Saturday, October 27, 2012

Disney World & Florida - Day 2

Warning: Amusement park travelogue ahead. Proceed with caution!

Day 2 found us at Universal Studios Florida.  We started the day with a 20 minute walk from the parking garage to Universal's Islands of Adventure.  We purchased our day-pass to Universal (Jordan and Morgan went with a 4-day pass that they got a great deal on) and then we headed right on over to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

I was super impressed with this area of the park.  From our pictures, you can see that when you are in Hogsmeade or Hogwarts you can't see any other parts of the park.  It really makes you feel like you are in a different place.

Next, butterbeer.  Specifically the iced butterbeer. This stuff was fantastic.  It was a root beer meets butter rum slurpee.  I can see why the Hogwarts kids loved that stuff.

We rode the roller coasters in this area and then went on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (the ride in Hogwarts).  This ride is what the future of amusement park rides will be like.  It was a great mix of 4D elements and was really fun.

We have very few pictures from the rest of our day, but after Harry Potter, we continued on around the lagoon.  Ada took both Alison and I on the Jurassic Park ride (ps. don't wear you hat on this ride.  Some d-bag right in front of this put her hat on as the ride was moving and they had to shut it down, and then they couldn't get it started again for a long time...).

We ate an overpriced lunch near Jurassic Park before moving on through the park to the Incredible Hulk.  After that, while Lyla napped, I took Ada and Kate to Suess Landing with all of the kid rides.

We then departed from Universal Islands of Adventures and made our way over to Universal Studios Florida.  The kids loved Shrek 4D, the parade and Woody Woodpecker's Kidzone, while we had fun on the Mummy (we walked on the ride 3x right in a row), MIB and the Rip Ride Rockit Roller Coaster (which was actually a bit disappointing).

We left a lot of things undone, but when you've only got one day in the park with tired kids and tired legs, we were satisfied with the things that we were able to squeeze in.

Coming up: Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park.

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