The flight was uneventful and everything went as planned, except that the weather was a little stormy, raining on our pool plans for Sunday night. That's ok, we needed time to explore the resort pick up our super awesome Cabana Bay refillable mugs!
Eventually, the thunder and lightning moved on, and we got to check out the pool, and the slide. By this time, the outdoor temperature was only about 65 degrees, but that didn't bother these two.
One of the perks of staying at on property at Universal Orlando was that we got early entrance to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. When we got into the park, we made a beeline for Diagon Alley and it was truly like stepping into the book.
The dragon on top of Gringotts Bank was very impressive!
But the first order of business was to go into Ollivander's and purchase wands. These wands would be able to cast spells all over the park.
After wands, we rode our first Harry Potter ride, Escape from Gringotts and were completely blown away by how amazingly immersive it was.
The Mummy ride was pretty cool too.
We met the driver of the Knight Bus. He told that kids that his favorite sibling pairings are Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw....they are "the heart and the smart, the genius and the generous". He was clearly an expert at improv, it was fun to watch him talk to all the passersby, which he did for HOURS every day that we were there!
After those first few rides we took a break from rides and looked at the Simpsons part of the park.
Back to Diagon Alley to get a break from the sun and do some spells.
And then we headed over to Islands of Adventure via the Hogwarts Express.
The Hogwarts Express was a magical experience in itself, and when you get off at the other end, it's a whole other world, Hogsmeade.
We backtracked into the main part of the park, and had lunch at Mythos (which was awesome!) and met an old friend (King Julien from Madagascar).
The "Hogsmeade" portion of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter includes some more rides, including the most intense ride I've ever experienced, Hagrid's Magical Adventure. That ride felt like a motorcycle that was accelerating rapidly, taking crazy turns, going forward and backwards and even included a surprising drop! That plus our sampling of frozen Butterbeer (from The Three Broomsticks) nearly broke Audrey.
BUT, we had one more ride before we ended our first day at Islands of Adventure...Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. This ride was in Hogwarts and was meant to simulate a ride on a broom. In hindsight this was a very bad idea for the motion-sickness prone people in our family who has just had a butterbeer! But it was an amazing ride, and it was very fun to walk through the castle. There were rooms set up with holograms of Dumbledore, Harry, Ron and Hermione. Universal does an amazing job of putting you right in the book!
Back to Universal Studios on the Hogwarts Express.
To see the dragon breathe fire at night...
...and to do a few more spells before heading back to the hotel. (At which point we collasped into a pile of stinky, exhausted people!)
Our second day, we used our extra early hour in Diagon Alley, and then focused on hitting the rides that we missed the first day. (Jimmy Fallon's Race Through New York, Men in Black, Fast and Furious, Minions)
Back at Islands of Adventure, Bob and Maddy were the only ones brave enough to go on The Hulk. The ride is so intense, they make you get ride of every loose object you are carrying, including making you go through a metal detector to make sure you don't have any change in your pocket!
Our third day in Florida was supposed to be for Bob, to see all the new Star Wars attractions at Disney Hollywood Studios. But you know what they say about "best laid plans". We did everything we were supposed to. We got to the park early, before it opened, cellphones primed and ready to get into the "virtual queue" for the new Star Wars ride, Rise of the Resistance. But, we vastly underestimated how many people would have the same idea as us...and that their cell phones would be so much faster than ours! So sadly, we did not get into the virtual queue, and decided to cut our losses and beg the Mouse to let us switch parks and spend the day at the Magic Kingdom instead (they were actually very accommodating and even changed our dinner reservation).
Surpise! I really didn't expect to be at the Magic Kingdom today!
And because I'd set up all our Fast Passes at Hollywood Studios, we had to kind of rough it on the rides. But on the upside, if we'd been giving a choice we never would have ridden the Carousel of Progress, and that truly would have been a shame.
We had lunch/dinner (at the convenient dinner time of 3:30) at the place where Lady and the Tramp shared a bowl of spaghetti)
While I was very sorry that Bob didn't get to see the Star Wars attractions, the kids were very excited to ride their old favorite, Big Thunder Railroad)
For our last full day on Florida, we went back to Universal we tried to hit all our favorites. The kids got a lesson in using a rotary phone.
Tried out Hagrid's motorcycle.
Escape from Gringotts was down for a little while, but they let us in to take photos in the "bank".
We had a nice breakfast (with actual really good food!) at The Leaky Cauldron.
We sent some postcards via owl post.
Got some final looks at the dragon.
It was a memorable trip and so much fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment