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Grad Bash

On Saturday, I went to Grad Bash. If you don’t know what Grad Bash is, think of it as Grad Nite, but at Universal Studios. If you don’t know what Grad Nite is, it’s a nite where they open Disney(land | World) to all the grads. It seems that most schools go to Grad Nite, but Universal has offered Grad Bash as an alternative. If you don’t know what Universal Studios is, it’s a theme park. Actually, Grad Nite occurs in both theme parks at the Universal Orlando Resort, of which one is Universal Studios. But it’s common to refer to both of them as “Universal Studios,” considering that Islands of Adventure, the other park, opened only recently, and so they didn’t need to have a vague name that would encompass both parks and whatever else they have on site. I don’t know about hotels. Disney World is like a sovereign nation, what with all its territory, but Universal is smack in the middle of Orlando, so it doesn’t have that much land. Dueling Dragons is right next to a gas station and across the street from a school, for crying out loud. But anyway…

I woke up at 6:00 in the morning on Saturday, I guess in anticipation of going on the trip. Several of my friends were going to be there, so I knew I would have a pretty good time. The bus left from school a little after 1:00 in the afternoon. The ride was pretty long, but the conversation made it go by faster. We made a rest stop on one of the uniform rest stops they have on Florida’s Turnpike, and for a moment, while everybody I was with had gone off in different directions, I walked about, looking for a familiar face in the crowd of weary travelers. And then I saw Gisela from the office, and she saw me. It was a very weird encounter, considering that we were hours away from South Florida and had been traveling in different directions. She said that she was getting back from a meeting that had kept her from being in the office the day before and that another familiar face from work was with her.

After what seemed like forever, we were finally at Universal. After what seemed like slightly less than forever but still a long time, we parked. It was very odd that they didn’t follow Disney’s lead by trying very hard to hide the inner workings of the park from us. We parked in a lot behind some of the main attractions at Universal Studios. I could see the New York facade from the side. We then were guided toward what seemed to be a warehouse and had to walk through metal detectors. It seemed a bit excessive, but since the recent shooting at Virginia Tech, everyone wants to kill everybody everywhere. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve been led to believe.

We were greeted by a party. That’s right: a Grad Bash pre-party. I had heard about this pre-party, and I wasn’t sure what it was going to be like. They had closed off the entire park except for a small section, probably to create the illusion that the place was really crowded. There was a stage set up and some no-name nobody singing other people’s hip-hop hits. There were people on stilts throwing out garish necklaces like it was Mardi Gras. (That was the theme, I think.) But the best good part was the free food. There were hamburgers, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese free for the taking, not to mention chips and soda. I should add that the mac and cheese was actually good. As for the hamburgers, eh. But they had a fine selection of condiments.

By this time, I had formed a group that would remain unchanging. The people I hung out with were Justin, Megan, Michelle, Val, Baba, Kerliza, and Jennifer. It was fitting that we stuck together for Grad Bash because I had known all of them since, at the latest, the beginning of 10th grade… except for one person who I was never terribly familiar with. I’ll let you guess who!

Anyway, when they let everyone loose throughout Universal Studios, we started to go on the rides. We hit upon most of the favorites while noting that many of the rides involve some perfectly ordinary excursion that goes terribly awry and eventually involves ferocious beasts, explosions, and/or a 100-foot drop. While it’s fun to go on those rides, it gets kind of annoying when every ride follows this formula. One ride that I remember as being particularly awesome was the Back to the Future ride. Unfortunately, during my pre-trip Wikipedia researching, I found out that the ride, which had been open since 1991, closed a scant three weeks before our visit. The De Lorean, along with the train from the third movie, were on display, and the De Lorean looked pretty fake. It looked like the lettering on the tires was painted on. I’m glad I didn’t realize that when I was younger, or it would have spoiled the magic. Justin and I, however, were terribly upset about seeing the ride closed.

The great thing about Grad Bash is that you get to wander freely between both Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Normally, this isn’t possible, but they opened up a passageway between the parks (and closed the regular entrances/exits) so that it would be. At first, the passageway consisted of a series of gates, which were opened in stages. At the first gate, a huge crowd of people had formed, waiting to get to Islands. After the gate opened, there was a stampede, during which my group struggled to stay together. The same thing happened with the other gates. But eventually, we were in, and we found that this hidden passageway opened right into Seuss Landing, the Dr. Seuss-themed section of Islands of Adventure. Everybody stampeded through there too. We went right to Dueling Dragons, the twin roller coasters that are so popular that there’s room for a really, really long line. It’s that popular.

I had noticed on the way in that Dueling Dragons is at the edge of the whole place, and is in fact bordering a gas station, as I mentioned. I was also the one to notice that there is a high school across the street from the roller coaster. It turns out that it has an extensive Wikipedia article, which mentions that “[s]tudents can actually hear screaming roller coaster riders through the windows of some of the classrooms on campus.” I wondered how many students would play hooky to go across the street. Probably not many because tickets might be expensive, but it would be worth it. And that’s what I thought as I was riding the roller coaster. It’s really cool. I’m not sure which of the two tracks I prefer. I like them both. They are roller coasters, after all. You can’t be too picky with them.

As for the other rides, I won’t bore you much with the details because I’d already been on all of them except one. (The exception was One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. It’s like the Dumbo ride at Disney. What? When everyone in the park is your age, and other people are riding that ride, it’s okay.) Oh, and I could also mention in this short paragraph that My Chemical Romance was playing at Grad Bash. I don’t listen to them, and I didn’t decide to start right then.

After a while of going around on rides and taking some time out to eat (I had Dippin’ Dots for the first time — yeah, I know, I’m a big loser), it was getting to be around 1:00 in the morning, which was when, we believed, we would have to meet by the Hulk (the other roller coaster) and leave. So we waited, and we waited, and we waited. We could have gone on the Hulk at this point, but I didn’t really feel like it because I was feeling both hungry and full at the same time. It’s an odd feeling. Anyway, we soon (or, rather, not soon) found out that we would instead be meeting at 2:00, so we remained sitting on the bridge that the roller coaster goes under while people walked by.

Eventually, we saw a crowd gathering, and it was getting close to 2:00, so we went there to find some people from our class. As we left through yet another random gate, we saw that the various schools’ buses were placed in impromptu sections: A, B, C, and D. My school’s buses were in section D. We soon discovered that the progression from section to section was linear, so D was the last. I thought it would be funny if our bus was the very last one in the last section. It was, and it wasn’t very funny. We were tired and had to walk a long way.

We got back on the bus. It took off, they turned off the lights, and we fell asleep. Actually, I just rested. Resting is where you close your eyes but don’t fall unconscious, so it happens in real time and seems agonizingly slow. Meanwhile, you can hear everything that’s going on, and you “wake up” feeling somewhat, but not completely, rested. I rested until we got to a rest stop, the irony of which I now realize. It was about 4:30, and I called home to let my parents know we would be getting back to school a little later than the planned time of 5:00. I was less able to rest during the second part of the trip home, and toward the very end, I just kept my eyes open to see what everything looked like at 5:30 in the morning. We got back to school at 6:00 — 24 hours after I had last slept.

I got home, had a little bit to eat, and did something very unusual: I slept. I just can’t sleep unless it’s nighttime — I can’t even remember the last time I had a nap — but I had to make an exception in this case. I slept for two hours and continued to have half-an-hour to two-hour naps till the early afternoon. I was really tired, but it was worth it.

Remember Mozilla’s successful community-driven campaign to get a Firefox ad printed in the New York Times? A more ambitious project called Tux 500 is being mounted by a group of Linux users; their goal is to have a Linux-sponsored car at the Indianapolis 500. They say: “If less than 1% of the Linux community donates $1, this will happen… will you do your part?” I’m willing to do my part, and I figured that others would too if only they knew about it. With that in mind, I submitted the story to Slashdot, but apparently it’s not going to get posted. It’s a shame, though. I hope it gets heavily Dugg. They want to raise at least $350,000 by May 21.