No Fastpasses today; no schedule, no real plans, and no idea of what the crowds and lineups will be like. All we really want to accomplish today is to try to get through everything at the new Harry Potter land, Diagon Alley.
Parking is pretty easy and no lineups at the gate. Since we are hungry we stop off at Panda Express for lunch before getting into the park. I tell you, for $25 we get a hell of a lot of darn good Chinese food. So much food we can't even eat it all.
This is on the CityWalk, which they have much improved since our last trip. This is opposed to City Wok, where we could have had the City Chicken, City Beef and City Pork.
Those of you who watch South Park are howling right now. The rest of you have no idea that was even a joke.
Off to the park; the "original" park, Universal Studios. One of the new attractions in Diagon Alley is the ability to actually ride the Hogwart's Express into the other park, Universal's Islands of Adventure, so assuming we can get on that we will be in both parks today at some point.
No lineup to speak of at the gate and it seems crowded but not crazy so far. Fingers crossed. We've heard nightmare stories about the lineups for the new rides.
The first ride we get to is the Despicable Me Minions Mayhem ride with a posted wait time of 50 minutes. Oh boy that is not good....if it's 50 minutes, the really new rides are probably hours.....
But we are very pleasantly surprised to see a board saying that the lineup at the big new ride, Escape from Gringott's, is only 30 minutes! That's good news. Of course in Universal speak, 30 minutes means 45, but that's still pretty reasonable.
There is a sign fairly near the entrance directing us in the direction of Diagon Alley. I'm mentioning this because this is the LAST sign we see indicating which way to go. Why is that important? I'll get to that.
Oh, and let's completely forget about the Harry Potter stuff for a minute and let's take a quick side-trip over to Springfield.
The last time we were in this park, Springfield consisted of the Simpsons Ride and not much else. Now?
Moe's is a working tavern, and Krusty Burger features a few different restaurants inside, including Cleatus's Chicken Shack. For Simpson's fans, this is theme park heaven. Really, really well done.
OK let's get back to Harry Potter for a moment.
First, let's start where we are supposed to start, in London.
Notice something missing? Signs to Diagon Alley. None. Why not?
Because there SHOULDN'T BE ANY!!! Diagon Alley is hidden, it's not SUPPOSED to be easy for us muggles to find. A fantastic little touch.
But we did find our way through.
Oh, and the Butterbeer. Frozen Butterbeer.
So here are a few pics of Diagon Alley.
There are so many more pictures I would shut down the blog site if I posted them all.
The theme here has been done to absolute perfection. It is, without exaggeration, the single most immersive and impressive theme park section or "land" I have ever experienced. Once you are in here, you can NOT see anything but Diagon Alley. There are absolutely zero signs that you are in a theme park. I've never felt so surrounded by the reality of the story.
For perspective, I'm not the biggest Harry Potter guy on the planet. I loved all the movies, but that's where my interest ends. I don't read Potter fan fiction and I've never read the books. But Tracey, the "Potter-phile" of our clan, summed it up pretty well:
'THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!!"
Yes, yes it is.
So, it would stand to reason that if they went to this level of detail on the theme of the land, the 'E-Ticket' ride, Escape from Gringott's, must also be awesome?
In a word, no.
It looks great; the story is intriguing, but the ride itself falls a bit flat. There is a bit of excitement, then a stop for story, then a bit of excitement, then stop for more story. The ride is SO short, and it's taken up by more story than excitement. They were SO CLOSE to perfection. So close.
After the ride we hop onto the Hogwart's Express for the trip over to Hogsmeade. I understand there are tons of different experiences that can happen to riders on this trip. For ours, we get to see Hagrid riding along with us outside the window and we get almost attacked by a Dementor INSIDE the train. Cute, but not spectacular by any means.
So we are now in the other park, Islands of Adventure, and frankly this park mostly sucks. The Spider-Man ride is really good but we've done it many times, and there are a few decent rides involving water but neither of us is dressed to get soaked. We decide we might as well go back to Universal Studios, do everything else we want to do there, and call it a day. If we've finished with the parks we won't have to come back a second day, giving the wife an extra POOL DAY!!!
Other than the Gringott's ride, the longest lineup in Diagon Alley was for the ice cream place. Ice cream place.
Butterbeer ice cream. Soft ice cream in a waffle cone. Tracey has that, of course, and it's fabulous. I had the Chocolate Strawberry Peanut Butter Sundae.
Strawberry Peanut-Butter ice cream, covered in hot fudge and whipped cream sprinkled in crumbled shortbread cookies.
And only 181 calories, so I'm told.
5:30 PM - We are done, literally and figuratively, and are heading back to the resort to enjoy some rest, some dinner, and some wine. What a terrific day so far and we are both hardly able to drag ourselves back to the car.
Oh, and a quick update on the Alamo Rent-A-Car situation.....it has now been EIGHT FUCKING DAYS since my case was kicked up to "upper management" who were supposed to contact me. EIGHT DAYS, nothing.
I'm looking forward to burying these assholes anywhere I can.
DON'T RENT A CAR FROM ALAMO!!!!!!
That's just the beginning of what I'm going to try to do to these scumbags.
Going to watch a little TV and get to bed early and try to finally kick these cold once and for all. Today wasn't a bad day but the damn cough is hanging around like Matt Damon in Rounders.
Tomorrow: To the Animal Kingdom, a park we haven't visited in about 7 years.
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