Harry Potter Land - Universal Studios

Growing up in the 90's, the release of new Harry Potter books and movies became a huge part of my teenage years, college, and even a little bit of dental school!  Seriously, my best friend Zach and I went to at least one midnight showing of Deathly Hallows in Omaha.  Also, hanging out at midnight to buy the newly released Potter installment so I could binge read it in the next 48 hours was a highlight for me.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like Harry Potter!  Haha.  For some reason I decided to re-read all the books starting last summer, and Harry Potter movies were the series of choice for my Christmas vacation.  All pretty good timing considering I finally made it to Harry Potter land this year!

I had a lot of related items on my bucket list...

This was all part of my Florida extravaganza with my best friend Rachel.  We spent Friday, April 24th hanging out at Universal Studios which, of course, is home to the wizarding world of Harry Potter!  Our DECA group was housed at a hotel within the Disneyworld resort that has shuttles within Disney's property, but in order to get to Universal, we had to find alternate transportation.  We ended up splitting a Taxi between the four of us that decided to go that day.  It ended up being Rachel, me, and two of her students that went on Friday.  The rest of the group headed to Magic Kingdom for the day.  This was actually the highlight of the trip for me, since my major motivation for coming was really just to get to Harry Potter Land.

Universal Studios is divided up into two separate parks, Islands of Adventure, and Universal Studios.  Since none of us had actually been to the parks, we depended almost entirely on my park Ap to figure out where we wanted to go.  It ended up being extremely useful because it included a map with GPS, and ride wait times.  We managed to put together a pretty good strategy in order to make it onto all the rides we wanted in a single day.  We started around 10 am, and ran around until 6 pm.  All in all a very successful day!  We employed all sorts of tactics in order to make it onto as many rides as possible, including single rider lines, and splitting up our group to catch the rides we were most interested in.  Universal has a unique concept of rides in which they provide free for an hour lockers for any loose items (purses, merch, etc) prior to your ride, meaning we made lots of locker stops along the way.  This also meant that most of the rides were more geared to adults, with the rides being much faster or "rougher" than those normally experienced at Disneyland.

Welcome to Islands of Adventure!

Um, I think this was old timey cartoon land?

Basically Universal is a giant movie theme park, so I freakin' loved it!  We started out in Islands of Adventure and made a giant loop.  First was the land of Marvel comics.  We skipped the Hulk roller coaster due to the long wait, and first ride was the Accelatron, basically the tea cup ride.  We then jumped onto the Amazing Spiderman 3D ride.  Next up was old cartoon land, and we jumped onto Dudley Do-Right's falls, a ride very much akin to Bear River rapids.  This was a disappointment in that the line was ridiculously long, and we ended up getting soaked in the process!  Poor Rachel's shoes got completely ruined by getting so wet.  Therefore she was less than excited to get on the next ride with me, Jurassic Park!

That's right, we made it into Jurassic Park!  I was pretty excited about this particular land since it's one of the iconic rides you always see on the commercials, as well as all the hype around the new Jurassic World movie.  One of the guys and I jumped on the ride, which was another water tour type ride that gets sidetracked into dinosaur mayhem - just like in the movie!  You end up going down a big drop right as a T-rex is coming after you.  I loved it!  According to Rach (who watched from the sidelines), the drop apparently kicked up a huge wave of water, but I actually stayed pretty dry.

Not too wet after our prehistoric trip down the waterfall!

We walked around until through the iconic park gates we saw a familiar castle!  We had finally made our way around to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts castle.  The Hogsmeade section of Potter land included three different rides, but the main attraction was the shops of Hogsmeade, and the butterbeer!

Definitely worth the hype!  It tasted a lot like rich cream soda, and I will be working on making some at home for my next Potter marathon!

Hogwarts Castle - also the entrance to the Forbidden Journey ride.

Within Hogwarts castle was the ride the Forbidden Journey.  This was more of a 3D interactive ride, as well as a bit of a roller coaster.  I could probably best describe this as a more exciting Soarin' Over California ride.  It took us through the castle grounds, and through the castle as if you were flying on a broomstick, and involved all our favorite characters!  I loved it.  I skipped the other two rides, and instead headed to the Three Broomsticks for some delicious British food.

The entrance to Three Broomsticks, one of the two pubs in Hogsmeade, this one most famous for its butterbeer!

The attention to detail was amazing!  I actually felt like I was in a magical British pub.

Honestly this was my favorite part of the day.  I got to sit back for a moment and enjoy English fish and chips with a frothy butterbeer while completely surrounded by Harry Potter's world!  I'm such a book nerd…  We spent some time in the shops picking up merch, then we boarded the Hogwarts Express to ride from Hogsmeade over to Diagon Alley.  While riding the Express you actually cross from one park to another, but in the meantime they had fun videos on the "windows" showing the British countryside, as well as shadows of students passing in the corridor outside our doors!  We eventually disembarked in King's Cross, and found ourselves transported to Universal Studios London.

Phone box!

The entrance to Diagon Alley, just like in the movie, wasn't actually marked.  It was a very unassuming entrance that opened up to a fantastic alley of authentic Diagon shops.

A view down the alley with the ancient white dragon perched atop Gringotts.  She would apparently breathe fire occasionally, but I never saw it.

Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, the twins joke shop.

The eccentric stacks of wands inside Ollivander's wand shop.

We spent quite a while exploring the shops.  Unfortunately they were completely packed, making shopping a bit cumbersome.  However, we did get to explore all the magical items, including a wide array of wands!  Diagon Alley had one ride, Escape from Gringotts.  That's right, we got to ride to the underground vaults within Gringotts, and make our escape from the goblins and Voldermort!  Yet another fun roller coaster employing 3D videos.  It was fantastic!

Inside Gringotts.

Us and some of the goblins… not the kids, the old guys behind us!

Headed down Knockturn Alley!  Once again, true to the books you actually had to hunt this area down.

After our ride we visited Knockturn Alley, then decided to leave the magical world of Harry Potter to check out the rest of Universal Studios.  It was getting on in the afternoon, so we quickly made some decisions about what we still had time to fit in.  We caught a ride on Revenge of the Mummy, which I loved!  The Mummy was literally my favorite movie for nearly a year back when I was in eighth grade, not to mention all its sequels, so I couldn't help be entranced by Brendan Fraser's cameos in the ride.  Our last ride was Hollywood Rip Ride, which basically was an awesome looping, upside-down roller coaster set to whatever music you wanted to choose.  Best of all was the completely straight-up ascent up the track right out of the gate.  We went in the single rider line, but we still ended up being in line for nearly an hour.  That was the longest we had waited in line all day!  Anyway, I selected ZZ Top's "Gimme All Your Lovin'" for my thrilling coaster ride.  It was awesome!

Exhausted and footsore, we managed to meet up again and called it quits for the day.  This was mostly because they were kicking us out of the park for a graduation event, but we were pretty well done.  One of our girls had broken a shoe, and poor Rach still had soggy shoes from the stupid Dudley Do-Right ride (seriously, skip that one)!  We hobbled our way out of the park, deciding to stop off at a delicious sounding Mexican joint for some much needed food (and Diet Coke).  It was seriously the best food I'd had since… well the Three Broomsticks that afternoon.  Haha.

Basically everyone fell asleep on the nearly 30 minute cab ride back to the hotel.  Luckily by then the hotel had opened up all our rooms, and Rach and I were able to get into our shared room.  After walking what my phone claimed was like 9 miles, and only about 7 hours of sleep within the last 48 hours, I was wiped.  Poor Rach was trying to put together our plan for the next day, but after showering I just wanted sleep.  I vaguely remember her talking, and I made some kind of response to her prodding.  She had to go to an advisor meeting, and by the time she got back I was out for the night.  Yep, I'm basically useless without sleep!

What a fabulous, magical day exploring the world of Harry Potter!