Just visited this park for the first time this past weekend and it was interesting!
Out of the all the Universal parks I've been to (USF, IOA, and USH), I gotta say this is the prettiest. The theming and details were "Disney-level" (as much as i hate that term) and it trickled down into interiors of buildings, even restaurants. It was like IOA plus'd, especially how the lands flowed into each other (my favorite transition being leaving the New York section seeing an ad for cars of the future to end up in Sci-Fi city).
By far the highlight land for me was Far Far Away, it is crazy how that never made it out to the US. It has all the character from the movie sprinkled around the land, including adult jokes. It truly is the Wizarding World-esque land for Shrek fans. The Shrek Waffle was a fun snack and the restaurant called Goldilocks that had it also had a special kind of porridge (a fun easter egg) and the fairy godmother's potion (which came with a full on plastic potion bottle and cork). The junior dragon coaster was surprisingly really fun and it packed in so many characters from the movies as static figures and props (kinda Velocicoaster style). There was also Shrek merch which is hard to find out in USH (some fun, some typical). However, the low light of the land was unfortunately the Puss in Boots coaster, that ride's animatronics were awful (a theme I noticed with this park that I'll get to later) and the paint was chipping drastically on them and other props. It's a ride with an identity crisis, they should demolish it honestly. Another bummer was Shrek's swamp being closed for Minions construction (which demolition for was in progress for but the swamp and the Madagascar ship and show building looked still intact).
Other highlights:
- The Cylon side of Battlestar Galactica. It's a very fun and smooth inverted coaster with a very fun launch that takes you by surprise. Riding it at night during HHN was a vibe. I also got duels.
- The Mummy exterior (such a tall building), land (they went all out honestly), and queue were amazing, definitely the best looking Mummy ride and area surrounding it. However even though the track layout is the same, I still think Orlando's is best with the upgraded in-ride elements, but Singapore's is definitely the scariest/creepiest. The restaurant in the land also had some shockingly decent Indian food.
- The menus around the park were fun and had cool food. Jurassic park even had a fun dino egg rice ball thing that came in a cool Jurassic Park happy meal-esque box.
- Sci-fi city is aesthetically a better tomorrowland than Disney's tomorrowland. There's so many little details everywhere too.
- New York and Hollywood areas were very pretty to look at. The New York section alley was closed for the HHN laser tag experience (the best horror thing I ever done honestly, I felt like I was in a horror shooter game), but it looked good.
- Meet and greet game was very strong for Halloween. Besides the typical Minions dressed up for Halloween, you had Shrek and Fiona and Sesame Street characters all in Halloween costumes. The HHN Dark Zodiac scarezone in New York doubled functioned as the Count's castle meet and greet lol
- Sesame street ride was a fun fever dream. Felt like the successor of E.T. in parts.
One thing that was just alright at this park was the Lights, Camera, Action show. It's not bad by any means, but I think Twister is more fun than just watching some fire on water and some things dropping into water.
Now for the bad with this park. The animatronics in all rides (except sesame street) seemed like they needed A LOT of help. You'd have rides with beautiful interiors, but really bad animatronics. The operations were also not the best all around as the park seemed to still be recovering from covid shutdowns with many restaurants and shops closed. Also some team members didn't seem to know when some things will be open.
Other lowlights:
- JP rapids adventure was closed
The JP flyer ride doesn't give you much view of the ride either, it's not worth a long wait and single rider was closed (just a heads up).
- Battlestar Galactica Human side is a waste honestly.
- Transformer's screens in places looked not sharp and effects were broken. However some screens that are usually weird at USH were not at USS so that was nice. It's nearly the same ride, just some proportions are different, however the queue was different and there were some fun things in there.
- Don't bother with treasure hunters unless there is no wait at the end of the day (only reason i did it). The theming is nice but the animatronics and ride itself is not good.
- No wait time boards.
- A jurassic park experience was shown in the app but didn't exist in real life. That whole area felt pretty dead with the rapids ride not operational.
- Late start and early close (I did stay for HHN so this didn't really bother me THAT much)
Overall, it's a fun little park (it is surprisingly small, you can walk across it in 5 minutes), but it needs some better ride upkeep, animatronics, and operations. More things to do wouldn't hurt either I guess, losing the Madagascar land seemed like a huge loss as what was still up looked awesome.
