Universal Orlando
Day 1: Travel/CityWalk
So I should probably mention that this was a birthday/Christmas gift for R, and she's a huge Harry Potter nerd, so naturally Universal is going to be a part of this trip report. We started off our morning at around 6 in the morning. The night before I had set this up in another room for her to find the morning before the trip (there was a stuffed owl as well, but that has the other side of the envelope with our address in the picture
)
My parents (the kind souls that they are) were kind enough to drive us an hour to Newark airport to save us the cost of having to park there. I know the airport is probably the least interesting thing in most trip reports, but I got to live out a childhood dream of mine and ride in one of the little airport carts (don't judge me) because they had switched our gate without notifying us and the lady driving it was one of the nicest airport workers I've ever met.
Anyways, back to the actual trip, we landed safely in Florida and took Universal's transportation that they offer during booking (SuperStar Shuttle) to our hotel which was Cabana Bay. The ride and check-in both went smoothly and we went to check out our room as we did not have park tickets for that day. The room was much nicer than either of us had been anticipating for the price (I believe we paid less than $100/night), I suppose having an outside company that's in the hotel business helps XD. We had a nice view as well(aside from the crane).
We spent the rest of the day napping and walking around CityWalk and grabbed dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, nothing too eventful for our first day.
Day 2: Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Now, when I said before that R is a huge Harry Potter nerd (I mean, I am too, but still), I mean a HUGE Harry Potter nerd, as in she was the president of our college's Harry Potter club during her senior year. So the morning of our first park day, she started to beeline towards Wizarding World (having never been) as soon as we were through the park gate. I did manage to have us take a quick detour to The Mummy Ride thanks to its short wait time. I forgot how fast/jolting that ride was from the last time I had gone, which resulted in one of the best (or worst, I suppose it depends on how you look at it) ride photos I've had. Yes, that's me in the Beatles shirt, screaming my head off.
With that out of the way, we finally made our way past King's Cross Station and through the brick alley wall into Diagon Alley. I'll refrain from posting the photos of her crying to save myself any trouble
but it was great to see someone that happy about being there. From there we had decided to follow the path from the books/film and went into Ollivander's to both get our wands. She was chosen during the ceremony/show in the shop which I had been hoping would happen (I don't even know if she knew they did that). So with wands in hand we proceeded to Madam Malkin's to get our robes. I ended up buying nearly every Slytherin thing you could get, so setting me loose in that shop may not have been our best idea. We also went on the Escape from Gringotts ride. I discovered later during the trip that your experience (if you have a fear of heights) varies greatly depending on whether you're in the front row or back row. The initial drop where the track tilts forward with your car looks much larger (and probably is about 8-10 feet more because of the distance between the rows) from the back row while in the front row you can see the track in front of you and see that it's only a 5-10 foot drop.
We took a break from our journey and grabbed lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. The atmosphere was great and the food tasting surprisingly good (dining within the 2 Universal parks isn't the best in my opinion).
Before hopping onto the Hogwarts Express, we took a quick trip through Knockturn Alley, where we ended up picking up some temporary Dark Mark tattoos that we used later in the trip (pics of that further down). We also ran into Ariel, she wasn't looking too good though.
After taking the train to Hogsmeade, we were quite literally like kids in a candy store. The candy store in question here being Honeydukes. R decided that it would be more cost-effective to by Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans in bulk, and therefore logically bought
2 pounds of them (1.5 pounds of which are still sitting in Honeydukes jars on our kitchen counter a year later). We then made our way toward Hogwarts and the Forbidden Journey ride. The ride was just as enjoyable as the first time I had ridden it 5 years prior, and all the little touches they have throughout the queue really help to immerse you in the setting.
I don't remember the majority of the rest of our day in the parks that day unfortunately (I'm pretty sure it was mainly wandering through both sections of Wizarding World), but we ate dinner at Toothsome Chocolate Emporium that night. R had some sort of sandwich and I had one of the flatbreads, both were pretty good but unfortunately filling enough that we didn't feel like we could handle even splitting one of their giant milkshakes.
[I'm ending here for the night so I can finally get some sleep, but I will pick this up after work tomorrow]
Day 3:
Day 4:
Day 5:
