The Dovecote: Harry Potter World

The first week of January we said goodbye to cold South Dakota weather and piled onto a plane and headed for Florida and Harry Potter World! The kids and I are huge Harry Potter fans, and Nathan is more than willing to indulge us.

We stayed at one of Universal's hotels which is within walking distance of the park and has a few perks, like early admission and cheaper package deals. It was really very nice. It had several pools (although unfortunately one of them closed the day after we arrived), a lazy river, a bowling alley, and several restaurants. We arrived Saturday afternoon and got checked in a settled down. We quickly discovered that the hotel was quite empty and getting emptier (we arrived on January 2), which is just how we like it!

Z on the couch which every night turned into his bed.

One of the pools. The hotel was pretty empty, which was awesome!

Sunday morning we went swimming and had lunch and then headed over to Harry Potter World. And what an amazing world it is! Our package included four days at Universal Parks. This includes two different parts of Harry Potter World (Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade/Hogwarts, which are connected by the Hogwarts Express), as well as other parts of the park that focus on other Universal movies and characters (like Spiderman, Men in Black, King Kong, the Simpsons, and Jurassic Park). On Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday all four of us went to the parks, and on Thursday morning just Nathan and Eden went. I didn't get tons of pictures because I was honestly having too much fun to bother with my phone, but here are a few of Harry Potter World:

Waiting for the train in Hogsmeade Station, to go to Diagon Alley.

Waiting at the train station.

In our train compartment. Compartment C (for Chocolate Frogs). The train trip is a ride, and your window is actually a screen which makes it look like you're leaving Hogsmeade and traveling to London.

Platform 9 and 3/4!

Diagon Alley. The shop with red window right in front of the kids is Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

Butterbeer! It is crazy expensive, but it had to be done. I was glad I didn't get any for myself because it was sickeningly sweet. Of course that meant the kids loved it!

We had lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. We all got typical London pub food.

Walking through the line to ride The Forbidden Journey. One of the fun things about Harry Potter World is that the lines themselves were made to be fun and somewhat interactive. In this line you walked all through Hogwarts before finally arriving at the line. We went to this ride first thing in the morning and there was no waiting at all -- we just walked right through. It still took us 5-10 minutes to walk the line (holy cow!) and I kind of wished we could go a little bit slower because there were so many fun things to look at. But, the line was so short (non-existent) that Z and I went on the ride twice in quick succession. Right here we're in the Herbology classroom.

Here is Z walking past one of the Hogwarts statues. I think the animals at the bottom are supposed to a badger and a lion, the mascots of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor.

This is the opening to Dumbledore's office

Inside Gringotts. We're getting in line for the ride Escape From Gringotts, but again, waiting in line is much more fun when it's like being in Gringotts itself.

Eden and the goblin bankers.

I can't quite remember, but I think this is inside Hogwarts Castle again.

Here we are again at Platform 9 and 3/4. You can see the sign up in the left corner, and Eden is standing by a bunch of student luggage, include Hedwig!

Z and I at the entrance to Hogsmeade.

Eden and I with Hogwarts behind us.

Nathan and I inside Hogwarts.

Eden and I both bought interactive wands. That means you can take them around to different shop windows in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade and do magic with them. It was actually really fun and we all enjoyed trying out the magic!

Here's Nathan doing a spell which makes the ape skeleton follow all your movements:

Nathan and Eden went to the Three Broomsticks.

Eden outside the post office, taking it all in.

We also did some other parts of Universal. The kids really liked the Spiderman ride. We went on the Popeye rafting ride twice and got completely soaked both times. We got a huge donut from Lard Ladd in the Simpson's neighborhood. And here are a few other pics: