Harry Potter World

We took a mini vacation after Christmas to Orlando for the ICE exhibit and Harry Potter World.

ICE was cold. Very very very cold.

It was themed for the movie A Christmas Story.

And had some truly beautiful craftmanship. Unfortunately, we were too cold to care.

Universal Studios was much more fun. We arrived as the park opened, along with 5 million or more tourists.

The Harry Potter area was awesome- very cool- very realistic. 

We got the interactive wands and loved doing all the tricks in the shop windows.

And OMG butterbeer was good. Think cream soda with a butterscotch foam.

So good.

We rode the train to Diagon Alley.

We recognized all the landmarks, because we watch all 8 of the Harry Potter movies every year in October.

The phone booth was funny for Dad, because we had no idea how to use the rotary phone dial. All the parents in the crowd were like "See?! That's how phones were when we were growing up, there were no SMART PHONES."

We skipped the best ride, Escape from Gringotts, because it was a 4 hour wait by lunch time.

We left when it became too difficult to navigate the epidemic of motorized carts.

But we had a 2 pound chocolate frog to keep us company.

We lovingly gnawed them to a warm melty nub while waiting an hour in line for the train.

Our parents love theme parks and crowds. They told us to enjoy our first and last visit to Universal.

We spent our last night having a blast at the hotel pool.