Universal Harry Potter

Our last day in Orlando was spent at Universal, rather than at Disney. Since this is my one and only vacation to Orlando (am I jinxing myself by saying that too much?), we had to knock out the Wizarding World of Harry Potter too, and that is not found at Disney World. 

Our planner got us into the special early hours, which meant that we could be in the park at 7am, but it was 20-30 minutes away from our hotel, and we had to Uber, so we had to be up at 6am! Once there, we had to go to the ticket counter to change our confirmation number into physical passes for the day, which we kept around our neck for convenience (Exhibit 1 below). We splurged on the Express Passes, which would hopefully make our day a little less stressful, since we could just go in the Express lane at nearly every ride whenever we wanted to ride that ride. Gotta make this one day count!

Once we got through the entrance line, it was another morning to start by going all the way to the back of the park (Islands of Adventure - 1 of the 2 Universal parks). The reason was because there are a couple of rides at each park that aren't covered by the Express Pass, one of which was Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure. We chose that over the Velocicoaster, for obvious reasons. Anyway, we made it to the back of the line for Hagrid's, which started before we even saw anything Harry Potter-like, and wove through all sorts of places like this theater. 

I wish I had a picture of the ride, but Universal has a strict, no-bags on ride policies. They have lockers available, so we wedged our backpack in one of them, along with my phone (didn't want it to fly out my pocket on the ride). Anyway, we waited probably an hour for the ride, and it was fun - a fast, smooth ride on a bike-like coaster with a secret drop in the dark! I still have trouble reconciling an hour wait for a two-minute ride, but to each his own. On to Hogsmeade (the town outside the Hogwarts' School).

It was so cute, like a little, storybook village in winter, but good-ness the people! I think 2/3 of the park go-ers were crammed into this small section of the park. We wandered a little bit, and then found ourselves in a wand shop. Hadley picked out Hermione's wand with her leftover souvenir money, and we were on our way. The wands come with a map of Hogsmeade depicting special spots where you can perform spells that interact with various props. In the window on the right, Hadley is waving her wand while she says, "Wingardium Leviosa!" and the quidditch balls seem to levitate in response. Other spells made water fountains spurt, opened and closed books, and measured a dress with a tape measure. Sometimes, she had to try the spell a half dozen times before it worked, but it sure was cute and satisfying when she succeeded!

Of course, we had to sample the butter beer, both frozen and not. Delish! And perused the shelves of Honeyduke's candy shop. Though I could not bring myself to spend $8 on one chocolate frog or roll the dice on Bertie Bott's every flavor beans...

Overlooking Hogsmeade, is the castle of Hogwarts. It is so cool looking, pictures don't do it justice, and Hadley was over-the-moon to see it in person! It has the same effect as seeing Cinderella's castle at WDW. Just stunning! We rode Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey inside, which is a 3D/4D ride flying over a quidditch field with dementors and being chased by spiders in the Forbidden Forest. It was all a little nauseating for me (again), but the inside of the castle, seen in the line, was really amazing with details from the book.

We decided to do a loop around the park before catching the Hogwarts Express to the other park. Jurassic Park is just down the lane from Hogwarts in this park! Can't you just hear the theme song as you go through these gates?

The kids haven't seen these movies, but Hadley has watched a kids' show spinoff, and they have a general idea. We rode a Jurassic river adventure, which was pretty fun, and Owen got soaked. Luckily, he blocked most of the water from H and me! 

We were pretty hungry from our early morning departure, so we had an early lunch of pizza, and Owen entertained us with his dough-bubble glasses.

Moving along, we next did King Kong, another 3D ride, where we witnessed and were rocked around in the middle of a KK vs T-Rex battle. On the way to Spider-Man (another 3D ride!), we passed through Comic Book Land, and I had to take a picture of 'home of the Dagwood' for my Dad because he uses that word for big sandwiches. I don't even remember Spider-Man, so my eyes must have been closed as we went web-slinging through the city. We also did Dr. Doom's Fear Fall, a drop ride. The kids were too old for Dr Seuss world, and O and I weren't feeling up to a big coaster like the Hulk after all of our stomach-turning 3-D rides, so it was back to the Hogwarts Express.

They have a neat set up where you can ride the train between the two parks. Of course, you have to pay for the double-park pass. Not sure why H is frowning here, but she has perfected her frowny face, right?

By mid-day there was a long wait for the train, even with the express pass line. We waited for quite a while, and then finally got to the station to hear that they were having problems with the train. Oh well. 10-15 minutes later, and we were moving again. Unfortunately, the crowd meant that we had to share our train cabin with another family (a family of 5 with large, teen-college-aged boys and little conversation), which made for a bit of an awkward ride.  

On the other end, we unboarded in London at Platform 9 3/4, which I realized is just about the same age as Hadley! Of course, we ended up in Diagon Alley and just happened to catch a show with Celestina Warbeck and the Banshees (characters in the book).

There were more shops and wand spots and people. We didn't look around as much here because everything felt like a battle through crowds, but Hadley did work her wand magic a little.

We rode Escape from Gringotts, yet another nauseating 3D ride (are they all 3D now??) with dragons, wizards, and dark tunnels. There was even a fire-breathing dragon on the outside!

It was a hot day (pushing 90 in March!), so ice cream from Florean Fortescue's sounded lovely. Hadley had a classic peanut butter strawberry, Owen had soft serve butter beer, and I had chocolate raspberry. All were yummy!

On our way out of London, we had to stop at No. 12, Grimmauld Place.

Next up was Men in Black, a fun shoot-em-up ride where your targets are aliens! I heard 'unlimited ammo' and went to town. Owen was shocked that I had bested his score by quite a bit, because he always won the Disney shoot-em-up rides.

I took a pass on the Simpsons ride, as I heard ahead of time that it was pretty nauseating, and I was just about done with all of that by this time. The kids rode it and agreed that I would have been closing my eyes.

But we did enjoy walking down Evergreen Terrace and seeing some familiar sites from Springfield! I really could have used a Duff at Moe's, but we persisted.

Love me some Back to the Future nostalgia! And we ended the day with one more nauseating ride with Minion Mayhem. 

We were toast by that point, so I scheduled our Uber back to the hotel where we ate our PBJ dinners and relaxed a little before snoozing and sleeping in a little. Our bus to the airport was picking us up earlier than I wanted, so we didn't have time for a swim or anything, but we could move a little slower at least. Travel was pretty smooth, so no complaints there. So long Orlando!

Epcot

Our last Disney day was at Epcot, and we had decided to move a little slower this morning, since there weren't as many rides to reserve at this park and just a couple that we really didn't want to miss. I woke up early and reserved Remi's Ratatouille adventure (for an extra $9/pp!) and Soarin', both for around mid-day, and we were set. We slept in a little and casually caught a bus after the park had opened, so it was less hectic and crowded than the past two mornings.

We checked out the sphere (Spaceship Earth) from the outside and noticed some of the themed landscaping for the Flower and Garden Festival.

Our first thing on the agenda was Remi just before an early lunch, so we headed toward the world showcase and France. On the way, we stopped off in Canada. We viewed the Canada 360 film, which highlighted its wild, natural beauty and totem poles, much like the outside did. 

The next stop was the United Kingdom. It was Saint Patrick's Day, and let's just say that we saw a lot of green shirts and beer drinking at 10 in the morning. And maybe even some green beer? This pillar was actually a sun dial clock; I should have gotten a picture from the clock face side, but you can see the little triangle sticking off the top.

Mary Poppins was having a photo shoot in the English tea garden (is there anything more English?), and there were red phone booths in both Canada and the UK. I had to explain to the kids about phone booths because why would you need a special booth to use a phone? I also discovered the kid's passport here, so I collected a little card from each country we visited, which was like a scavenger hunt. The kids weren't interested, but I thought it was cute!

France was very Parisian, and Remi's ride was very cute, but a little frantic for me. You ride in a mouse with 3D glasses on and get chased throughout the kitchen while you get mop water sprayed on you, scurry under tables, and even scoot under the stove where it got a little too hot. I think they should offer some free ratatouille as part of the ride, but we had to settle for some French crepes for lunch nearby, instead. Hadley totally scarfed down her crepes, but Owen was less of a fan. The kids' meal came with both a savory and sweet crepe! Yum!

After lunch, we headed back to the World Celebration/Nature/Discovery area where we bounced around from ride to ride. I don't know if I finally figured it out by Day 3 or if Epcot was just less popular for Genie+, but I could reserve rides much closer to the time I was actually on the app, and then reserve our next ride as soon as we scanned in for the first ride. So we rode Soarin' Around the World, Spaceship Earth, Seas with Nemo, Turtle Talk, Living with the Land, and Mission: Space all within an hour or two, plus we walked through all the aquarium exhibits. Test Track was the only ride that we couldn't squeeze into our day. 

Soarin' was our favorite - they lift you up with your feet dangling as you fly over world landmarks and almost don't clear things like the Eiffel Tower.

Living with the Land was a slow boat ride, but it was relaxing and educational to learn about different gardening techniques and how they grow food for a lot of their restaurants on site.

Hadley was excited about Mission: SPACE, but she was a little disappointed when Owen and I made her go on the green mission, instead of the more nausea-inducing orange mission. I still had to close my eyes for parts of it, and it was a little claustrophobic for Owen.

After we exhausted all of the rides in that area, we decided to continue our loop around the world showcase. The first country on this side was Mexico. I was surprised when the pyramid actually opened up into a dark and cool huge interior lined with restaurants and shops. We walked onto the Three Caballeros ride.

Outside, they had some beautiful orchids on display. I've never seen them so full of flowers.

Next up was Norway, which was styled like a Nordic ski village. We did stumble upon a small museum of Norse mythology, which the kids found to be very interesting after our Marvel movie marathon introduced them to several of the characters. I liked the random trolls in the stores.

We saw another 360 movie in China. They only had lean bars, but I could really have used a seat by then, so I watched from the floor. I wish I had a Fitbit to track our steps on this vacation! My feet were killing me, and I had a new blister each day.

Germany resembled a Bavarian village, complete with a Beer garden. If not for our Italian dinner reservation, I definitely could have enjoyed a beer and some pretzels and sat for a spell. This duck in the fountain would have to do.

Nevertheless, we pressed on to Italy, for our pasta/pizza dinner. It was overpriced, per usual, but we were starving and so happy that they brought out bread before our food!

We skipped over the USA because, hello! We were also losing daylight and had two more countries to visit. So it was on to Japan. They had a huge store with everything from kimonos to Samurai swords, which was fun to peruse.

Our final country was Morocco, where we learned about an ultra-marathon held in the desert and appreciated the gorgeous mosaic tiles everywhere.

We walked back around the lake towards the exit to get a good seat for the fireworks. All of the prime spots were taken, but we found a decent spot and sat down. We realized that we still had about 30 minutes until the fireworks show, and the kids said they'd be fine with just going back to the hotel instead of waiting that long. So that's what we did, especially knowing that we had an extra early morning the next day. At least we got a bit of a light show from the Spaceship Earth sphere on our way out!