Day One!
We chose Universal as our day one park since we were doing both parks in one day and wanted to get the long day out of the way first while we were still fresh with energy. It was a long day for sure. Here was our original plan:
This plan was extremely ambitious as I knew from all the red flags I got from touringplans.com when I tried to enter it all in. We tried to see highlights of both parks but it was a busy day with lots and lots of walking to hit everything. I will update the plan as I take you through our day.
I was a little nervous because I didn't know anything about Universal besides watching a few videos here and there. Parking was a breeze (we did preferred because of Scott's dad) and we were through security in no time.
It was fun walking through City Walk to enter the park and we stop even had time to stop for a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
For some reason, I was also worried about getting our tickets from the will call kiosks but it literally took two minutes and we had them in our hands. Super easy! We also arrived about an hour before the park opened so there was no line or really anyone around yet.
It was a beautiful morning!
Universal Studios had the early entry that day so we started at Islands of Adventure to get a jump on the crowds.
Our first stop was Spider-Man, which everyone rode.
It was a wild ride but everyone liked it! So far so good.
Up next was Reign of Kong: Skull Island. We all walked the queue which was very creepy (sometimes pitch black) with lots of....you guessed it, skulls. We had also watched a video of this ride back at home on youtube and Michael originally said he was too scared to ride but he hopped on along with Anna. They had a family waiting room at the ride loading area for rider switches to wait, we loved this even though we never had to switch riders (just waiters) at this park. It made life a tad easier for the whole group to stay together and reunite right after the ride before exiting.
Watching the boats on Jurassic River Adventure.
After Kong was Jurassic Park River Adventure which everyone went on also. It was a really neat ride although the final drop gets you soaked! Brynn was very upset after it, mostly because of the getting wet part. It was a very intense drop, which was surprising after a relatively tame rest of the ride. The ride operator was yelling at someone to put down their go pro right before we dropped so it distracted us right before the big hill- it was a big surprise for me! Way bigger than splash mountain!
We stopped at the Raptor Encounter on our way to Hogwarts, which I highly recommend. My lines app said it had a long wait but even though the line was long, the groups were big and it moved quickly. The photographer took a ton of photos on my phone and it was really fun. The raptor was Blue (like from the movie) and there was a character dressed as a trainer who interacted with you and the dinosaur.
As you can see from Brynn and Anna's faces, they were not too sure about it but were fine in the end.
We decided to skip the Jurassic Park Discovery Center as it was a bit much to try and navigate a stroller inside although we peeked in for a minute.
Up next: Hogsmeade!!!
It was so fun exiting the Jurassic Park section and having the castle appear right then. Wow! It looked so cool!!!
This bridge is a very popular spot for photos and also a busy area as it is the only way into Hogsmeade from this side. We had to take pictures!
We headed right into the queue for Forbidden Journey whose wait time wasn't too terrible at this point in the day, maybe 30 minutes? It went by really quickly.
Although they are not in any photos, this is another ride the girls and Dave and Margie stayed with us in the queue and then waited in the switch room while we rode. It was nice because they held our bags for us and got to watch a bit of the movie.
As for the ride itself...wow! It was wild! I had never experienced anything like that before. I was worried about it being too intense but I didn't want to close my eyes for fear of missing something. I would have loved to ride it twice, such a fun story!
Flight of the Hippogriff was up next on our list but it was down as we were exiting the castle so we decided to check back on our way through at the end of the night.
After the ride, we headed into Hogsmeade for lunch at the Three Broomsticks. It was a long line for lunch and we waited for maybe twenty minutes to order our food. Afterward we took our food out to the courtyard behind the restaurant and it was not crowded at all. It was lovely to have a bit of a break from the crowds and enjoy our delicious meal and our butterbeers, of course.
The girls had a little freedom here to play while we finished our meals and took turns running to the restroom. It was perfect.
All the signage around the Wizarding World was true to its English roots with Pram Parking for strollers and the lift for the elevator.
We left Hogsmeade had headed towards Seuss landing for some rides a bit more the girls speed. If there was time, I thought Michael might like the Poseidon's Fury show because of Percy Jackson but we decided to skip it on our way past.
We visited the Caro-Seuss-el which the girls and Michael loved.
(Michael thought these looked like butts, hehe)
We also visited the Cat in the Hat dark ride but skipped the One Fish, Two Fish ride because of our snafu with our first time in the land, the High in the Sky Trolley Ride. It had a ridiculously long wait (30 minutes maybe?) and then we got STUCK on the ride!! Way up in the air! It was actually a great time to people watch and the weather was fine at the time so it was not a big deal at all. However, after we got off we got a free bottle of water and.....ONE....EXPRESS.....PASS....TO....ANY....RIDE!!!! Worth it!!!
After Seuss landing, we ran back to Hogsmeade station to board the Hogwarts express to head over to Universal Studios.
I loved riding the train! I really felt like I was in the stories.
I had reserved our time for Jimmy Fallon but I panicked when I couldn't find the time thingie in the app. I did some quick problem solving and we were on our way. The virtual line was really awesome, and it worked so smoothly. It gave us a bit of downtime to not wait in a line for once and we were on the attraction in no time.
Plush, Hashtag the panda! Everyone was taking selfies with him.
Race through New York was really fun and everyone rode this one besides Dave and Margie.
It felt like the park was getting so busy at this point in the afternoon. They were trying to get everything set up for the concert and parade that evening and it really affected the crowd flow. We had Despicable me on the list next but the wait was something like 40 minutes so we skipped it and opted for Shred 4-D instead which we only waited about 10 minutes for. The kids loved it and it was nice to sit for a bit. Dave and Margie sat this one out as well. Afterward, the wait for E.T. was also very high and we were just getting tired of waiting so we skipped it in favor of visiting Springfield for some beers and donuts to rejuvenate.
Michael definitely knew he wanted one of those big pink donuts thanks to all the youtube videos he watches so we shared three between all of us plus a Duff beer (just the adults of course even though it looks like Brynn has one in the photo below). It was pretty good!
At this point, Dave and Margie decided to take a taxi back to the condo. It was late afternoon and had been a long day already. We let them go and headed towards the Simpson ride which had another long wait. We skipped it and Kang & Kodo's Twirl and Hurl to do Men in Black. We were putting our stuff in the lockers when Scott realized he had left the rental van key with his mom. So he left us at the ride and ran back to catch up with his parents to get the key. It was lucky he did that as his parents had lost each other by that point but Scott helped them get back on track. Men in Black was an awesome ride and it was a fairly short wait. Even the girls liked it!
When Scott rejoined us, we finally headed over to Diagon Alley! First, we stopped at the Knight bus, and also waved at Kreacher in Grimmauld Place.
And then...we were in!
Walking through the brick wall and seeing Diagon Alley for the first time was awesome. It was so cool. It's own little world.
Michael's first stop was at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes where he wanted to adopt his pygmy puff.
Felix Felicis!
His name is Carl. The girls got mini ones: Sweetie and Cutie.
It's so awesome!!!
Up next was Ollivanders wand shop. We walked right into a selection ceremony and it was so neat. I had goosebumps and almost cried for the girl who got chosen to be fitted for her wand. Her family was just over the moon about it, it was really special. I had not expected to do the experience, I thought you could just shop if you wanted but I was glad we did it.
Trying to pick out wands was a huge task. All those tiny boxes and you have no idea. The employees were really helpful and all the kids got wands. Michael got Dumbledore's and the girls got two that met their approval.
We decided to go ahead and use our free express pass for Gringotts before dinner. It was over an hour wait so we were pretty tickled to express pass it, otherwise, we were going to wait and do it the very last thing to hopefully experience a shorter wait time. We had a little bit of a hard time with the locker situation as we had to pay extra for a large locker since the small ones couldn't accommodate the wand boxes. Geeze, Universal!
Escape from Gringotts was awesome and totally unlike anything I'd ever done before. It was more rollar-coaster-y than Forbidden Journey but also had a lot of the same elements with the 3D screens. It was very thrilling and although the girls met the height requirement and we took them on it, it was maybe too much for them (no tears though).
We ate supper at the Leaky Cauldron which was surprisingly not busy at all. I would not recommend eating at both Wizarding World places on the same day as they had similar foods. I got a sausage dish that was really good but also had lots of the same flavors I had at lunch. Neither of the kids ate hardly any of their meals, luckily we just bought one for the girls to share.
After supper, we explored Knockturn Alley and Michael tried a few spells with his wand. They were tricky and I wish we had more time built in for everyone to try, it seems like a really fun thing to do and there were lots of places to try them.
Brynn was not a fan of Knockturn Alley. Turns out our stellar parenting strategy of making her go on scary rides all day was backfiring on us. In her defense, it was really dark in there!
Luckily, ice cream from Florean Fortescue solved all her problems. The butterbeer ice cream is SO GOOD! This was another shop that was not busy at all, I was glad to not wait in a huge line.
It was really fun as we enjoyed our treat together just soaking in the ambiance of Diagon Alley. The kids enjoyed looking in the animal shop and we took a lap around the whole place to look in every window. I just wanted to bottle it all up. I was sad to leave, I wanted to stay there forever. It was too dark at this point for any good photos but very pretty at night.
We took the Hogwarts Express from Kings Cross Station back to Hogsmeade to exit the park. Kings Cross Station was awesome and also no wait at this time of the evening.
On the way back through Hogsmeade it was much less busy and we had a chance to actually look in the windows of the stores. It was amazing to me how much larger the Diagon Alley stores were compared to Hogsmeade. I wish we had more time to explore Hogsmeade, it was almost impossible due to the crowds during the day and we were out of time at the end of the night.
As we were passing through, the Wizarding night show had begun on the Hogwarts Castle so there was a huge crowd in front of the Flight of Hippogriff so we just forgot about trying to ride it. We tried to watch a few minutes of the nighttime show but Brynn was too scared of the dark and noises. We enjoyed a nice walk back through Islands of Adventure and to our car and by the time we got back to the condo we were POOPED!
It was a long day but we really enjoyed Universal Studios. We felt like we did it fast and furious, trying to hit everything we could but still missing a lot. There is literally no way we could have done everything in both parks in one day but we felt like we got in some good highlights. It was definitely a good use of our tickets and I hope we can come back some day.
Next up is Hollywood Studios Day!
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