BFF Weekend Continues - Universal Studios

May 31, 2011

One of the things we planned to do on my next visit down to Florida was go to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure to see The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

We are both big Harry Potter fans and we like to go on roller coasters together. We dropped the kids off in the morning and drove up to Orlando. I told Krystina that I felt like I was cheating on Walt because we were driving by all the signs for Walt Disney World parks. When we arrived at Universal we decided to go straight to the Harry Potter section.

As we walked in we passed the Hogwarts Express

and we were was swept away into the land of Hogsmeade complete with Honeydukes full of sugary treats like Chocolate Frogs and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans.

Diagon Alley was also there in case we needed any supplies at Olivander's Wand Shop or wanted to send letters from the Owl Post.

We had to use the restroom and much to our surprise Moaning Myrtle was talking from inside her stall. We also walked by The Three Broomsticks.

We went on our first coaster and as we walked in a staff member said "Good luck Muggles." In the line walked we by the Weasley's magical flying car complete with blinking lights and honking horn.

Then we went to the castle for that ride. There was a two hour wait! Someone said the wait for single rider was on 25 minutes so we took that instead. We figured it wasn't like we could talk on the ride anyways. So as we were standing in line the portraits on the wall were talking to us, telling us what to expect. It's amazing how real they looked, not digital at all.

A woman in the line next to us asked me how long we'd been waiting. I looked at my watch and told her "Seven minutes." She said "I've been waiting for two hours and it took you seven minutes to get on the ride." I was surprised because I didn't realize we were just about to get on. The ride was a virtual flying ride through the world of Hogwarts. We went on the Quidditch field, were chased by spiders, Dementors, the Whomping Willow and even Voldemort. Fortunately we made it through and Dumbledore himself congratulated us. After the ride Krystina and I both looked at each other and said "I would have been really upset if I had waited for two hours to go on that ride." We were both disappointed with it.

We decided to check out the other lands and went to the Simbad show. Boring! We left halfway through it. We decided not to go on any water rides and moved on to a 3-D Spiderman ride, which was cool. He jumped on our car and it started rocking. Then we went on a big drop ride that Krystina almost lost her legs on (she lost her breath and got weak!) and then went on The Hulk. That was a lot of fun! We certainly got our thrills. We were famished after all that so we decided to eat some food that was bad for us and then it was about time to call it a day. Of course not before we got some funny pictures in front of comic strip sayings.

It was a great day that ended stressful for Krystina as we hit traffic and were late picking up Vaughn.