Word: walke
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...previous billion or so for its Universal Studios Florida, or U.S.F., park, which opened in 1990) to get Orlando-bound kids to think "Universal." Though visitors have been filtering in since March, this week marks the official opening of Islands of Adventure, or I.O.A., and an adjacent area, City Walk, with shops, restaurants and lots of singalong. The expanded park area, called Universal Studios Escape, has enlisted Steven Spielberg as a creative consultant...
Even these days, $2.5 billion is a lot of dough to invest in rides and restaurants. For that money, you could finance 12 whole Titanics or 14 Waterworlds. What it gets Universal, in addition to I.O.A. and City Walk, is three lavish hotels, the first of which, Portofino Bay, opens in September. The plan is to challenge Walt Disney World as a full-service resort--a place where people can spend all their time and money...
I.O.A. blends the best of both strategies. In design it virtually out-Disneys Disney, and, on the 360[degree] thrill rides, certainly outdizzies it. I.O.A. is stocked with familiar characters from Zeus to Seuss; with its imaginative attention to detail, the park is jazzy fun just to walk through. Toddlers could spend the day in Seuss Landing, a genial riot of DayGlo colors, where you can drink Moose Juice (turbo tangerine) or Goose Juice (sour green apple). In the Lost Continent area, you pass Magic Rock, which squirts water and speaks, with the droll sarcasm of a bachelor uncle roped...
...land with a cascading plop 80 ft. below. Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges take visitors on a whirling whitewater ride where you will get soaked. (The ride guides will tell you it's practically illegal to remove your footwear. Do it anyway and save yourself a day's walk in soggy sneakers.) You also get sprayed in the elaborate Sinbad stunt show, in the swirling vortex that leads you to the battle of the gods in Poseidon's Fury, and on the One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish kiddie ride. Some days, of course, it'll just...
...extras mill about, but the sunglasses do little to disguise his identity, given that the rest of the Hugh Grant package--the blue shirt and khakis, the bounteous hair he repeatedly refers to as "floppy"--is reassuringly intact. And so is that Hugh Grant awkwardness; he somehow manages to walk straight past the restaurant before realizing his mistake, doubles back, comes in through a door with a sign on it advertising (What else?) Notting Hill and says sheepishly (How else?), "Sorry. You'd think I'd know how to get here." No need, of course, to apologize. This is Hugh...