Thursday, November 30, 2017

Harry Potter World!!

When Trav told me he was going to Orlando for work and wanted me to come, I knew I couldn't pass up this opportunity to get something knocked off my bucket list....Harry Potter world. So we packed up our bags, left the kids behind with multiple babysitters and headed for sunny Florida.! Here we are boarding the plane...
 On the plane...
 We documented A LOT so we'd have lots of pictures to show the kids so they wouldn't be as mad at us for leaving them home. Ha ha! I don't know if it worked, but now we have lots of pictures! This was my first time to Florida and there were lakes, or little ponds of water everywhere! VERY different from Utah.
 Our hotel was right next to this guy. I'm still not sure, and probably don't want to find out, what the Whirly Dome is.
 
Here's the first palm tree we were close to
 And the view from our hotel room
 
The first night we got there we just walked around Orlando and over by the parks.There was this place called the Chocolate Emporium. O my. I will talk more about it later but this was inside.


 We woke up bright and early and headed over to Islands of Adventure.


 The first thing we went through was Seuss land! Since Rach is in Seussical the musical right now we tried to get some fun Seuss pictures for her.

 We didn't have time to linger though because there was only one thing on my mind....
 AHHH!! I seriously got chills as we walked into Hogsmede. I was having a major freak out moment of being so excited. It was pure magic! It really was. I felt like I was in the book.
 Everywhere we looked was just better than the next. The Hogwarts Express...
 Honeydukes....
Then we saw Hogwarts!!

 
We got in line for the Harry Potter ride, which means you get to walk through Hogwarts. It was AWESOME! The lines really weren't bad either! We went on this one twice in a row.

 The way to Dumbledoor's office...
 Oh man, it was SO much fun!


 We decided that we should at least check out a little more of the park so we headed over to Jurassic Park. That was fun too, but nothing else even compared to Harry Potter.
 So we hopped on the Hogwarts Express to head over to Universal Studios and Diagon Alley.

 They had everything! The phone booth...
 The triple decker bus...
 And then we saw Gringotts. I'm pretty sure I actually lost my breath.
 And inside was just as magical as the outside! It was just like the movie!!



 I know it's blurry but I rock these glasses.
 The Gringotts ride was by far my favorite. I LOVED it!
 Here's a picture of me taking a picture of the dragon. Ha ha!
 We did take a lot of pictures of the dragon because it was so cool.
 
We went in Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes and they even had Extendable Ears!


 We had lunch at the Leaky Cauldron and tried Butterbeer for the first time.
O. My. Goodness. My life will never be the same.




Again, we decided to go explore the rest of Universal. Again...not as cool as Diagon Alley but I'll give them points for trying. We saw the back to the future car...
 The Kwik E Mart...
 And the Transformer ride was pretty fun too.
 This ride was insane. It totally rattled my brain. Surprisingly, going straight up was not the worst part.
We also saw Jaws, and were right on time for a parade (but we didn't take any pictures of that)

 We hit the Hogwarts Express one more time.
 So we could see this....
 
And drink more of this....
 The next day we got there as soon as it opened and made a bee-line for Gringotts. We pretty much walked right on the first time and had to wait a little while the second time. Thankfully we didn't have to wait in this....

 Friday was a lot more crowded but we had pretty much done all we wanted to do the day before because there was hardly any waiting in line. So we went on the few rides we had missed, and got the ones we loved again. It was perfect.


 Check out this shot!


It was actually kind of nice to take our time this go around. We saw a lot more than we had the day before.


 And it was still totally magical.

We walked through Jurassic Park again....
 On our way to the Superhero land. The Hulk ride was awesome!
 
This is what Trav's dad used to always say...
 Gosh I still really miss him.

We had lunch at the Three Broomsticks and drank more butterbeer. This is me trying to figure out how to do a video. Ha ha!
We went on a ride in cartoonland that got us completely soaked. Like, there wasn't one part of me that wasn't wet...kind of soaked. So I looked like a drowned rat and was freezing the rest of the day. With that Florida humidity you just don't dry out like I'm used to.
 
 We went back to Seussland


Bought some delicious but the most expensive chocolates we've ever eaten from the Chocolate Emporium.

 We just walked around Universal and went on rides as we felt we needed to. No schedule, no rush, nobody was dying of tiredness or hunger or thirst. It was actually really refreshing to just be there with the two of us. But we were saying the whole time "The kids would love this!"
 My face is gigantic in this one.


We saw quite a few turtles.
 And then we ended the night in Hogsmede. Where it all began.

 We did a little shopping and hit the candy store one more time for good measure.
 I was still freezing but had to drink my frozen butterbeer. It was worth it.
 The next morning we bought some souvenirs
 We considered buying these shirts for ourselves...


and then headed to the airport. I had a long day of traveling ahead.
 I came home while Trav stayed there for his work conference. There were a few faces that were excited to see me (and I'll admit I was excited to see them too) They loved their souvenirs.
Even though it wasn't a long trip, it was one of the most magical and most fun trips I've been on. We love you Harry Potter!!