After our days at Disney, we spent one day doing Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. We had a choice of the van picking us up at insanely early or about an hour later. We were stuck though, because if we chose the later time we would miss park opening. So we chose the insanely early time, counting on traffic and other stops making the trip about 45 minutes long. We were surprised when we were the only pick-up and it took about 10 minutes to get there! ha! I know the guy thought we were insane to want to show up so early!
Even though it was a good hour before official park opening, we headed to the gates of Islands of Adventure, hoping to be first in line to visit Harry Potter World. Imagine our surprise when they let us go right in to the first gates of Islands of Adventure! We soon realized that this was just shops and we assumed they would stop us at the next entrance, but we would try anyway! We showed our tickets and they let us in. We couldn't believe our luck! We realized they were letting their resort guests in early, so at the next stop, they asked for our resort bands. We told them we didn't have that, so they asked to see our tickets. To our shock, they told us to go ahead in! We were thrilled!!! It was like a little fun blessing from God to start our day.
We headed straight for Harry Potter World. The theming is on par with anything Disney has ever done! Totally immersive and awesome. We were able to do ALL of Harry Potter World including the shops before the park even officially opened.
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| The chocolate frogs! |
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| Three Broomsticks Restaurant |
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| We did sample the butterbeer. It was tasty but very sweet. |
After knocking out the major blockbuster before the park even opened, we were at our leisure to do the rest of the rides. We did some of the water rides and man that was a mistake. We were SOAKED. This might be good if it were July, but it was April and I was freezing. We spent the money on two rounds in the people dryer and were still miserable. Justin finally just bought me new shorts. Islands of Adventure does not play with their water rides. Only ride if you want to get soaking wet. (even the log flume which is relatively tame at some parks). We also did all of the DC comic portion of the park and enjoyed the Hulk, Spiderman, etc. We are both roller coaster people, so we really enjoy Islands of Adventure for the thrill rides.
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| Help! A dinosaur is attacking! |
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| Yeah, they try extra hard to get you wet. |
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| Justin's in the doghouse. :-( |
We had ridden every attraction we cared to at Islands of Adventure by noon, so we headed over to Universal Studios. I've got to say that I was not that impressed with Universal Studios. It just seemed rundown. BUT there are some great coasters there as well, so we will be going back. Plus they are doing some refurbishments that should enhance the property. The mild rides we road were Shrek 3D, Jaws, E.T. (pure nostalgia-I hope they never get rid of this one!), and Twister. On Twister, Justin's sunglasses were literally blown off the top of his head. They had to stop the ride cycle so a coast member could get them out of the set. We rode the two big coasters numerous times. Mummy Returns was WAY more awesome than I expected it to be. We were done with everything we wanted to see at Universal Studios in plenty of time to go out to their City Walk and have a nice dinner at Bob Marley's. Then we went BACK to Islands of Adventure to explore til closing. We had more than enough time to do everything we wanted to do at the two parks. It was really nice. :-)
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| JAWS! Glad we got to see this before it was demolished to make way for a new attraction. |
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| We had a fun talk with the conductor of the Hogwartz Express back in HP World |
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