Girls Trip (Part one)

My sweet sister in law Corrine decided we needed a girls trip, and so she took me to Universal Studios in Florida. (She's awesome like that)

Anyway, neither of us had been to the NEW section of Universal Studios.  You know, the SECOND Harry Potter Theme Park.

The first section was just Hogsmeade the town, with a couple of rides,

some shopping, and of course, Hogwarts.

And that was so popular, they added a second park area, Diagon Alley, and connected them via the Hogwarts Express.

Which they did a fantastic job of.

Corrine and I stayed at a cute little hotel on Univeral Studios property, which meant we got an early entry to the park.  The plan was to go to that park for 2 1/2 days.

And not go to DisneyWorld at all.  Because it's just not enough time.

Well, we did go to the Polynesian Resort because they have Dole Whip there.  So technically I guess the very first thing we did was run straight to a Disney property. But I digress.

But since we got the early entry passes, we pretty much did almost everything we wanted to do by early afternoon.  The only thing left were the rides where you get wet, and it's January, so neither of us were wanting anything to do with that.

The new area is pretty cool, The bricks don't actually move, but they sound like they do.

And there's a cool new ride which is under Gringott's bank.

If you watch long enough, the dragon will move and blow fire.

And we totally ate at the Leaky Cauldron.

I ate Toad-in-a-hole.  And I loved it.

Outside of Diagon Alley, you are in a very tiny little London.  With a King's Cross Station that leads you to Platform 9 3/4.  Which if anyone wants to see it, I have a little video of me crossing through the barrier. Pretty cool.

In London you find a couple little surprises, like the Knight Bus.

And you can talk to Stan Shunpike and his shrunken head.  Which totally talks to you.  The head actually corrected Stan when he said my name wrong. (and PS- hot Butterbeer is pretty good too)

And even Number 12 Grimmauld Place.

And if you watch long enough, you can see Kreacher peek through one of the windows.

And after all that, we were still thinking 2 1/2 days was more than enough.  And here we were, two life long Disney Girls, (Corrine actually worked at Disneyland) minutes away from Disney World.

To be continued...