Harry Potter Land!

It is possible I was a little excited about Harry Potter land. If you want to go here, go on a weekday at 8 am. We did the whole thing including the rides twice each before breakfast. 

Apparently it is always winter here. This might be odd in the summer. When you first walk in there is the Hogwarts train. They have an inside the train where you can pay to have your picture taken as if you were on the train. We did not, maybe if we had costumes...

Us at the entrance to Harry Potter Land

Hogwarts Express

After the train are a bunch of shops. Some real, some fake. There is the joke shop (left), the candy shop (right), a wand shop, and a 2 big souvenir stores. After the stores you see the castle! So exciting. 

Castle!

The first ride we did was the Hippogriff roller coaster. The line was said 5 min. Most of that was actually walking there. The ride was fun, but very short. We went on it a second time and walked a lot slower through the line to actually look at all the neat things. 

Hagrid's Hosuse

The beginning of the roller coaster. 

Selfie at the end of the roller coaster.

The next ride was in the castle. I don't remember the name, but it's a 3D ride moving on an actual track. Like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride meets roller coaster meets 3D movie. I liked it. The path to the ride was long, the line was nearly empty, but so far. We went on this one twice too, the second time we let a bunch of people past us just so we could look at everything. The castle was very well done. I loved how they did the talking paintings. I tried to get a video, it isn't the best due to lack of patience. 

Sorting Hat

Mandrake Root

 At the end of the ride there was a shop. I finally found a snowglobe with a castle in it. It was absurdly overpriced so I didn't buy it. I took a video instead. 

After we had finished all the rides we started looking at the stores. I tried on official wizarding robes from Ravenclaw of course. We also looked at the wand shop. The wands are interactive in the park. So at certain places in the park they actually do things. Might have to try this out someday. You can get into the wand shop normally though the door, or you can do the "wand experience". When we got to this point the wait for this was 55 min, so we didn't wait. Later we came back and decided if it was less than 20 min we would wait. It was exactly that, but ended up being more like 10. I wouldn't consider it worth it. You go in a room with a crowd of people, and only one person gets to go through the picking experience. 

At this point I was regretting not eating breakfast. We got a Butterbeer to share while we made our way to the Three Broomsticks. I was expecting lunch, but they were still serving breakfast. Lucky! I didn't even know they had breakfast. I got the full English breakfast, which was surprisingly good for theme park food. 

After eating we decided to look at the rest of the park. There was a 60 min studio tour. I thought it would be nice to sit for an hour, so we did that. The 3D rides on the tour were not that good; mostly the car just jerked around a lot and hurt my back. The tour itself was interesting. We saw a bunch of sets where movies were made. 

Oh no! A Plane crash!

Universal Studios has a lot of shows. Which is nice because you can rest a little. We tried to see all of them. There was a special effects demonstration during which they lit a guy on fire. There was a Hollywood animals show that had trained chickens. I didn't pictures of those, but they were both enjoyable. I took one picture of the set of the Waterworld stunt show. The plot was ok, but the stunts were fun. We sat directly behind the wet zones seats hoping to not get too wet. It worked. The area to the left of the picture has no dry zones... The people in the show were very good at spraying water with their jet skis, mostly over there. Towards the end of the show a fake plane crashes in the water and soaks everyone over there. 

Next we headed to the lower part of the park to go on The Mummy roller coaster and the Jurassic Park water ride. The Mummy ride is great. The souvenir picture timing on it is perfect. They don't let you take pictures of your pictures, but my expression was of complete shock. We went on it again right away trying out the single rider line to avoid the 15 min wait. We ended up getting seated right next to each other anyway. 

After this we went over to the Jurassic Park ride. On the way there I was followed by an Anubis guy on stilts. Steven tried to video this rather than warn me that I was being followed... We did the single rider line again. This time I was right in front of Steven. This was also a good ride, the end is mildly terrifying. 

There are a few more rides mostly 3D movies in a moving seat, not worth mentioning. I doubt I would go on them again.