Hogwarts and Hollywood Day 2

Nothing quite starts the day like having waffles at Disney :)

After eating Mickey we jumped in a cab and headed to Universal Studios. It began to rain as we waited to enter the park but we didn't mind. We excitedly rushed through the gates to find the section of the park for Harry Potter. You enter through Hogsmeade...via the Hogwarts Express train that greets you as you enter.

They have different shops as mentioned in the books and some that are from Diagon Ally such as Ollivander's Wand shop. Our first stop was to Zonko's joke shop. They had fun things to buy such as the extendable ears that Fred and George create...and they really work.

Next we found ourselves in Honeydukes sweet shop...were we bought Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans and a giant Chocolate frog, which includes a wizard card. It was fun and weird to get to be in the world of Harry Potter after reading all the books.

Our next stop was to go to Ollivander's Wand shop. They do a presentation where they pick someone from the small group allowed in at one time. We then see which wand chooses this young witch or wizard.

With Ollivander :)

 We were ushered into a shop were we could buy wands and other Harry Potter items. They even were selling these:

Seeing as it was still raining and we were running out of shops we went to the Hogwarts Castle to check out the ride. I was sad we didn't have to wait in line to get on the ride because of everything we wanted to see while in line. We did stop to take a few pictures along the way.

Which house is winning?

Can I go see the Head master?

The pictures really moved like in the movie!

It was a great ride and one of the most all around experiential rides I have ever been on. You feel like you are really flying on a broom...to the point that my legs felt shaky when getting off the ride. Very fun! We were hungry by this point...Mickey only last so long :) And went to the Three Broomsticks for lunch (and poked our heads into the Hogs Head Pub as well)

We ordered a yummy lunch and got to try Butterbeer...which is like cream soda flavored with Butterscotch. I did try some and liked the flavor but the fizz is always the turn off for me (if you don't know I don't like pop at all). I drank some Pear Cider which was delightful and later bought some Pumpkin juice to try too.

Before leaving we had to get a picture of the wanted poster (which also moved in true wizarding fashion). Feeling defeated by the rain (and I was FREEZING) we headed back to the resort to change into dry clothes and while leaving Universal the sun came out. So we jumped on a bus at the resort and went to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon. We arrived just in time for the Pixar Parade.

We rounded out the afternoon with the Beauty and the Beast show followed by the Indiana Jones Show. We even had time for a couple walk through exhibits and saw their evening water and light performance. We got to stay later at the park because we were staying at a Disney resort which gave us time to see The Little Mermaid show, Muppet's in 3D, and do a couple of rides.

From Mary Poppins

Muppet's 3D please :)

We saw almost everything we wanted to see and knew we had time later in the week to come back.