Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure (02/09/22)

First of all, we were very lucky to have my sister, Jessica, join us for our time at Universal Studios. Having a third adult was amazing. And I think she had a good time too! 😉

We all woke up early and headed over to Universal Studios because we’re pros at theme parks now and we value good parking spots. Luckily, Universal has a massive parking garage, so there aren’t any terrible spots. Nonetheless, we got a good spot. 

After entering the park, we headed immediately to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in the Islands of Adventure section of Universal. For the uninitiated, Universal Orlando has two parks right next to each other: Islands of Adventure, which is a bit more oriented at thrill rides, and Universal Studios, which is more oriented at less-thrill rides. Except that isn’t quite true because there’s a mix of thrill and non-thrill rides at both parks… It’s confusing. 

Nevertheless! We started off by heading over to Hogsmeade and buying Logan a wand. There were many wands from which to choose, and Logan opted to get Harry’s wand. Clara and Jonas were very generous and donated some of their allowance to him so that he could afford it. They’re sweet.

The Wizarding world portion of the park has a bunch of spots throughout, where you can use an interactive wand (which costs more than a non-interactive wand, of course) to ‘perform magic’. It’s cute. Logan was very excited to start practicing magic with his wand. After doing this for a spell (see what I did there? Heh!), the twins took turns throwing tantrums. 🙁 Poor St. Jonathan (he is truly deserving of that appellation). And then they went to the Three Broomsticks for some butterbeer.

Meanwhile Jess, Clara, Jonas, and I all went and rode Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey twice, since the line was pretty short both times. After the second go around, Clara, Jess and I were all feeling a little bit queasy. So that was the end of that.

At this point, we opted to go wait in line for the Flight of the Hippogriff ride. And the fact that there was a bit of a wait actually was a plus. To give our poor tum tums some time to settle. We also discovered that Logan was tall enough to ride it! So, the short people dropped the remains of the Butterbeer and Logan off at the line. Logan was pretty excited that he was tall enough to ride the ride.

As was stated previously, it was a bit of a wait, so St. Jonathan and the twins rode the Hogwarts Express over to the other park. It’s a very cute ride that simulates the journey between London and Hogsmeade and the twins loved it. They arrived at platform 9 ¾ and then turned around and got right back on the train to go back to Hogsmeade. The twins were stoked to ride the train again and they enjoyed bumping down a staircase at one point.

We all met up in Honeydukes. And of couse, since we were there, we had to buy some treats. (Fizzing whizbees are the clear favorite! Though the fudge flies were also popular.) Then we headed over to the Three Broomsticks and had lunch. We decided that the trifle was delicious, but the potted Butterbeer was a little too sweet for our tastes. It was basically pure sugar.

After lunch, we split the party and Jonathan and the twins headed to the Doctor Seuss section. We rode the One Fish Two Fish ride a few times, which the twins loved. Unfortunately, many of the KIDS rides had minimum height requirements, which meant that they couldn’t ride on a bunch of them. Sadness. And also Dumbness.

During this time, the tall people rode several rides: Hulk, the Accelatron (picture lots of spinning), and Spider man. They were all a grand ol’ time. Then we met Captain America. Which was awesome. I guess you could say we’re pals now.

And then we headed over to the river rafting ride because Logan was REALLY excited about it. And in the process, we got drenched. I figured we’d get wet, but not that wet. I mean, it was kind of unreal how wet the kids were, especially. They looked like they had been in a shower. Luckily, we had thought ahead an had extra clothes for almost everyone. We supplemented with sweatshirts and parent t-shirts and in the the end, everyone had damp shoes, but no one got hypothermia. 

Meanwhile, the short people were saved by the Jurassic Park Playground area. The twins were delighted to scamper around the whole thing (including spooky caves!)

They finally settled on going down the following slide repeatedly for an hour:

The tall people then joined up with us and the kids decided that the Jurassic Playground seemed like a pretty cool place to explore. Plus, they wanted to ride the pteranodon fliers ride. So Jill, Jonathan and the twins snuck over to the Velocicoaster and took turns riding that while the twins took a short nap. 

Oh my word, what an awesome roller coaster. Seriously, it was amazing! In fact, it was so amazing, that we decided to send Clara, Jill, Jess, and the twins to use the parent swap to ride it.

Meanwhile, Jonathan, Jonas and Logan rode the Hogwarts Express and explored a bit of Diagon Alley in the other park. 

By this point, the park was closing. So we headed down to CityWalk where we had planned to meet up. There was a vigorous lobby from the children to stay and eat at the City Walk, but we decided to stick with our lunch that we’d brought and keep our eating out to just one place that day. 

We decided we would eat at City Walk tomorrow.

I gotta say, it makes a huge difference to arrive home at 8:30 instead of 10:30. We gave the kids melatonin and headed for bed. 

Let’s do it again tomorrow!