Last winter I had a chance to go to the new nine billion dollar Epic Universe theme park in Orlando and would love to share what I saw. Since I hadn’t planned to do a blog post the images are a bit random.

I wasn’t new to Theme Parks. I had taken my now adult children when they were early elementary school age and then ventured to Florida when our first grandchildren were that age. But it had been awhile. The oldest is heading to college in six months. 

This trip was to commemorate some birthdays and to get away from the nasty bitter cold Michigan weather. 

So, part of me, actually most of me, enjoyed and reveled in the experience with the grandchildren, while a smidgeon of me wanted to understand why people  pay huge amounts of money to stand in long lines, often in the heat for a three minute thrill. They eat overpriced food and buy silly stuff. Some people do it every year. 

What is the big deal? 

Full disclosure, I love Harry Potter books and movies.  I’ve grown to know the characters and appreciate the  good versus evil plot lines and expressed values. As a result, visiting the Harry Potter venues in the original Universal park is true fantasy come alive for me. 

The rides were fun,  especially the one where we swooped around playing quidditch.  I thought riding a broom was great. 

The new world of Harry Potter in the Epic Universe is confusing. It is set in Paris in the 1920s. Harry and his friends never went there. I don’t get it. If that didn’t boggle my mind enough,  the Ministry of Magic ride—a really fun one—is set in the Paris venue. Hmmm. In the books that establishment was in London in the late 1800’s.

Obviously being a stickler for accuracy in details doesn’t work in this environment. I chortled when I saw a caldron shop reinterpreted as a vintage Paris boutique.  

Oh my. 

But there’s lots of fun to be had. People dress in costumes. Entertainment is on every corner and I found seeing through my eleven year old grandson’s eyes quite charming.  He didn’t mind if there were some lapses in accuracy. Like, who cares?

We wandered the five Parks in Epic Universe, enjoying the figures in the Dark Universe and finding the Nintendo area quite bewildering. Lots of color with a cacophony of sounds.  

I did have a “first” there.  I confess I have never actually played a video game, but taking the Super Mario brothers ride placed me in the middle of one. I zapped the characters that, thanks to 3 D glasses, zoomed around our racing car.

Here!  Take That! Poof! I zapped away.

Back at the main Universal Park we meandered through the area featuring superheroes, comic strips and my favorite Dr. Seuss. We also visited New York, complete with its own museum—a ride, of course. I wondered why one wouldn’t go to the real NYC? Why go to the fake one? 

This was fun.  Construction guys playing their tools.  For a moment I thought I was in the Big Apple instead of the fake New York.  You might see something like that there.

So, I pondered  the question of why hundreds of thousands of  folks love theme parks and, of course, asked Google.  

The answers were obvious. Theme Parks are an escape from everyday life. You can’t think of what is going on in your life when you are screaming at the top of your lungs zooming lickety-split on a terrifying roller coaster ride. It is controlled terror. 

You know you are safe. It’s not like sky diving or bungee jumping. You are tucked into the vehicle snuggly and carefully supervised even though it feels like you are flying to the end of the universe.  

Theme Parks are about creating memories and shared experiences. That’s what we did.

When you enter the Magic Kingdom, you go under a sign that reads:

Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and Fantasy.

I’d add…..and exhausted.