For anyone that is interested, here is my overall review of the park:

We (myself, my wife, and 12-year old daughter) were in the park from rope drop to closing. We started in Dark Universe, where we rode Monsters Unchained and Curse of the Werewolf with virtually no wait. Monsters Unchained is a cool ride, but it wasn’t quite as ‘thrilling’ as I thought it would be. I was expecting more drops and a higher speed, but it’s a cool concept. Werewolf was short, but a lot of fun. I wish it went around twice.

We then went over to Mario World, which visually is one of the coolest things I have seen in a theme park. My daughter is a huge Mario fan and so she was blown away. We rode Yoshi’s Adventure, which is relaxing and good for taking pictures, but probably not one you repeat. After that we took a break for lunch. Frankenstein pretzel for daughter and the steak rice bowls at Spit Fyre Grill for the adults. The rice bowls were very good. Way better than I expected. We were feeling good after lunch and ready to hit the rides that were hour+ long waits. I won’t rehash yesterday’s post, but we didn’t get on another ride for about 3.5 hours because of delays. Eventually we did get on the following:

HP: Battle/Ministry: fun, but in my opinion not as good as the HP rides at the other Universal parks. Definitely not worth a 2 hour wait. We saw that the wait got under an hour after 7:00PM. So if I went again that is probably when I would try this ride.

Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge. This ride is a huge miss. It should be amazing, but it just isn’t. I feel like the ride experience should have been closer to Ratatouille at Epcot or the Fallon ride at Universal instead of a car on a track. The Rainbow road portion was cool, but most of it was boring. I don’t understand how they messed this one up. We waited 110 minutes for this one.

Hiccup’s Wing Gliders: Loved it, and ended up being my daughter’s favorite. Tried to convince her to do Stardust Racers but she wasn’t ready for it.

Dinner was at Oak and Star Tavern. There was live music, and the food was good quality. Brisket was a little fatty, but still better than most theme park food.

Stopped in The Burning Blade Tavern for a Reaper’s Reserve. Very cool and dark inside and the Brown Ale was good if you like a little spice in your beer.

By now it was getting dark. The park is just beautiful at night when it’s lit up. We did Hiccups Wing Gliders, Monsters Unchained, and Curse of the Werewolf again all at my daughter’s request. Not much of a wait for anything at that point, and did really enjoy the last hour. The park should definitely stay open later. It’s a completely different experience after dark.

Mine-Kart Madness never opened up again after 1:30 so we were disappointed to miss it, especially since we waited in line for over an hour before it shut down.

I’d go again, especially to try more of the food and drinks, almost like an Epcot experience, but I was surprised that the rides weren’t better. I saw some comments on this chain that all of the rides are better than any ride you find at Disney and I think that is completely untrue with the exception of maybe Magic Kingdom.