November 15

Finally! I had waited so patiently (over a year!) before visiting The Wizarding World of Harry Potter and it paid off. We stayed at the Royal Pacific which is a Universal property so they let us into the Islands of Adventure an hour early. There were only about 50 of us at the time they opened the gate. Yes, I was there at 8:00am. Unheard of!

We all went straight to the Harry Potter ride which is housed inside Hogwarts and we got on the ride in about 5 minutes. I wasn't in love with it the first time I rode it...or the second. We rode this crazy Dragon Challenge ride after that. I don't know what possessed me to agree to it because it was the most hardcore roller-coaster I've ever ridden. Even Matt said it was like something at Magic Mountain. My legs were wobbly after that so we spent the rest of our free hour walking around Hogsmeade. It was fantastic. I'll have more pictures later. I wish the area was bigger but there was a lot of attention to detail. I loved every minute of it!

Turns out, the park just wasn't very busy that day. We rode every ride that we wanted to ride and a few of them twice, like Spiderman. We went back to Harry Potter later in the afternoon and had to wait 15 minutes but the line itself has a lot to see so I didn't mind waiting. The third time's the charm. I don't know if it was because we had done other 3-D rides or because my eyes had warmed up but our third time on the ride was SO much better. I went into it thinking "okay, I'm sitting on a magical bench" and that's exactly how I felt. So fun!