Chris reports from the holidays at Universal Orlando,

and we talk to Julie Zimmerman about the Rides That Made Me

on episode 332 of the unofficial Universal Orlando podcast. Hey, ULP, this is Chris, and I wanted to give you guys a quick trip report from the holiday festivities over here at Universal Orlando.

We started off the day with the Grinch Show, and I am very happy to report that it was great.

And the reason for that, especially this year, is that they actually changed some things around.

All the set pieces have been changed. Some of the choreography was changed as well. And the show itself just felt fresh, felt new. So we, you know, were happy to see that they, you know,

made these changes and glad to see that Universal's still improving on things that you know they do every year

we got the Macy's Day parade about to start so I will be back shortly to give you a little

update on that and we're back so just did the Universal Holiday parade and I got to say it was

really good if you've done it before in the past,

then you know the drill. If you haven't, it has tons of floats and balloons and performers on

the street, dancing, and everything. So I think Universal did a really good job on it. One of the

things that stood out this year was the music. I thought the music was really well done and played to the floats. Some of the standout floats, I think, was little baby donkey dragon

hybrids from Shrek. Those were kind of fun to watch. And yeah, Santa rounding up in the end,

lighting up the tree. So yeah, definitely worth a watch. So it's going to be wrapped up shortly with

the Mannheim Steamroller show. And I will be back to give a little info on that.

Last but not least, Mannheim Steamroller. So we just finished doing that right now. We, you know,

always go see it every year. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, a, it's a, a, a end of the night there, and they, they, they do a bunch of Christmas songs, and they'll even do some of the hool-a-day songs, so they, um, they, you've seen it, still go watch it because, you know, you'll enjoy yourself.

And one honorable mention that I have to say here is the Hogwarts Castle Christmas lighting.

We didn't get to do that this trip just because we didn't have enough time to do it.

But we did do it last year and it was amazing.

You know, seeing the lights on the

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