A Very Potter Vacation

I recently got back from my dream vacation to Universal Studios/Magical World of Harry Potter Theme park in Orlando! My friend, Meg, and I went for four days and three nights. We stayed in a hotel that was practically connected to the park. We could walk to the park and be there in minutes. Though, we almost always took a free water taxi instead, because well, boat vs. walking. Boat wins.

We spent two days at the Islands of Adventures theme park (where Harry is) and one day at the main Universal Studios park. Our fourth day was spent at the pool. Most of our first day was spent with Harry. Meghan was such a trooper, letting me fan girl out at every minute detail. These aren’t even close to all my photos. I just have other things to do today, like write book reviews…And I am only focusing on the Harry Potter part of the vacation. (There were also the Simpsons, Transformers, The Mummy, E.T., Jurassic Park, Marvel Super heroes, etc.) Meg also talked me into doing a very scary fright night at the park, in which the park was open late at night, and covered with zombies and scary people jumping out at you on your way to haunted houses.

While I absolutely love roller coasters, haunted houses terrify me and I only went into one of them: the Walking Dead house, because I am also a fan of that show –and we figured if we were going to miss the premiere, we might as well be in a Walking Dead haunted house while we were.

Any way, we shopped at Hogsmeade! We saw the Hogwarts Express. We rode on hypogriffs and dragons. We toured Hogwarts and went on a broomstick ride. (These were the rides!) We ate at the Three Broomsticks! We actually ate there twice, once for lunch and once for our English breakfast that was part of our vacation package. We listened to a Hogwarts choir. We drank butter beer and pumpkin juice. The butter bear tasted like a creamy cream soda slushy. I actually waited in line for it twice because it was so good (and I’ve had other versions before –they did not compete with this at all).

I got a wand! It was picked out for me based off of what my birthday is (and it’s made from ebony). I bought a quidditch t-shirt and a travel mug. We got candy from Honeydukes and looked at all the jokes at Zonko’s. We saw the moving hog’s head in the Hog’s Head bar. And this sounds weird, but one of my favorite parts of the theme park was the bathrooms. Inside the bathrooms at the Harry Potter part of the park, there’s a sound recording of Moaning Myrtle talking to you!

And here are the lovely pictures (by the way, the pink fluffy thing is a pygmy puff):

Really, words and pictures cannot even begin to describe what I was feeling when I was there. There’s something purely magical (no pun intended) about being able to walk in the world of your favorite books. It’s one thing to read about it, and another to see it in a movie, but to physically walk through Hogwarts was nothing short of magic for me. If you are a fan, I highly recommend the whole experience. I would most definitely spend the money to go back again.