I'm a huge fan of Harry Potter. This is my 3rd time going and second time since they opened up the second park. I've read the books over and over again and now I'm re-watching the movies. If I ever move into a 4 bedroom house I would have a separate Harry Potter themed room. Seriously!
We started off at Diagon Alley and worked our way through the rides first. We got there at 9 am and already the first ride we went on - Gringotts Bank was already an hour long wait. Also if you are carrying a bag, any kind of bag of any size they make you check it in to a locker which is a huge pain. Next time I'm definitely not going to bring a bag with me.
The ride is a lot of fun and it's one of my favorite rides along with the Hogwarts castle ride. One of the best things to see there is the dragon that sits on top of Gringotts Bank. It spits fire every 20 minutes or so. It's also cool seeing it at different angles so I was around for a while to take the photos along with everyone else!
Don't leave Diagon Alley without visiting Borgin And Burkes on Knockturn Alley. It's my favorite store ever! It's almost hard to find. It's in a dark corner all the way in the back and if you don't go you can totally miss it. Everything was super dark so I couldn't get any decent photos.
This is right before you enter Diagon Alley. The Knight Bus!
We took the Hogwarts Express at King's Cross Station to Hogwarts Castle. You need park to park tickets to do this.
The train ride drops you off at HogsMeade which is AMAZING if it's your first time walking through the entrance. Since this wasn't my first time I got to watch an amazing reaction from a mother pushing twin carriages through and she just stopped there and gasped with her mouth to the floor.
There's a ton of shops to walk through. You can easily spend a couple of hours here. There's Zonko's Trick's & Jokes shop, butter beer stands, candy shop, ice cream shop, Three Broomsticks, and Ollivander's Wand Shop.
Then we walked over to Hogwarts Castle. Be prepared to do a lot of walking if you're doing both parks. We clocked in over 23,000 steps which is around 8-9 miles. We walked around for 10 hours straight almost. We stopped once to eat at Three Broomsticks.
The Hogwarts Forbidden Journey ride is my favorite because you actually get to tour the castle inside! You get to see Dumbledore's office, a room where there are paintings that talk, the Fat Lady's portrait that guards the Gryffindor common room. It makes the long line for the ride go by faster. There's just so much to see!
At the end of the night there was a light show at Hogwarts Castle. The crowd was insane. There were so many people trying to rush over to see the castle they had to do crowd control. It's about a 30 minute wait but very worth it. So pretty! The show itself is only about 10 minutes long with some fireworks at the end.
Once that was over we left the park fast. The temperature dropped 20 degrees and we weren't wearing heavy jackets so we beat feet out of there fast.
Some of my souvenirs.
One of our other favorite things to do when we're in Orlando is to eat at this Peruvian restaurant called Pio Pio. The food itself was worth the 8 hour drive! It was so good we went twice while we were in Orlando. It's better than anything I've had in Atlanta.
The plantains, with rice and beans- ohmygod. The avocado in the chicken soup was delicious. The garlic shrimp is TDF! Seriously, if you're ever around there, you need to go to this place. Everything we've ever ordered tastes amazing.
And yes, we took both of my kitties with us. They are traveling kitties. Nero is usually pretty good about it, but we weren't sure how Sherlock would be and he was fine. They both meowed in the beginning and Nero actually peed in his cage but I lined both of their beds with a wee wee pad in case this happened and good thing I did. We just removed the pad and he was fine the rest of the ride.
Nero
They're still not completely getting along. Nero still hisses at Sherlock but it's getting better. We ordered some Multicat Feliway from Amazon to help with the tension and stress. I'm hoping this works!
My husband surprised me with this Coach bag for Christmas and had it monogrammed with FML- For My Love. It's so pretty. 💕
Hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year's! Will be back soon with a best of 2017 post. Here's to an amazing 2018!
I have not tried the audio books. I'm actually slightly hard of hearing, so I don't know if I would be able to follow along!
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