Well, got to go enjoy the park this weekend. I will prep a high level review and post it in the next couple of days. I will also work on a more detailed review over the next week or so. Mostly good, but a few honest poor points will be awarded as well. I want to try and be reserved in personal strong opinions until after the park opens more to the pubic.

But for right now...overall the park is visually beautiful, especially at first entry. After years of seeing concept art and aerial photos, its quite a different look and feel with boot on the ground views. The 'lands' are really detailed. Most of the attractions are really nice. The food (that I tried) was really good. We were only allowed in the park until 6pm so no experience at night, but seeing the lighting that is in the park I would expect that this park will be even more visually exciting and beautiful at night.

More details to follow in the coming days.

BTW - no photos or video as it was not allowed and very strictly enforced, so these reviews will have to have the pictured created through my vivid explanations and descriptions.

:)

Part 1: Celestial Park

First Parking. The parking is an open/flat lot and quite a bit away from the park entrance, so its a bit of a hike. Kind of like walking from the MK lot and not taking the tram. In the morning it was not so bad, but at the end of the day my dogs were barking and didn't want to make the walk back to the car. I looked around and as best I could tell I couldn't see any evidence of plans to have trams (like loading areas and side-roads for trams to drop off/pickup riders). There was quite a lot of covered parking being installed, so I have to assume that's for preferred $$$ parking.

The Entrance: The park gate is beautiful and the reveal of the park is beautiful with the park hotel setting the backdrop. All the fountains and pools of water look really great. You can see all the portal tops reaching to the sky and there feels like a lot is going on.

We did get an official picture taken that I can share that shows a bit of what this looks like (will post it later).

I tried to pay close attention to all the lighting and there seems to be a lot of it. I can only believe this place will look even better at night. This area of the park has a major theme of star lights. I would think the water will also be lit very well. At first I thought they made us all leave about 6pm was because we had to be gone before it was dark as it would make it much easier for guests to try and take picture and be ousted. Word on the ground was there were undercover folks making sure nothing was being recorded. Photos, video, social media, face timing...NOTHING. I actually ended up not leaving until about 6:45 (more on that when I talk about Super Mario Land later). Also, workers were streaming in to do work over the night hours, so this more likely why the days are cut short right now.

This part of the park has many restaurants, food stands, and bars scattered throughout. Not all were opened yet, but I did eat at a BBQ place and the food was really good (sorry don't remember the name, but it was outside the Monsters land). Everyone in my party got something different and we all loved the food. I would have to say, one of the best park foods I have ever had. This part of the park feels like EPCOT, or even a version of City Walk, but with all Universal branded places to eat and drink (aside from Starbucks). I can very easily see this turning into a "Drinking Around Celestial Park" because of all the stand-alone bars and I can say pretty certainty that every eatery also had a bar of some sort. (side note for when I get to each land...I did not have anything to eat or drink from any of the lands...we just didn't have time).

There also seems to be a few very open areas that maybe will be expansion pads for future food booths as right now they seems under utilized.

Constellation Carousal

First comment: Overall, a really beautiful ride. The building/cover over the ride is very nice, and huge. Its a very complex merry-go-round type ride. Nothing is connected at the top...all animals are connected to a pole that goes underground. All ride animals are those that I believe are in constellations. They are nicely painted and have LED lights that twinkle. All riders must use a seat belt. Layout of turntable.

1. There is a large turntable that rotates.

2. Within the large turntable, there 3 (maybe 4) smaller turntables that hold maybe 5 animals each. These also turn independently from the larger table.

3. There are also a few animals that are only on the large table.

4. Each animal also rotates and rises and lowers independently.

5. I also felt like there were times that one or both of the tables changed direction, but it was had to tell with all the rotating going on.

This allows for a nice multi-level of rotating an floating. Very slow movements so worry about getting dizzy. Music varies from original dreamy like music to more upbeat music.

Each animal also has a pole, like a tradition ride of this sort, but they end a few feet above you and have a light up planet at the end of the pole. Above that its all open air above you to the 'ceiling' below the peak of the dome. This is themed of gears and steampunk like feel that spin and rotate with the ride. There is also a central may-pole type feature in the center that has lighting and rotates as well.

Stardust Racers

Wow. This dueling coast is something else to watch. I did not get to ride it. It was open and running most all the day, just didn't get to it with everything else going on...but it looks really intense. I talked to a few people that did ride it, and they said its wild. Even more so than Velocicoaster. There were times that the trains almost look like they were not going to make it over the hightop hills. Very scary looking. You can see much more of the coaster track not visible from the front, from the How to Train Your Dragon land as it bends out and around the back of that land.

Again, looks like it will be really cool at night. Sorry I couldn't provide more on this ride.

Next: Dark Universe

That carousel ride sounds interesting! Not really a carousel at all. More like a teacups ride? Thanks for doing this park report. Looking forward to future 'editions'.

actually more like a carousel. the rotation is very slow and flowing.

Dark Universe:

WOW.

This land is beautiful, as far as look and feel. The old world Europe classic monster village feel is right on. I could only imagine how much better this will look like at night. Dark and foggy with awesome lighting effects.

Character actors walking about the village were right on. A big nod to the casting team. they did a great job finding the right actors. We encountered a gypsy playing the violin, the invisible man (yes we can see him), and Igor (the main host for the main monsters ride). This guy was spot on, looked great and was great with interacting with us.

The village is very maze like, meaning you can't see the entire land, but have to explore all the twists and turns to see everything. I'm not even sure I hit every pathway.

The castle looming over the main part of the land is intimidating, dark, and very detailed. One of the best show buildings I have ever seen. The windmill pub looks great, but we were not able to see the flame effect as it was not in action that day.

Monsters Unchained Ride - Spoiler free

High level rating: A very good ride overall.

For those that don't know, this is a KUKA robotic arm ride system. Same as the Potter ride in the other Universal parks. Honestly, this ride is the Potter ride, only with a monster theme and no 3D screens. Yes, the themes is awesome, the action is awesome, the scare factor is strong for many, and the animatronic monsters are spot on some of the best out there. In my opinion the Phantom of the Opera scene is the best on the ride. While all this is great stuff, much of the ride is screen based...meaning there are screen with clips playing embedded into the real sets to tell the story. There is an overall good mix of real sets/animatronics/screens, but me personally would have liked less screens and more real action, but I totally get that budgets and maintenance would never allow that.

Werewolf Coaster

This ride is a Mack Rides Spinning Multi-Launch Coaster. The theme is a gypsy camp and werewolf encounter on the ride. Typical spinning coaster type ride, but no lifts or drops. The track has several high banked turns and wavy track sections. Overall a fun coaster that was not that intense. The spinning aspect was also not that bad. I had never been on a coaster like this as was a bit concerned about the spinning part of it, but I actually enjoyed the ride a lot. It a short ride, but really fun.

Dark Universe:

WOW.

This land is beautiful, as far as look and feel. The old world Europe classic monster village feel is right on. I could only imagine how much better this will look like at night. Dark and foggy with awesome lighting effects.

Character actors walking about the village were right on. A big nod to the casting team. they did a great job finding the right actors. We encountered a gypsy playing the violin, the invisible man (yes we can see him), and Igor (the main host for the main monsters ride). This guy was spot on, looked great and was great with interacting with us.

The village is very maze like, meaning you can't see the entire land, but have to explore all the twists and turns to see everything. I'm not even sure I hit every pathway.

The castle looming over the main part of the land is intimidating, dark, and very detailed. One of the best show buildings I have ever seen. The windmill pub looks great, but we were not able to see the flame effect as it was not in action that day.

Monsters Unchained Ride - Spoiler free

High level rating: A very good ride overall.

For those that don't know, this is a KUKA robotic arm ride system. Same as the Potter ride in the other Universal parks. Honestly, this ride is the Potter ride, only with a monster theme and no 3D screens. Yes, the themes is awesome, the action is awesome, the scare factor is strong for many, and the animatronic monsters are spot on some of the best out there. In my opinion the Phantom of the Opera scene is the best on the ride. While all this is great stuff, much of the ride is screen based...meaning there are screen with clips playing embedded into the real sets to tell the story. There is an overall good mix of real sets/animatronics/screens, but me personally would have liked less screens and more real action, but I totally get that budgets and maintenance would never allow that.

Werewolf Coaster

This ride is a Mack Rides Spinning Multi-Launch Coaster. The theme is a gypsy camp and werewolf encounter on the ride. Typical spinning coaster type ride, but no lifts or drops. The track has several high banked turns and wavy track sections. Overall a fun coaster that was not that intense. The spinning aspect was also not that bad. I had never been on a coaster like this as was a bit concerned about the spinning part of it, but I actually enjoyed the ride a lot. It a short ride, but really fun.

Forgot to mention that the queue for the monsters ride is unbelievable as you traverse through the castle.

Potter - Ministry of Magic

First, something weird I want to point out about the portal entry. All the other land's portals are visible from the central park, but this land....you can see the wizard's hand high above the top of the portal post, but the actual portal is 'hidden' behind a standard looking brick and restaurant. I don't believe this is by design, but maybe a design flaw in the park. The building looks like it was added after the fact in a large open space in the park and thus blocked the sightline to the portal. You literally have to go behind the restaurant to find the portal. Just seemed really off to me.

So, the land. Old 1920s Paris and looks really good...like you have been transported to the past. Buildings are high (way higher than other Potter lands) and totally removes any views to outside real world. Places to eat and shop and the standard wand interactions are all about.

While there is a stage show and a big ticket ride in this land...it still felt like it was lacking attractions and more needs to be added to boost it.

The Battle at the Ministry ride

This ride is still under construction, so we couldn't ride it...but the queue was open and we were allowed to walk through the entire queue. Took about 10-15 to just walk through at normal speed. Wow. this queue is something else and almost an attraction in itself. The ride is rumored to be an elevator type ride that travels up, down, sideways, etc. to replicate those scenes in the Fantastic Beat series. Back to the queue. You actually walk through the fire place flues to enter the Ministry. As you approach the flue blasts with a lot of green smoke as you pass through, totally blinded for a few seconds. The Ministry room is amazing. But to scale and is at least 4-5 stories high in real life with mirror illusions to make it appear even higher. Large statues and everything. It was amazing.

Le Cirque Arcaus

This is a stage show that has the feel of a 1920 circus with sideshow, magic, dancing, acrobatics, etc. We did try to see the show. The preshow was really nice and the beginning of the show looked very promising, but seeing they were still in technical rehearsals, they did have technical issues and our show had to cancel part way through. It was running earlier in the day, but not for me and we just didn't have time to try and see a show later in the day. Again, looks like it will be really cool.

You make a good tour guide! :-) It all sounds very exciting. I'm dying to see some photos and/or videos at some point. (You will be going back when it's officially open, right?) ;-)

I hope

Thanks for this. Sounds very very promising.

Super Mario World

This world has had a lot of press, social media, etc. already as its pretty much a duplicate of what is already in Japan and Universal Hollywood. Overall, this is my lease favorite land. Mostly because its so loud and there are stairs everywhere. As I walked out of Peach's castle the view is very cool, but within a second I found myself yelling to the rest of my party to be heard. I can only imagine that it will be worse when the land is packed with people. Beep! Burp! Bop, bop bop! and very loud music. Lots and lots of connectic energy in this land.

You take an escalator up through the portal/pipe to the second level. Mario Cart Racers ride is on this level as well a few other things (like maybe shops and places to eat?). Then you have to go back down 2 flights of stairs to get to the rest of the land. This level has the entrance to Yoshi ride and the walkway through another portal to Donkey Kong World. Also places to eat and shop on this level. This is also the level you use to exit the world.

More on the attractions later

Mario Cart

Again, lots of stuff out there already on this one, so I can't add much. Especially, because I never got on it. We tried a few times and it kept going down. the last time was just a few minutes before the park officially closed. They let us in line, we got all the way through the pre-shows and close to loading platform....when the fire alarm sounded and we were evacuated.

Like I mentioned before. If there was an award for how many stairs can you place in a ride queue....this would be the gold medal winner. Up an escalator to get to the level for the entry of the ride. Then up a large staircase right entering the queue. I think we may have even gone up more stairs...lost count. then before you get on the right, back down and down more stairs. That last stairwell going down was super high and felt like it went on forever.

Yoshi Ride

This was a slow dark ride like attraction. nice for the little ones. It had a game of finding eggs and pushing buttons, but honestly I couldn't figure out how to make it work. Nice view of the world from this ride. Note" again up a long spiraling stair case to get to the ride....and then back down when the ride is over.

Donkey Kong Cart Coaster

This was well themed coaster and the jumping illusion was very cute. the ride was actually a bit faster and rough than I expected, but overall it was lots of fun. Hard unexpected dives was the name of the game on this coaster. If the queue is long, the relentless drum beating audio starts to get to you. I would recommend some variation in the queue soundtrack.

How to Train Your Dragon - The Isle of Berk

This land was really nice. Lots of kinetic energy. Coaster flying around, moving dragons everywhere, water rides, flat rides. The theme was great. Couldn't get much more accurate recreating the movie. This was the largest world as far as I can tell and had many twists and turns to make it even feel bigger than it was. I did not explore the kids play are, but it looked really nice. Lots of food options all around this land as well. Didn't try it but word on street was the mac and chees cones were really good. Saw the Toothless meet and greet from the pathway and it looked really well done. The moving dragon was very real looking from my viewpoint. I really wanted to explore and spend more time in this land, but just didn't have enough minutes in the day. The reveal of the land as you exit the portal was really nice.

Hiccup's Wing Gliders

This was a really fast and fun coaster. Multiple launches, lots of curves, dives and dips. No huge drops. I guess you can classify this as a family coaster, but IMO more on the high end of that label. For example, more intense than say a Slinky Dog. This coaster encircles and passes all around this world. You can see it from just about anywhere and in many cases up pretty close to the pathways and bridges. Nice queue and the load building was made mostly of real timbers and wood as far as I could tell.

The Untrainable Dragon stage show

Can't say much about this as we didn't have time to see it.

Dragon Racer's Rally

This is flat ride that towers above the land. This ride is a well known Gerstlauer Sky Fly flat ride that is in many parks around the globe with different themes. The grandstands set piece by this ride is enormous, and Hiccup's coaster actually passes under and through it for some nice head-chopper moments. Again, didn't get to ride this as every time we were in the area the ride was down. It was up most of the day, just not when I was in the area.

Fyre Drill

This is a calm boat ride where you fire water cannons at targets. There are a lot of colorful moving targets. Didn't get to ride this as it was cool in the morning to get wet and we never made it back later (we didn't get a lot in because the park previews were shortened hours, not a full day). We did see it in action later and it did add a lot of energy to this world. I also liked thet is was slighting below grade so you were looking down into the ride and could see what was going on very well.

I will share a few more details later after the park is open to the public, but let me know if you have any specific questions or want more details on anything. If its something I don't want to share publicly yet, we can talk through message.

Let me know.

Wow, what's with all the stairs? I have to assume that there are elevators for those that can't do the stairs (wheelchairs and such)? It seems like they're having a LOT of breakdowns. Maybe this is normal for themeparks at this preview stage? Thank you, Mr. Tourguide! ;-P

Yes - there are elevators, but the general crowd is assumed to have to use the stairs. Yes, this is why they have previews. To get some repetition in on operations to work out issues before the paying general public is there.

I also believe that some of the downtime may have been scheduled to help manage staff that was on hand and also move crowds around more. With the overall crowd level being low, they may have wanted to test queue management by forcing people away from one area and to another to simulate more realistic crowds in areas...but who knows this could be a conspiracy theory by this arm chair park designer.

Thanks for providing this, I'm super excited for this park as I know many are. So far what I've heard is that the park is good but doesn't live up to the insane expectation that everyone had with it? But that could just be doomsayers.. I'm aiming to visit sometime next year!