If you live in Florida or have visited Florida, you have probably been to Universal. If you haven't, you need to get out from under that rock of yours. It's incredible. Especially if you're a diehard Harry Potter fan like me and one of my best friends. So diehard, in fact, that we caved a few weeks back (as many college students in Central Florida do at one point or another) and dropped a sizable amount of money we didn't have on the Preferred Annual Pass (which is a fancy way of saying we are suckers and paid the extra fee to go without blockout days).
Since our little splurge, we've been to the parks twice and spent an inexcusable amount of time in the Harry Potter areas of the parks on both occasions. In our defense, we had begun our first day with the intention of making a beeline for the new King Kong ride. (Again, if you aren't familiar with this, you need to get out a bit more, or maybe just turn on a TV for ten seconds and see the commercial that's been playing on loop on every channel.) Unfortunately, our plan was immediately dashed by the offending 170-minute waitlisted on the new Universal app I had downloaded (my one and only technology-related accomplishment in my very technophobic life). So we spent our first day riding through Gringotts vaults and screaming on green roller coaster tracks.
Our second day, my fellow sucker and proud preferred pass holder, Hannah, and I were determined to ride Reign of Kong. But when we arrived (our lazy late-morning butts didn't make it there until well after noon) the wait was still 90 minutes, a step down from 170 minutes, but still a bit too much for my very short attention span. So off to Diagon Alley we went to revel in the geeky wonders of TheWizarding World of Harry Potter.
I checked back frequently to see if the wait on King Kong had dropped, even a little, but it rested firmly at 90 minutes throughout the day, and still was standing firm when we made our way from Universal Studios to Islands of Adventure in the early evening. (Universal Studios was closing at 5pm to prepare for Halloween Horror Nights.) When we entered the park, we did so with slim chances of riding the new ride that had been our mission for the past few weeks. Hannah especially was taking the blow pretty hard and was on the verge of (to my horror) suggesting we stick out the eternal line when our saviors appeared in a flash of fanny packs and sensible shoes.
A couple approached us, little paper rectangles in hand, and I prepared to be questioned about how the day passes worked, or how to get from one park to another. Instead, the couple held out their tickets and asked if we would like them, as they carried the express pass option to skip lines. Hannah and I couldn't quite believe it, nor were we about to take this kindly couple's passes, but they insisted they were leaving, and practically forced the passes on us with grins from them and stuttered thanks from us.
Now, I recognize that this situation poses the simple and seemingly superficial kindness of allowing two college girls to skip the lines at an amusement park that they already had annual passes to, but the gesture (beyond the immediate response of screaming and jumping like an idiot and running straight for Reign of Kong) really was touching. These two people, who had presumably spent their day at the park and had their fun, took the time to seek out a pair of people still enjoying the day and go through the trouble of asking them if they would like the pass, explaining what it was and telling them how it worked (all what we experienced when their wandering eyes found us as the lucky couple). They easily just could have thrown the passes out. Or, as I have done on many occasions, kept them as memories of that day of fun. Instead, they decided to find someone who could enjoy them, and they genuinely seemed to think nothing of it. In the meantime, as they wandered home, not dwelling on the handing off of such prized materials, Hannah and I were experiencing an overwhelming sense of gratitude and mounting excitement.
We rode Kong, and it was amazing. We skipped the entire line stretching and twisting inside and out like a knotted snake and waited just ten short minutes for our spot on the ride that had us screaming and jumping and staring open-mouthed the whole time. That alone ordinarily would have been enough to make my day, but it really was afterwards, thinking about the tiny kindness that couple had afforded to two complete strangers, that made me smile at the memory of the day.
I'll never know that couple or be able to properly thank them for waiting up a second on their way out to find two people whom they could be generous to. I'll never be able to tell them how much it restored my faith in people and how much Hannah and I appreciated the little bonus to our day. So instead, I'll do the only thing I can, and shout into the infinite Internet, Thank you! and hope that somehow that gratitude makes its way to them.