Harry Potter!!! FINALLY!!

Wed afternoons are great. 

The kids get out of school an hour early,

 and Christina doesn't have school.

Now that all the tourists have gone home,

 its time for us to head back to the theme parks.

On Wed, Mike, Christina, her friend Shannon, and I picked up the boys

 at the bus stop and headed to Universal Studios for the afternoon.

We only had one ride in mind.

Harry Potter!

You go behind Jurassic Park and there is the entrance to Hogsmead.

We bought a Butterbeer.  It was very good.

 Kind of reminds you of a rootbeer float, only with a butterscotchy taste.

  It took us forever to convince the boys that it was not Beer.

Once they tried it they really liked it.
We have not yet tried Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jelly Beans.
Maybe next time.

You can not bring any kind of bag, or loose item like sunglasses into the ride area, so either don't bring anything, or get lockers before heading to the ride. They have lockers inside, but it was packed, and all were full. To get your bag you have to come back thru the beginning of the line, so you can imagine how jam packed that is. The lockers by the train had plenty open.

There is Ollivanders Wand Shop where one member of the audience
 gets picked to come up and have a wand choose them. The line for that was long, and since we
 are planning on making many return trips, we decided to wait.

Our wait for Harry Potter was about 25 min long.

It was perfect timing to see all the wonderful displays and scenes that they have while you are in line.

The line winds thru a greenhouse where they have 'mandrakes' growing along with lots of other plants.

The pictures move and talk. You go thru Dumbledores office where he speaks to you. 

The 3D effects of it are almost real looking.

You then go to the Defense of the Dark Arts classroom where 

Harry, Ron and Hermione talk to you and make it snow.

The way you enter the ride is sort of like how the Haunted Mansion is.

The bench keeps moving on the platform and you climb on and they strap you in.

Now, I'm not going to give away any big secrets or anything,

 besides even if I did try to explain it in detail you'd still have to ride

 it to get the awesome effects of it.

Each bench seats 4 and is its own ride.

The ride is like an arm. Put your elbow on the desk and picture holding a bench in your hand.

Now swivel your elbow as well as your wrist and make the bench go in all kinds of directions.

The ride moves thru rooms that remind you of the Spiderman ride at IOA. 

Some of its a screen and you feel like how you feel in Soaring over California at Disney.

It's also a very long ride. 

I was afraid that one or both of the boys would cry or not like it, 

but the moment the ride stopped Caleb shouted,

 "OMG!! That was AWESOME! Lets go again!"

We couldn't agree more!

We have all dubbed it THE BEST RIDE EVER!

Universal redid the Flying Unicorn ride and turned it into the Hippogrif ride.
The boys loved it and went on it 5 times.
They also redid the entrance to Dueling Dragons and are calling it The Dragon Challenge.
The boys are not big enough for that, so Mike and I will go on it on date night.
Caleb was just barely big enough for Harry Potter. 48 in is the requirement.

Maybe you can tell, in this picture the boys are soaking wet.  We all were.
It started pouring rain just before the park closed, and when we checked
the weather map on Mikes phone, we knew the storms were going to be here for awhile.
We didn't bring our umbrella or parkas, so we had to walk all the way back to the truck in a down pour.
Of course, Harry Potter is all the way on the opposite side of the parking garages.
Thank goodness it was a warm rain!
We got up early the next morning, dropped Christina off at school,
 then the 4 of us went back to Universal.
There was no school on Thursday due to it being Rosh Hashanah.

Yesterday we had made a quick stop in the Jurassic Science Center, 

but they were closing, so we stopped here first on our way to Harry Potter.

They got to feel a 'dinosaur' egg. 

We talked the boys into going on Jurassic Ride. Ok, we bribed them.
Caleb got a NASCAR and Zachary gets to play 2 carnival games.
Caleb ended up LOVING Jurassic and wanted to go again and again,
Zachary 'put  up' with it.
Now Caleb wants to go on the Mummy.
I can't wait to go back and do that ride with him..
Zachary still doesn't really, but if Caleb will, he probably will too.
We are going to get as much use as possible this month out of our tickets because they expire on the 30th.
Then we will have to renew them, because
that Harry Potter ride is AWESOME!