The Harry Potter Theme Park Experience, or, I Enjoy Being A Dork

[chanaleh]

This past weekend, jessruth and I flew to Orlando just to go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

There are pictures!


* Yes, we are big dorks, and enjoy it very much, SO THERE.
* Yes, it was awesome. Small, but extremely well done (and quite immersive, apart from, y'know, the vast crowds of Muggles). I came away with the feeling that what it really needed was to be used as the setting for a Harry Potter LARP.
* The Hogwarts Experience is absolutely worth flying to Florida for. We rode it three times over our two days.
* The Dragon Challenge is a worthy coaster.
* As in actual Hogsmeade, the majority of the fun is really in the shopping.
* They sell about 500 different enamel pins, including two sizes of emblem badges for each of the four Houses. But "Prefect" badges? Come only in Gryffindor and Slytherin. Seriously? They don't think there's a ripe market of wanna-be Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff prefects?
* Theme-park food is abysmal. The Three Broomsticks had the best food of the weekend, but that is really faint praise.
* As in actual Hogsmeade, Butterbeer is excellent.
* Frozen Butterbeer is still excellent even when it is THIRTY-NINE DEGREES IN FRICKIN' FLORIDA.
* Regarding the Every-Flavor Beans: Jess soldiered on past Pepper and (we thought) Baked Potato, through Dirt and (we thought) Rotten Egg, before finally being defeated by Soap. Soap!
* The Dr. Seuss section of the park is almost as awesomely immersive as the Harry Potter section.
* Universal's Islands of Adventure park as a whole is way more interesting and well-put-together than the Universal Studios park, which is meh by comparison. We spent a full day and a half in the former, got bored after half a day in the latter.
* Take the MEARS shuttle from the airport, and book your return shuttle to the airport in advance. Really, just do it.
* Next time, we are darn well going somewhere with Actual Hot Weather.
* Flying out of New York made total sense, but booking the trip so as to get only 2 hours with justom on either end of the Orlando segment was... dumb. (But soon he'll be in Boston to spend the rest of his winter break, so yay.) Also, fly into as well as out of LGA next time, because JFK is like ten times as far away.
* Being as taking 2 days off work has meant doing 2 days' work per day since returning, I need to go to bed now.

Comments

[cmouse.livejournal.com]

Cool. I'll be there in a few weeks!

[wntrrvn.livejournal.com]

Great pics. Going to have to go so "the kids" can see. ;)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Uh-huh!! :-D

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun!

[c1.livejournal.com]

:D

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Glad you had such a good time!

[suntop.livejournal.com]

I'm going in February just for this (I was just there October 2009 when they were building it)!

Did you ride the Hulk coaster? That was my first loop-de-loop coaster and it was AWESOME!

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Hufflepuff Prefect = stage manager, y/y?

[eudociainboston.livejournal.com]

I have not been to Orlando since I lived there ten (good god)years ago. I'm glad to hear Islands of Adventure is still fun. People don't realize that central Florida can get cold in the winter for a few weeks. We had a few nights below freezing and it was hell on the citrus growers.

[vettecat.livejournal.com]

Very cool - glad you had fun! Thanks for sharing!

[besamim.livejournal.com]

Nifty! I knew Orlando as the home of Disneyworld (which I visited when I was five and then six) and the Epcott Center, but I didn't realize it now had other, non-Disney amusement parks. Housing costs in Orlando must be tremendous.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Orlando has had non-Disney parks almost as long as it's had Disney -- we went to Sea World in 1978, for instance.

Universal Studios opened in 1990. While it's nowhere near as sprawling as the Disney empire, Wikipedia says Universal's resort is the second-biggest in Orlando.

No idea about housing costs, but tourism is certainly Orlando's main industry.