Oh you know I feel bad for you but that's just how it goes in Spring Break. Whoa buddy. 105 minutes for the Hulk. That is not Keno. I know some of you really enjoy watching spinning rides on the videos right and live streams. There you go. This is for you. This ain't no teacup ride. I'm gonna show the whole thing. No breaks. Oh boy. I'm a little dizzy watching. All right let's cozy mosey to our lunch today which I gave you a hint. More than more than one hint but I've never had it before. We'll give it a try. We'll watch the Hulk as we cozy mosey over. Back to Circus McGurkis. I had a few options today but I'm just I'm in the mood for a hot dog. You know what I'm saying? So even though I was tempted by that double Wellington I knew it just wouldn't satisfy. Although I just thought of this. I just remembered I'm going to Portillo's tonight for dinner. They have hot dogs. I could have gotten the double Wellington and had my hot dog at Portillo's. Oh well. I've committed. I've committed to the new hot dog at Circus McGurkis. I didn't show you the scrim earlier but the scrim's still up at Confisco. If you haven't seen last week's Islands of Adventure update video. You know so many new menu items I went over. I think I got all of them. If I didn't I got 90%. I did a pretty good job considering I didn't have a cheat sheet or anything like that. There's been no press release explaining all the new options for food here at Islands of Adventure. I just had to walk around and look at menus to figure it out. Hopefully nothing escaped. All right here we are. Seuss Landing. The kids zone. I've had some viewers who used to come to Universal a lot. They're getting older and they've sort of switched over to going to Disney because of you know wilder rides here at Universal than say Disney. I did suggest that they could just hang out hang out in Seuss Landing for the kiddie rides but it's not enough. Gentler rides at Disney parks. Now they have this one has a cinnamon apple pie churro. I was tempted today as well with a different type of churro. The Bavarian cream filled churro but I think that's one we're going to save for another day. Another visit. Here's the big top. Doesn't it look stupendous? Oh my goodness. One fish, two fish. It was 15 minutes when we walked by earlier right? It's up to an hour. It's now 60. I would I would wager that high in the sky trolley also increased to 60 or more as well but I'm not going to go check on that. We can just assume that based on one fish two fish. So here we go. Now are we going to see the menu out here? Is it going to show us what I'm getting? Green eggs and ham chocolate cheesecake. Not getting a sweet today. Let's see here. There it is. The cheesy crunch pretzel dog. One third pound all beef hot dog cheddar cheese sauce jalapeno red jalapeno reddish relish. Excuse me. Let me do that again. Jalapeno relish barbecue mayo flavor twist honey barbecue flavored corn chips with fries. Oh boy and there's the picture of it although I don't know why I'm showing you the picture. I'm about to order it. I can show you what it really looks like as I wait on my $17.49 hot dog. I did get a discount though. Mine wasn't that expensive. That organ there I just wanted to show you way way way back in the day someone used to actually be up there playing the organ but that hasn't happened for a long time. Now I know a man who can pull some strings usually. Taylor from Orlando Informer. I did message him just now suggesting that one of these meetups he should have an organ player in there. If he can make it happen that'd be fantastic and I of course would take 100% credit for making it happen. Oh lord have mercy there it is. Now I did put the jalapeno relish on the side just because it made me angry trying to say it. We banished it to the side but there it is. Holy smokes there's no way I can eat all of this. I wish I had someone here with me. We'd cut it in half and share it. That'd be my suggestion to you. Share this baby. Well no further delay let's uh let's start doing the taste test. Be thankful I'm not one of those vloggers that show themselves eating the food because this would not be pretty. After the first bite I have to say I'm enjoying the sauces. The cheddar cheese sauce and the barbecue mayo. Yes I'm enjoying this hot dog way more than I thought I would. Can you see these little honey twist corn? They are working too. While I'm thinking about it you know I mentioned it comes with the crinkle cut fries. Didn't they used to have curly fries here at the Circus McGurkus? I think they've gotten rid of curly fries throughout the entire park. Have a change of heart. You might not want to share it. You'll like it that much. All done with my lunch and holy wow that was so insert profanity word good. It was phenomenal crazy. I didn't eat the whole thing. My plan when I got it was to cut it in half and only have half. I ate about 75% of it. I left the last 25% just because you know I'm trying not to eat so much bad food. I'm trying to be you know a little more healthy. That's what I'm trying to say. So I felt like at least I feel a little better about myself not having eaten the whole thing. But it was so delicious I could have. One last thought about the hot dog. The hot dog and the bun themselves were really good but it was the sauces. It was the sauces that really elevated that dog. So the question remains is it an official recommendation? Yes. Yes it is. There is something I want to show you inside the trading company before I forget about it. Check out the Transformers t-shirt for $27. One shall stand one shall fall. I love this Transformers t-shirt. A new cup too. It's silicone. I just can't find a price but it's pretty cool. I like that too. So such a good day at Islands of Adventure. That hot dog really like got me in a good mood. So much so I think I'm going to go redo my intro to kind of tease that food a little bit earlier because I didn't know that was going to happen. I didn't know it was going to be so good. So let me go do that and then I'll just say right now goodbye. Thanks for watching. Don't miss the magic. Don't miss the fun. Watch this next.