Having a Magical Day : Visiting "That Other Theme Park"

At work when I see a kid in a Minion shirt or a Dr. Seuss shirt I like to joke around and pretend they are in the wrong park. Well I, along with some of my good friends decided to escape Disney for a day and visit the competition. So we hoped in the car and went over to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Two of the people I went with had never been before so we tried to do as much as we could. Of course, the entire day was spent secretly comparing Universal to Disney. At the end of the day we came to a good balance of which park does things better. They are pretty even if you really think about it and they just have their own styles of doing things. But it was fun to feel like a real tourist even though all Universal's "Team Members" could spot our Disney vibe from a mile away. One of the cool things we have noticed in the months that we've been here is a lot of people work for both companies. So we actually knew a few people we ran into throughout our day, which made the day even better.

We got to meet and see some of their most famous characters, Betty Bop, the Minions, the Simpsons, and Spongebob and his friends. But my favorite part of the day was seeing all the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons in person. I have watched the parade every year so it was so cool to be able to be right there and see how big the balloons really are. It was fun to be able to just have fun and not worry about anything for a day. It felt like a mini vacation.