Universal Studio's Minion Land

In this week's episode, Jared reviews Universal's newest land and tells us about the rides and what to expect. 

Transcript

0:00

On this week's episode of a Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared takes us to Minion Land and Villain Con at Universal. Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer Dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared Dryer, and today we are gonna take you to Universal Studios, Orlando, and their newest land, which is Minions Land. And this is from Despicable Me with Gru and all the little yellow minions. And this place is a lot of fun and we had a chance to recently visit it after its opening. During its trial phase and actually got a chance to ride some of the new rides and experience some of the stuff there. So we wanted to share that with you today on this episode and take you through the new Minions land over at Universal Orlando. But before we do that, we did wanna ask, wherever you're listening to us, go ahead and click that pause button and click subscribe. So that way you're gonna get this content delivered into your inbox each and every single week. And then if you're over on YouTube, obviously you get the opportunity to see us in person there. And you can see from today's video I am back at home in Denver, Colorado. We have driven back from our time this summer out there at the dryer dose of Disney Condo in Orlando, and that is available for rent if you wanted to check that out. That's down in our podcast description below. But we did wanna let you know that now that we're in season four, we are a few episodes in, and these are some of our biggest episodes that have been waiting. Out there for you, our public, that we're hidden over on Patreon, just for our Patreon supporters. And, we've actually replaced it with our biggest Disney tip or trick ever. And this is available only on Patreon and only to our Patreon subscribers. And we will not make this available to our general public listeners out there because it's too good of a secret. And you're gonna find that this is gonna be at our highest tier. And it's because it's that great of a secret and we don't want the secret getting out too much. This is only gonna go to our highest level supporters. And don't get me wrong, we have a lot of supporters out there and we want to thank you. But what we saw is a lot of people would join for a month or two and support us for a month or two just to get access to our butter beer and our how to Go to Disney for almost free episodes, which are now available to the general public. This episode, we are not gonna make it available, like I said, to the general public, but we're gonna put it at the top tier, and that's because we get a lot of people that subscribe. They'll watch that video and then they'll unsubscribe. We wanted to make sure that you, get the most bang for your buck, because this is such a good secret. I. So definitely go check us out at Patreon. Their link is down in the description below. And then, for today you can see that I'm wearing my Cool Jaws shirt. Jaws is one of my favorite movies and I love the Universal Parks and I love all the Jaws theming that's at, universal Orlando. And so I love, to just go take my picture with the shark and hang out around that part of the park and see all the cool merchandise. This is my R S V L T S shirt. And we did get a couple comments that people were like, isn't the company called Roosevelt's? Yes, a hundred percent it is. And we love the Roosevelt shirts. The issue is if I say Roosevelt shirts, you're gonna go Google that and you're not gonna be able to identify when it says R S V L T S. So that's why I use the acronym is. Just to get you guys easy access to it so you can find it easily online. And again, I don't get paid for saying this, I just really love their shirts. I have a whole bunch of them now and I just keep ordering more and more. And they're great for the parks, because they're lightweight, they breathe really well, they dry really quick, and when you wash 'em and stuff, they don't get wrinkles like some of the other Disney shirts do. So a really cool thing, about their shirts, you wanna check it out. And I'm gonna keep highlighting different shirts as I get those. We do like to also let you know that we have our, I can do this all day gear over at our Etsy shop that's also in the description below. You can see the water bottle there over my shoulder. So help support our podcast through our gear there. And I can say I wore that gear quite a bit to the parks this summer, and every single time I did, I got tons of comments. People would be in line and they'd say, I love your shirt. I love that you say you could do this all day. And I would show 'em, where you could order it and we. Saw a lot of orders go through every day that we were in the park. So a lot of cool things, happening over there. So go check out our Etsy page. But with that, let's go ahead and dive into our episode. And actually I decided I'm gonna do a two part episode. So I'm gonna do this episode today talking about Minions land. Over at Universal Orlando and what to expect when you go there and what kind of cool things they have going on. And then next week, since we're gonna be talking today about villain Con, the new shooting game over there at Minions Land, I'm gonna talk next week about Buzz Lightyear, and that's gonna be at both parks, so both Disneyland and Disney World Magic Kingdom. And I'm gonna tell you how to maximize your score. Because there's a lot of really competitive people out there. So I'm gonna highlight that today for Villain Con. And then next week I'm gonna talk about Buzz Lightyear, and then maybe eventually I may do, the Midway Mania as well. That's a really fun ride, and that one's got some really cool things, but that one's a little more difficult to do. It's not as easy as just going in and doing a couple things and maxing out your score. So we're gonna be talking about that. Now let's talk about Universal Orlando. Obviously you've got two big parks there. You've got Islands of Adventure, and you've got Universal Studios. Orlando and the Minions Land's gonna be at the universal studio side. It's not an islands of adventure, so when you're walking through a city walk, you're gonna want to go right at the bottom of the hill and that'll take you around over to Universal Studios, Orlando. Know that the Minions land is in the front of the park, so it's very quick and easy to access. I do recommend when you go, you're gonna wanna rope drop this area of the park because it does get very busy throughout the day, even in the preview that we got to go to. It was very busy and perhaps the longest line. That exists at Universal Studios. Orlando is gonna be at the Minions Mayhem Ride today. Now, that'll probably switch over to Villain Con as soon as that gets open and going as well. But that's where your longest lines are gonna be. So you're definitely gonna wanna rope drop over there. So let's talk about what the layout is and how it all works. But, when you go in, just right there off the main street, you already have Minon mayhem. This is a three D simulator ride through Gru's Lab where the minions are gonna, be doing all kinds of crazy chaos and they're gonna be taking you through the lab. This is, like I said, typically the longest line at the universal side of the park. So if you wanna ride it, I do recommend you rope drop it, like I just said a second ago. When villain con opens, that'll probably be split between the two. But that's good news if you're a Harry Potter fan, because that'll keep people up at the front of the park versus running back to Diagon Alley and escape from Gringotts, which used to be the, busiest ride, in the park until this land started to open up. So you're definitely, if you have little kids and they love the minons, you're gonna wanna hit this early in the day and get it knocked out before it gets too crazy busy. But that ride Minon mayhem is a lot of fun. I'll be honest. If you listen to my episodes about motion sickness in the park and some other things, I don't necessarily love this ride just because it does make me feel really sick. When you go in, you're watching a huge almost IMAX type screen in front of you and it, they shrink units. It's all three D and you're running through all this. And it can make you really ill if you get motion sick. It's a ride that we typically like to skip. But it is a lot of fun. We have ridden it a handful of times and the little kids absolutely love it because it's just full of chaos and it's just a ton of fun. Definitely you're gonna want to go check that out. But aside from Minon Mayhem, they've done a few different things. So they took out one of my favorite restaurants, which is the Monsters Cafe, but they did replace it with the Minon Cafe and Bake My Day, which are two new eateries there at Universal Studios Orlando that are tied to the Minions land. They also added the new Ride villain Con, which is where your blasting minions and all kinds of crazy things there. And that one's a lot of fun as well. But before we get to villain Con and I talk about how cool Villain Con is. I want to take you through these restaurants. So over at Minon Cafe. They do have a lot of bowls, sandwiches, and then they've got a, one pizza there. And, the food there is really good. Now, I will say we didn't get a chance to really try a lot and we tried to stay away from a lot there just because if you're familiar with minions, you know that they absolutely love bananas and there's a lot of different banana flavorings and banana things within these restaurants and in the bakery. And my wife, unfortunately is allergic to bananas, so it just wasn't worth chancing it. So we just tried to. Stay away from anything that might be cross-contaminated and just, went there for a couple little things as well. So we do recommend Minons Cafe. The food selection is very vast, meaning you get a lot of different good options there. And when we looked at the menu, there was something that we all found that we would enjoy eating there. So everyone's gonna be happy when you go to Minon cafe. I really thought the bowls and the sandwiches look good. My daughter thought the pizza looked good. So you can definitely try those out. Now bake my day, which is right next door. We were really looking forward to getting some new sweet options and some new treats that are available in the parks and they do have that. Just know that if you've been over to Islands of Adventure and you go to the Dr. Seuss land, they also have a bakery in there. The Dr. Seuss bakery is much larger. You're gonna have a lot more options and a much wider variety of selection over at the Dr. Seuss Bakery. Here at Bake My Day, you only have a very small display case, only a few things in there, and then it's more of a candy store, so you're gonna have a lot of candy options. And then of course, everything in the display case is typically gonna have some kind of banana item in there or associated with it. So do be cautious of that. If you don't like banana or maybe you're allergic like my wife. It may not be the best place for you to go. If you go further back into the park at Universal Studios Orlando, you do have Diagon Alley as well as the Simpsons Land, and there's a lot of different food options between the two areas over there. And in Diagon Alley, they've got their own sweet shop and ice cream parlor and butterbeer and all that. So don't feel too stressed if you walk in to bake my day and you feel like none of this stuff really appeals to me. You've got so many different food options throughout the park, you're gonna find something that you love. Just know it is very much geared towards the little kids in the minions. And likewise, like I said, islands of adventure as Dr. Seuss area, and they've got very similar items over there for islands of adventure. Now the big thing, this is what everyone wants to hear about is Villain Con. So Villain Con is a new shooter ride over there at Universal Orlando. It is a lot of fun, it is very interactive, and it is very different from, many of the other shooter rides that are out there. So what I wanna do is I'm gonna take the next few minutes to walk you through what to expect on this ride, what it's gonna be like, and then how you can really maximize your score and do really well on this. Know that, they did take over the Shrek Theater to, put this in. The Shrek theater's now gone, so it's in a very large warehouse sized building in there. The queue is mostly outdoors now. If you've been to Orlando or you've listened to this podcast enough, you know that, that actually disappoints me just because, being in Orlando, it is very hot out there and there's a lot of concrete at Universal Studios and so that's gonna definitely kick the temperature up a little bit and having most of the queue outdoor, you are gonna sweat. So that's why it's best to hit this first thing in the morning. We did rope drop it and it only took us about five minutes to get in, and so it wasn't bad at all. We were able to get through the outdoor part of the queue. Now if your midday late day, I can imagine, you may have an hour long wait with the majority of it being outside. They do have some coverings over the area. They have some of the umbrellas up similar to the Velocicoaster area. So it's not terrible. You can find some shade when you're waiting in line. You're not directly exposed to the sun. But do know it's gonna be a little bit warmer out there in this queue as you go through it. There is a really short, indoor portion of the queue, which is actually really cool. It's very interactive. It's very high tech. They've got a lot of cool l e d screens going on. With a lot of the villains and a lot of the different things you're gonna see throughout the ride, but it's very short, so you're only gonna go through a couple different switchbacks in here before you're boarding the ride. Do know that once you get in there, you do get a chance to cool down for a second, but you're gonna be getting on the ride really quick. From that point in time, that's also good to know those you're getting in there. Once you go into the building, the ride's, not far. Now, once you go through there, you're gonna have a short little room that's gonna tell you, that you're gonna take a gun from a rotating wall. This, the best way I can describe it is when I went to college, there was a tray return, a cafeteria tray return that was a wall. You put your tray on it, it went around to the backside, and it kept loading empty slots, right? These guns work very much the same way. There's a rotating wall. You're gonna walk up, take your gun from the wall, it disappears and comes back around and it's fully loaded again as it comes around. It was a really slow moving wall, so know that is, really pacing the traffic for this ride as well as the fact that you're gonna be on a conveyor belt. The ride is very fixed as to how many people it can take and how fast it can take them. And the gun wall, it's no different. So when you do get in there, you're gonna see it's moving a little bit slow. That might frustrate, you or maybe some little kids just because it moves very slow, but there isn't a attendant there. They're gonna help you and it doesn't take too long. You're gonna be able to get a gun and, go into the next area, which is when you're gonna actually get on the ride. So from there, once you have your gun, you're gonna walk over, there's a conveyor belt with dots on it. That dots do alternate left and right, and they're gonna tell you to stand on the dot, and then you're gonna go through the right standing on there. Okay. The gun does have two buttons. So you have a trigger button, like normal, like any other gun that's gonna be your primary weapon, which is just a laser. And then it's got a thumb button up on the front. So basically, if you're holding the gun, and I'm demonstrating on the video right now, you, you've got, your right hand on the trigger, your left hand is holding the front of the gun. There's a button up there for your big missile type weapon. I do wanna recommend you do want to use that button as often as you can. That's how you're gonna get the most points, the laser. Part, the actual trigger is really cool. You're gonna get to, to shoot out a lot of different things, but that front button is going to really wipe out a lot of stuff on the screen when you're able to use it. So you do want to be able to pay attention to that. When we went through the ride, I saw a lot of other people just shooting their laser and they didn't use that front button. So please don't forget about that. And that's probably one of the biggest, keys on this, ride. When you go through the ride, there are gonna be l e d screens on both sides. So there's some on, the wall that you're facing. There's also gonna be some on the wall behind you. So you're gonna want to turn, you're gonna want to go both ways. You're gonna want to shoot at everything you can and know that when you're on this ride, it is total chaos. So you're shooting at everything in every single direction. Sometimes a villain comes in with a huge robot. Everyone's shooting at that, trying to kill that. You're gonna be shooting at different boxes that give you different power ups. You're gonna have coins that are falling and you want to shoot the coins. That's a way to get a lot of points. So you wanna definitely go after, the coins that are popping out. What I saw a lot of people doing is they would shoot the box and the power ups would apply to their gun, and all the coins that would fall to the ground, they would leave. So you definitely want to be shooting those coins to get a higher score. And you can. Any coins that are out there you can shoot at. So even if someone else opened a box and the coins fall, you're able to shoot and get those points. So please do that. But the action is happening all around. So you wanna be looking back and forth very quickly to see what's going on. But have a lot of fun. You wanna shoot at things as you go through this ride. You're gonna go through multiple rooms. I believe there's three or four different big rooms that you're gonna go through, before you get to the end of the ride. And you wanna keep shooting pretty much the entire time you wanna be shooting at everything. I will say the biggest downside to this ride, and I've seen this a lot online from other people that have ridden it as well. I do follow a lot of blogs and a lot of people that are doing podcasts like we are, and they all were saying the exact same things that we thought. And that is that towards the end of the ride, this gun starts getting a little bit heavy. So as you're carrying it, it's a bigger. Like plastic, Nerf gun, it is a little bit heavier than your traditional Nerf gun, but it is very good in size. And towards the end of the ride, after you've been holding it for a few minutes and shooting quite a bit, your arms will start to get a little bit tired. Now I can only imagine if you had a little kid there with you. Obviously they would be pretty tired at that point. Their arms are gonna wear out pretty quick. I also imagine that they're pretty excited and they may have a little bit of adrenaline kicked up, and because of that, they may make it through the ride without complaining. But do know that these guns do get heavy. One thing that you can do is, you can link your, universal experience app to this ride and it can give you some more interaction. When we were there, that was not ready to go because we were, part of the beta testers and so we didn't get a chance to experience that. So I don't know what that does any different for you. As you go through it, but know that is an option. You are gonna see advertisements for that throughout the park, that you want to be using your, experience app there to link, to get some more things out of the villain Con ride. Now for today, our, I can do this all day tip of the day, like we do every single week, is that you want to figure out as soon as you start this ride, Where your, icon is that you're shooting at. So when you look at the screen, you're gonna see probably 20 or 30 different like little circles, that are up on the screen. And these are all representative of different guns that are pointing at the screen at that point in time. So what I recommend is as soon as this, ride starts, Aim your gun towards a corner of the screen. So the top corner, bottom corner, aim it towards the corner just to figure out which one is yours. If everybody's aiming at the middle and everyone's shooting, you're not gonna know which one is yours. What you wanna do is you wanna not only identify the color, But you wanna identify the symbol. There's only a handful of colors. There's reds, blues, greens, things like that, that are out there. But each, icon that's on the screen has a different symbol. So like mine had a lightning bolt and it was green. There were probably four or five other green ones on the screen. So when you're looking for yours, obviously since mine was the lightning bolt, I wanted to find the lightning bolt up there on the screen. And that won't change throughout the game. So as you're shooting the different power ups and the different boxes and your gun becomes more powerful, you're still gonna see, like for me, mine was the lightning bolt. You're gonna see that lightning bolt that's up there. Knowing where you're shooting at is a huge advantage. You do not want to think about this gun like a normal gun where you know you're gonna be looking down the sights and trying to aim at something. No, you wanna hold this at. Chest or hip level, and you just think of Arnold Schwartzenegger, like in predator. You just wanna be, taking this gun back and forth you wanna be shooting at as many things as you possibly can on the screen and blowing them up, and then using your special weapon as you go through the game. By knowing which icon as yours, you're gonna know exactly where you're positioned and what you're shooting at. So that's my tip of the day, is identify that at the very, very beginning. Aim at a corner, figure out exactly what icon is yours, and then, as you're looking around and you're shooting at things where you're shooting at through the rest of the game. And then like we said, you definitely wanna be using that thumb trigger for the bigger, explosions. Now, as you go through the game, you're gonna be earning bananas and those bananas are your secret weapon, right? Now on the gun, it will tell you how many of those secret weapons you have available. And I looked down at a couple different times and I had 13 of 'em available, just because I kept shooting different bananas and different items throughout the game. So at that point I was about halfway through the game. I just started launching these things everywhere and I kept accumulating more. So know that weapon is available on the front of your gun and you do want to use it as often as you can to maximize your points. I can say when we got towards the end of the ride, My score was over 500,000, and my wife and daughter each hit about 150,000. I asked them, did you use your special weapon at all? They both said, no. I asked them, did you know where you were aiming at? And they said, no. There were too many things on the screen and they hadn't thought about it. And again, this was our very first time riding it. So I hadn't thought about it until, maybe a few seconds into the game. And I was like, I gotta figure out which one's mine. And I looked over to the corner and aimed to the corner, and then I knew which one was mine. Knowing that obviously made a huge difference in score. Like I said, they each hit about 150. I hit 500,000 points and it was because I used my special weapon. I was shooting at the coins and I knew which target was mine. So those are my tips to winning this game. If you're a competitive person, share these tips with your kids. You know right when they start, figure out which one's icons theirs, and shoot at the coins and use that special weapon. And you'll do great. You're gonna have a ton of points. As you go through this ride, every single villain you come in contact with, every single box gets shot, it gets destroyed. So it's not like you win or lose, it's just how quickly you do it and how many points you're going to get while doing it. Once you finish the ride and come off, of course you're back into a gift shop. They have a lot of cool things. They do sell the guns. If you want to buy a gun, again, this is not one you can take back through the ride. To use on the ride, but you can take it home with you and use it at home, obviously, with your siblings or your friends and pretend shoot at them as well. So they've got a lot of cool merchandise. But basically Minions Land now is a restaurant, a bakery, and two rides, there at the front of the park. And it is a lot of fun. This is a little bit different than Universal Studios Hollywood that does have the Minon Mayhem ride as well. But they also have a kiddy area with a few little rides there. They've got a little bit of a carnival and then they have the ride, the Secret Life of Pets, which we did last time that we were out there. And that one was a lot of fun too. But the, this is more of an illumination land out there at Universal Studios Hollywood than a Minon land. Like what you're gonna have at Universal Studios Orlando, just know that it's a lot of fun. The little kids are gonna love it. If you do have little kids, like I said earlier in the podcast, I'm gonna recommend you knock this out first thing in the day just because of that outdoor queue and the fact that this is the place where the two longest lines will be, once this thing is up and fully operational, which will happen, by about the time you guys are listening to this podcast. So with that, we wish you a very magical week as you're planning your next vacation. I encourage you to listen to us next week as we're gonna take you through Buzz Lightyear and we're gonna talk both Magic Kingdom in Orlando and Disneyland in Anaheim. And I'm gonna tell you how to maximize the score at both, which I have done. And I'm a galactic hero at both Disneyland and Disney World multiple times. And I'm gonna tell you how to do it and how to get the perfect 9 9 9 9 9 9 score on your buzz light year ride. So tune into us next week and we'll talk to you then. Bye-bye.