The Wizarding World...

For my birthday this year Jasey bought me two tickets to Universal Studios.  I’ve been trying to convince Nene to get down here so we could go together (which was the original plan before she moved to South Carolina).  :(  But as we know plans don’t always work out the way we would hope.  Since the tickets were going to expire the end of the year and I was going to start getting into lots of blackout dates with the holidays, mom and I decided to head on up to Orlando and go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter!!! Yippeeeeeee!

(I will try to keep my excitement to a minimum, but I really can't promise anything)

We drove up Saturday night after mom got off of work, checked into our hotel which was literally right around the corner.  It took longer to walk to our car then it did to drive the car to the park.  We went to City Place that night and had a couple Cheeseburgers in Paradise.  Before we were Potter Watchers we were (and still are) Parrot Heads.  Next day we got up earlier than we expected to, checked out and got to the park before 9:00.  We went in and headed right back to Harry Potter!!!

  

Entering Hogsmeade!!!!

I proceeded to spend the next few hours gasping and squealing and jumping up and down clapping my hands (I actually did this a few times).  I took tons of pictures, it's a good thing that everything is digital now, I would have been lugging around rolls and rolls...and rolls of film.  I took more pictures than any person approaching 32 should ever admit to taking at the Harry Potter park...and then I took some more.
There are no pictures of this but I cried like a 12 year old, love crazed, Beatles fan.  Well, that may be a bit of a stretch, mom probably would have walked away from me at that point, but there were some teary eyed moments involved during all the gasping, squealing, jumping, picture taking madness.

Oh, I had so much fun.

Hogwarts!!!  It's so wonderful!

 The park was pretty empty and we weren't sure how quickly it would fill up so we headed straight back to Hogwarts for the Forbidden Journey ride.  If you look really closely at the sign it says there is a '10 minute wait', awesome!!!  We walked right in and traveled through the castle.  The dungeons, the greenhouses, classrooms, hallways, common rooms and offices.  I of course took pictures of almost everything the whole way through, squealing and holding up the people behind me.  There was actually a guy in front of me taking pictures of everything too so I thanked him for making me feel like not as much of a doofus.  Then we hoped on our brooms and flew off into the air (see, told you, big dork, that's me)

Pumpkin Juice and Butterbeer outside of Ollivander's

 After the ride we headed back into Hogsmeade and decided to stand in line at Ollivander's to see a wand choosing it's wizard.  We got a Butterbeer and a Pumpkin Juice while we were waiting.  Yummy.

Hogwarts Express

 The rest of the day we wandered around and visited all the shops, had lunch at the Three Broomsticks and tried to catch a ride on the Hogwarts Express.  We went back to Hogwarts one more time and with a wait of only 20 minutes this time I took another ride.  It was even better the second time.  Yes, I squealed some more, laughed out loud and clapped my hands.

Lemon Drop!

Mom and I had an amazing time and were not in the least bit disappointed.  Every little detail was thought through and put into place.  The only problem we had was deciding which trinkets to buy.  I can't wait to go back (maybe with Nene this time ;)  and even if you aren't as big of a Harry Potter dweeb as I am you will still have a great time! 

Check out the rest of my pics, click on '2011' then 'WWHP'   web.me.com/campbell4158