Universal and Harry Potter

I'm home.  I have blisters upon blisters and blisters under calluses.  The heat and humidity were seriously high which resulted in  HOT!  We'd walk outside at eight or nine in the morning and within fifteen minutes sweat would bead on my shins.  I have aching feet and a new respect for 'happy all the time' theme park cast members. And all I can say is thank God lovebug season hadn't started, though I had a pair land on me during our last day at Disney!

Overall, my family and I had a really fun vacation.  But into each cramped hotel space some crankiness must evolve:

--I had a list of cranky triggers (airplane etiquette, line jumping, can't follow directions, etc), but opted out of posting it, since that isn't what this post is all about.

We arrived at our hotel on Saturday and as soon as we unpacked we promptly took the boat to Islands of Adventure.  Though our main goal was the Harry Potter area, we planned our path to take us on some of our favorite rides.  Up first was The Hulk--a fast, roaring, corkscrewing, upside-down looping rollercoaster.  One of the best perks of staying at a Universal hotel (we were at the Portofino) are the complementary Express Line passes.  Trust me, these are even better than Disney's Fast Pass system.  And I planned it that way since we were at Universal over Labor Day weekend and it was crowded!  It took longer to navigate the path to the ride than it did standing in those Express lines. We rode the coaster three times and I blacked out all three times!  Yes, I did vaguely wonder how many capillaries I busted in my brain during this ride, but did it stop me??  Nope!  That is a seriously fast ride! 

We rode Storm Force Accelatron, Spiderman and Jurassic Park before tackling Harry Potter.  We opted out of Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Fallswater ride along with Popeye's Bilge water raft ride.
Too bad no one bothered to tell me how soaking wet I was going to get doing the Jurassic Park ride.

We knew the Wizarding World of Harry Potter would be crowded, but WOW! I hate to imagine how packed the place was this summer when overall attendance was high!  We decided to wait in line for the main HP adventure.  It wasn't too bad--only an hour.  The line wound through Hogwarts (and Prof. Sprout's greenhouse).  There were tons of things to see and listen to that if you would miss if you went to the front of the line.  For those of you who haven't seen or heard of Harry Potter, I'd like the address of the rock you're living under.  Even if you haven't read the books, you would still 'get' the ride if you saw the first three movies.  Don't forget to ride the Hippogriff--yes, it's a kiddie rollercoaster, but it takes you through Hagrid's forest and you see his house, plus Buckbeak.  The Dragon Challenge is the new name for Dueling Dragons, a double coaster that passes by each other during the ride--awesome!  Ride both sides--Fire and Ice--as they are slightly different rides.

We toured the shops, drank butterbeer (wickedly good stuff), bought a chocolate frog and a pygmy puff.  All of this was accomplished between two and six on our first day.  Unlike many of the Disney parks, Universal usually closes at seven.  We ate dinner at Bubba Gumps and turned in relatively early. 

The next day we hit the Universal Studios park.  First up on the list of rides as we entered the park was Rock it!, a rollercoaster that takes you straight up (and yes, you feel like you will slide out of the seat).  It looks scary, but it was tame by the Hulk's standard, though cool in the sense that you get to pick the music you want to listen to while riding. We rode virtually every ride in the park twice (I could list them, but I got tired of clicking the links etc.) Let's just say that they are all wicked cool!!  We left for an early dinner at a restaurant in our hotel. 

Day three we mixed up both parks, but got an early pass--hotel perk--to Harry Potter.  What had taken us an hour to navigate to the ride took us ten minutes--and that was simply walking through the line maze.  We redid many of our faves and by the end of the day I had my first batch of blisters.  We ate dinner at UNO's Pizzeria.  There used to be one in Tulsa, but it closed quite a few years ago.

That's it for now--I'll continue the vacation saga on Friday's blog when we switched over to the Disney parks!

TTFN ('ta-ta for now!' --Tigger quote)