Universal Resort 2016 - Day 2, The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter

The morning of Day 2 ~ we woke up and saw that the rain had passed! Yay!! It was time to get to our first park. We had beautiful weather the entire time we were at Universal. It was a little chilly in the mornings but it warmed every afternoon.

Bri was dressed in her Gryffindor shirt (that she had bought at the gift shop the night before) and her Gryffindor pass holder (that my friend Kathy bought her). 

Doug suggested we bring nothing to Universal (bags, purses, etc) except our tickets. I was hesitant about it but agreed. 

This was my lifeline when we were at the parks...

It held my ticket/express pass (the unlimited express pass was worth every penny), my license, a credit card, a few dollars and my map.

We weren't very hungry first thing in the morning, so we skipped breakfast and decided to eat at the park if/when we got hungry. 

The shuttle was there right at 7:15AM...

It was early but we were excited...

The bus dropped us off at the entrance of Universal Orlando Resort.

Universal Studios has two theme parks - Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios Florida. You have to walk through (the quite long) Universal CityWalk to get to either theme park. Islands is to your left and Florida is to your right.

Ready to walk through CityWalk to the parks...

Ok - if you have been an avid reader of my blog, you already know I am a planner. A big one. A huge one. I already knew what side of the park I wanted to focus on for the day. Now, we did buy park hopper passes because we wanted to ride the Hogwarts Express (you cannot ride it unless you are going from park to park). At Disney, we never do park hopper. I like to focus on one park per day because I'm totally weird like that. I was trying to work out in my head how we were going to work in the train ride at Universal. But, I wanted to concentrate on Islands of Adventure the first day ~ Islands of Adventure houses the Hogsmeade/Hogwarts Castle side of Harry Potter World. 

We walked through CityWalk and veered to the left for Islands of Adventure and Hogsmeade. We couldn't wait to get to Hogsmeade and see the castle...

Several families were walking along with us as we headed toward the closed entrance. (It was still a bit early and the park still hadn't open yet). 

We get to the entrance and are immediately told by an employee that Islands of Adventure doesn't open until 9AM. The Universal Studios Florida side with Diagon Alley was the side that was going to open early that particular week.

I. Had. No. Idea.

To find out, Universal can pick and choose at random which side of the park they want to open early at any particular time. The week we visited, the Diagon Alley side was the only side that would be opening early. Grrrrr. (Doug checked the website that evening, and it was on the site. Not exactly sure where. But, I had just assumed ALL of Harry Potter was going to be open. That's what I get for assuming I guess.)

That messed with my plan!!! And you know that I don't like to go off plan! LOL! It was Disney all over again. Two years ago, I found out that the magic hour for Magic Kingdom only included Fantasyland and Tomorrowland. I wanted to get into Adventureland early. Not cool!

Ok, nothing we could do about it. So we hiked over to the Universal Studios Florida side...

 Luckily, it was still early. A small crowd was already gathering in front of the gates of Universal Studios FL (those that got the memo). 

I started mulling everything over in my head as we waited in line. Ok - we'll do the big Gringotts ride at Diagon Alley, go on the train and head over to Hogsmeade by 9 and we will be able to focus on Islands of Adventure the rest of the day. It was going to work out ok!

At 8AM sharp, they let us in and we darted to the back of the park (which was quite a walk) where Diagon Alley is located...

Entering Diagon Alley was pretty amazing...

It really felt like you were in a Harry Potter movie...

Your eyes immediately go to this huge dragon...

It sits on top of the "Escape from Gringotts" ride. (This ended up being one of our favorite rides)...

You cannot bring anything on this ride and belongings must be placed in a locker. Thank goodness we didn't have any bags (thanks Doug)! While other people were sidetracked into putting away bags, we walked right into the ride/bank...

The entrance was amazing...

Once you get through the bank lobby, you get ushered into a room with a short hologram movie...

Then we were ushered into an elevator...

Then we walked up a flight of stairs and into another corridor with these neat newspapers...

The ride seats (I swiped the pic from Google)...

Once you are on the ride, there is no way to take pictures. Everything moves way too fast. There is one big immediate drop at the beginning of the ride. Here is a Google image...

We loved the ride so much, we went right around and got on it again. It was so early, we didn't really have to wait very long.

A couple of photo opps before leaving Diagon Alley...

The triple decker bus...

We went to King's Cross Station to get on the train so we could head to Hogsmeade...

The inside of King's Cross Station...

 

Cool effect that made it look like visitors were disappearing through the wall...

We made it! 9 3/4 Hogwarts Express...

We waited a bit in this line because a ton of people had the same idea we did about getting to the other park by 9.

Finally, we boarded the train...

Riders sit in a cabin on the train and look out the "window" to see the landscape as they head to Hogsmeade (there is a different "movie" when you head back to Diagon Alley)...

This is Hagrid on a motorcycle...

We made it to Hogsmeade...

And there was the beautiful castle...

Hogwarts Castle houses the "Forbidden Journey" ride.

Very cool moving pictures on the walls...

There was a bit of a wait, but it wasn't too terrible because we were there early. But, if you even wait to get on it mid-morning, because of the popularity of the ride, you could wait up to two hours to get on it. No joke. Neither this ride nor the Gringotts ride accept the express pass. You have to wait in line with everyone else. I refuse to wait two hours to get on a ride, so we made sure we got to Harry Potter early each day to get on the rides quickly in the Wizarding World. 

The Forbidden Journey ride was pretty intense - lots of motion...

I actually felt a bit dizzy on it (a friend warned me that could happen) because your seat flies all around and the movie screen is right in front of you. There were some spiders and dementors (animatronic) that pop out at you. When we got off, Briana was almost in tears. She didn't mind the motion, but she didn't like the stuff popping out at her. I reassured her we didn't need to go on it again. So that ride was a one and done. Maybe we'll try it again when she is older.

We tried to hit the Hippogriff roller coaster but the wait was 45 minutes with an express pass. We knew we had a few more days ahead of us, so we skipped it. And there was no freaking way that Doug or I were going to attempt the Dragon Challenge roller coaster. It was way too intense for us. Bri wanted to go on it of course, but it wasn't going to happen for her by herself.

We did hit Ollivanders while we were there...

I kind of hoped that Briana would have been picked for the wand choosing demonstration, but the wand seller picked a kid that looked just like Harry Potter. Bri didn't stand a chance - LOL...

We decided not to get Bri a wand at that time. We were going to be there a few more days and figured we could get one later.

Time for a break and some Butterbeer...

As we drank, we watched the Frog Choir...

I loved the Butterbeer, Doug thought it was just ok and Bri didn't really like it at all. Heh.

Because we had been so busy, we hadn't consumed anything but Butterbeer by 11AM.

We were pretty hungry. We stopped at the Three Broomsticks for some lunch...

It was pretty easy to find a seat at that time and the food was quite tasty. They even had Gilly Water...

As we left the restaurant, we realized just how crowded things were starting to get in the Wizarding World. So crowded in fact, we knew it was time to leave Hogsmeade for the day. We headed out into the main area of Islands of Adventure.