Universal's Harry Potter Park

20th of February, Friday

Today was my sister's birthday. So I celebrated it by going to an amusement park I wanted to visit since forever: Orlando's Universal Park. Stephanie and Betty took us all the way there, for which we were really thankful for. Before we headed to Orlando though, we visited a park for manatees. Neither me or Saki have ever seen a "sea-cow" before. It was early in the morning, so it was cold. The manatees were sleeping in the river. The rain forest and the liveliness of the place was beautiful. I've never seen manatees before, but I always wanted to. We couldn't really take good pictures of them, but we did see a lot. There were some babies too. I loved how relaxed they were.
  From the manatee park, we went on to Orlando. Stephanie and Betty dropped us at the gates.
From there, we were on our own, but excited as ever. There were some problems with Saki's tickets, but it all worked out in the end.
  As we later found out, we entered from the Islands of Adventure part, and not the Universal Studios. Our first ride was on a 3D Spider-man attraction. We got 3D glasses, but it was all 4D. They took us through a story with Spider-man and several villains. We got tossed around, sprayed at with water, scared and excited. It was really fun, but it was just the beginning.
  We soon decided to head for the Harry Potter Hogsmeade village, the part we were most anxious to see.  Because it was at the end of the park, we had to walk through some pretty interesting themes, like Dr Seuss and Atlantis. But finally, we arrived to the fake snow covered little houses.
  In the magical land of Harry Potter, Hogsmeade is a little wizard village next to Hogwarts, with a lot of attractions. Such as a sweet-shops, wand-shop, restaurant (more like tavern), post-office, and a train station.
  And everything at Universal was perfect! The details, the sights, the smells, it all fit. We were anxious to try the butter-beer, a famous (non-alcoholic) drink in the wizarding world. Turns out, it's a very very sweet soda. I loved it, Saki threw it out. We couldn't stop wondering, how they achieved such a perfect replica of J. K. Rowling's creation. There were a million places to shop, people in all sorts of replica clothes were wondering about. Wearing Hogwarts themed clothes and waving wands around is completely normal in this place. There were a bunch of speakers that played the original soundtrack of the movies, making the whole experience feel more real. The employees were all dressed as wizards and elves too.
  After we drank our butter-beers, we went to Olivander's wand shop, Honeydukes, the sweatshop (with every kind of made up brands and flavors, made real), and the post office, where fake-robotic-owls hoohooed. Other than building this village, they built a smaller replica of Hogwarts, the castle/school where 80% of the Harry Potter books take place. But instead of being fully decorated, it gave home to the first Harry Potter ride we went on. It was very similar to the Spider-man ride, but this one was a 4D Harry Potter one. The amount of people who wanted to go on it was so much, I lost Saki in the crowd. It took us around 30 minutes to find each other. I had to ask several employees, to help me find her. They all told me not to worry, parents loose their children here all the time, and they always find them. (LOL).
The next attraction we went on was a crazy, dragon themed roller coaster. The seats were hanging from the tracks, and we got tossed around with such speed, my surroundings got mushed together. The ride was called the "Hungarian Horntail", the name of the dragon Harry had to defeat in the fourth book. The fact that J. K. Rowling thought of Hungary when she named the most important dragon of all the books makes me so happy.
  Because we bought tickets to both theme parks, it was time we went to Diagon Alley, the part of the Harry Potter Park, that was in Universal Studios. The two parts were divided by the Hogwarts Express, a train, that took all the schoolkids from London to the well hidden castle in the country. The train was just like in the movies and books. Instead of windows, they put TVs, and they played a recording of the British countryside and Harry Potter characters flying by, while the train really did take us from one theme park to another. When we got off, we suddenly found ourselves in England!
  It wasn't just the King's Cross train station, that looked very real, but outside, there was a double-decker bus (resembling the Knight Bus, an actually triple-decker bus from the books), a telephone booth, a British souvenir cart and building, that looked like they were taken right from London.
Of course, we wanted to find Diagon Alley, a hidden enchanted street.
   It wasn't too hard to spot because of the flow of people, but it was covered by a wall. And then, we saw the street. It was incredible. Diagon Alley, replicated to a 100% accuracy. Everything in it was just perfect! The boutiques, the houses, the Gringotts Bank in the middle of everything, with a white dragon on top (from the scene in the 7th book, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione had to escape by breaking through the roof with a loose guarding dragon). We went in the Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, a funny shop owned by George and Fred Weasley, and we visited The Leaky Couldron, a tavern that plays a big part in Harry's life. It's basically the place where he found out about the people who where out to get him (Voldemort in the first book and Sirius Black in the third).
  I had some split pea soup and warm butterbeer (which I like better than the cold. It was almost like a hot chocolate or tea), while Saki had some fish-n-chips. Very British.
  Because it was starting to get dark, and we spent almost all our time with wondering around and looking at Harry Potter stuff, we decided to race through Universal Studios, and get on as many rides as we can. We went on a kind of lame MIB ride, where the most important thing we learned, was that we have to aim for the "single rider" lines. Even if we go separate, we get through the long lines much much faster.
  We walked through the Simpson themed part to get to the front of the park. We couldn't miss the biggest roller coaster of Universal, so even though the wait was 45 minutes, we waited. And oh, it was so worth it. When we got on it, it was right at sunset, so we saw the whole park in beautiful orange, but just for a second before we plummeted down on an almost 90 degree drop! The whole experience was over in 30 seconds, but our adrenaline levels kicked up so high, we were laughing as we got out of the seats and fixed our wind-blown hairs.
  After we got our purses from the designated lockers, where you can put your bags for the time of the ride, we hurried back to Diagon Alley, to get on the Gringotts Bank ride before the park closed. The wait wasn't very long, and there were significantly less people. All the parents with their little children went home. That last ride was pretty good too, same 4D experience.
  By that time, we were beyond exhausted. Our feet were aching from the day's walking and standing. We visited some more shops and boutiques, and we watched the white dragon blow fire out of it's mouth. At 8, when the park closed, we were ready to go home. Stephanie waited for us at the gates, where she dropped us off.
  Today was amazing. Going to this place has been a dream of mine for so long, and now I had the opportunity to go. We didn't go on many rides, and we spent 70% of our time at the Harry Potter part, but that was completely acceptable. We were happy and poor. We emptied our piggy banks on the tickets and souvenirs, but it was so worth the experience.
  Stephanie took us to St. Petersburg, we spent the night at Avary's aunt's and uncle's. We were so tired, we had to go to sleep right away. This was one very very fun day to remember, and we were sure we were going to feel our sore muscles the next morning.