Diagon Alley

After we left Disney World, we drove across town to Universal Studios and checked in at the Royal Pacific hotel. Our check-in was very smooth but picking up our Universal Studios tickets was anything but. The person running the kiosk insisted that we had to know our confirmation number in order to use the kiosk, so we had to run back down to the room to get the confirmation number, only to find out when we got to the kiosk that it would have accepted an email address. Then the guy tried to explain to us how our tickets worked. We told him we'd been here many times and was aware of how to use a ticket. Rebecca and Janie headed off to the pool for a little while J. R. rested in the hotel room for an early morning at Universal Studios. Breakfast was snacks in the hotel, then we caught the boat to Universal Studios and headed with the crowd back to the new Harry Potter Diagon Alley area. We didn't see much of this as we hustled to the Gringott's ride but would come back later to look around. All in all, we thought the area was very well done and the ride was interesting, even though we were hoping for more of a roller coaster than another 3-D simulator.

Hogwarts Express

Following the Gringott's ride, we climbed aboard the Hogwarts Express to Islands of Adventure. The ride was cute with the various screens showing scenes of the trip to Hogsmeade and characters running up and down the halls.

Because of Universal's strict 'no bags' policy, we didn't carry cameras or cell phones around for most of our time at the parks. For many of the rides, you couldn't take anything on board unless it fit in your pockets and some rides, like Rip Ride Rockit, even banned you have carrying anything in your pockets. So to avoid having to go to lockers all of the time (and reduce our wait times), we left everything in the hotel. On day one, we spent time at IoA riding the Harry Potter ride and Dueling Dragons before hitting Dr. Seuss land. For lunch, we went to Cowfish in CityWalk, which was a very interesting restaurant that served burger sushi, among other things. We started off with a Crab Rangoon dip, which was delicious. Rebecca had the "Cowfish has officially left the building" which was a beef burger with peanut butter, fried bananas and bacon, which she said was quite tasty. Janie and J. R. split a filet roll and taste explosion roll and a black truffle cheese burger. After lunch, we returned to Universal Studios and took in Twister, Mummy, Transformers and few other rides. We called it a night early and headed back to the hotel for some sushi at the hotel bar and some pool time.

For day two, we swapped the order and headed to IoA first for Harry Potter then the reverse Hogwarts Express ride back to Universal, where we rode the Gringotts ride. Following that, we finished up the rest of the rides in Universal, took an afternoon pool break, then headed to IoA for Superhero Island. Dinner was at Jimmy Buffett's which was disappointing. This is usually one of our favorite places, but it was overcrowded, the service was slow and the food was bland. But the music from a cover band was good. Our final Universal day had us back at Universal Studios for more Harry Potter and to re-ride some of our favorites. We stayed until around 5PM, then had some dinner, checked out of our hotel and drove to the airport, where we had booked the Hyatt for the night due to a 5:30AM flight home the next morning.