Just a Muggle Girl Visiting a Wizard World
I don't mean to sound cliche or like a little kid, but our trip to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter was literally a dream come true! I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat!
Location: For those who aren't familiar with how WWHP is set up, it's spread out over two parks in Universal Orlando Resort. Hogsmeade opened in 2010 and is located in Island of Adventure. Diagon Alley opened in 2014 and is located in Universal Studios. I definitely recommend getting the Park Hopper Passes and using the Hogwarts Express to go back and forth between both parks while you're there! And I'd suggest at least a full day for each park!
When to visit: Shawn and I picked the PERFECT week to visit Universal Studios. We went Thursday through Saturday of the week after Labor Day. Kids were back in school and it was the weekend before all of Universal's Halloween events started up. The only way it could have been better was if we went Tuesday through Thursday that week instead. But as it was, we walked on every ride Thursday and most of Friday. By Saturday it had started getting fairly crowded.
Ask a worker: Our first day at Universal, we got talking to one of the workers handing out maps and she gave us some really good pointers. She said to download the Universal Wait Times App and base your day off of that. Apparently if the wait for the Minions ride is less than 45 minutes, the park is not very crowded. Y'all...the wait for that ride was 10 minutes!!!! Which apparently meant that there were less than 1,000 people in the park that day and that we pretty much had it to ourselves!
I was ecstatic! Music to my ears! I had worried that it would be so crowded and the lines for everything would be so long that I wouldn't get to see or do anything. But hallelujah that that wasn't the case! Oh and this gal was also able to give us a heads up on the best restaurants in the park and where we could find gluten free food!
I remember telling Shawn that I was fan-girling hard and might pass out haha! To a lot of people this may have seemed average or just like any other theme park, but after growing up reading these books it was almost too awesome to put into words! Half the time I was like someone pinch me, this can't be real.
Ok back to the good stuff! One of the things that I really like about WWHP is how they spared no expense and made everything look so legit. Plus, they were strategic about the way they set up rides so that if you have to wait in line, you get to walk through the castle or the bank and look at all the sets and decor.
You enter through the bank entrance and walk into the big lobby with all the goblins sitting at their really tall desks. The goblins looked so real! And they talk and interact with you as well. Kinda cool kinda creepy!
Then you get a group picture taken in the "security booth" before moving on to a room where you're greeted by Bill Weasley and a goblin. They tell a little story, explain what's going on and usher you into giant elevators that take you almost 9 miles below ground to the vaults of Gringotts. You're handed 3D glasses and loaded into a cart with 15 other people. The ride takes you along the tracks of Gringotts as you try to escape with Harry, Ron and Hermione. The Dragon, Voldemort and Bellatrix also make appearances. It's so cool!
The other thing you want to be sure and do first thing in the morning is ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey; an awesome ride inside the Hogwarts castle. (This is why I recommend doing the Park Hopper Pass: so you can go back and forth as much as you want and ride rides when wait times are short).
So I thought that I loved the Gringotts ride...which I did, but the Forbidden Journey was even better! The entrance to the ride was inside Hogwarts so you walked into the castle and oh my gosh. It was every bit as epic as I thought it would be! It looked like it was straight out of the movies. Everything was perfect...from the Portrait of the Fat Lady to the sorting hat and the entrance to Dumbledore's office.
This ride is set up so efficiently, I was shocked! Groups of four people walk along a continuously moving belt and load into the carts, so the loading process is super quick. The ride takes you through a mix of scenes and settings in and around Hogwarts...you even get to play Quidditch with Harry, nearly get smashed by the Whomping Willow, fight off Dementors and unfortunately see Aragog and his spider friends. Yuck!
Oh, I also recommend getting some butterbeer fairly early on for a few reasons; lines start getting really long later in the day and you can try one version (cold) now and a different one (frozen) later! So delicious!
Shopping: Shawn and I looked at all the shops just to check it out, but the only souvenirs we bought were treats from Honeydukes (the fudge is AMAZING!) and a Christmas ornament to continue our yearly tradition! The merchandise was all really cool, but way overpriced in my opinion. So we just wandered through the shops and soaked it all in! (I will admit that the interactive wands that cast spells are pretty cool and if money is no object I would say get one!)
Dining: We really wanted to eat at The Leaky Cauldron and The Three Broomsticks, but unfortunately they didn't have anything gluten free. So we ate turkey legs and other things outside of WWHP, but we definitely still walked through those two restaurants and checked 'em out!
I could probably go on and on and on about how amazing this trip was, but the post would be forever long! So I'll just leave it at this and if y'all have any questions or want to know more you can email me! Have a fabulous Wednesday!
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