"It's Because This Wand CHOSE Me!" Sept 2017 TR *COMPLETE* 3/1 x2

Smart idea dressing in your bathing suits and getting the water rides done right away! Those rides really do get you soaked! Sounds like you all had a blast!
 
When we went last February, we weren't staying on site, but we did the same thing, made a special trip just to do the water rides. DD wouldn't go on rickshaw falls, but we did the other two. Bluto's is a total soaker! Love the ride but the timing has got to be right. I think a lot of people don't believe a theme park ride is going to get you THAT wet.
 
Good thinking doing those water rides all at once and going back to change! Looks like a lot of fun!
 
Captain Brad is fun!
Watching the videos was a hoot

Brought back memories when I rode the water taxi with him in charge

Absolutely love your pictures and reporting
Never got to post this in your studios section, but cat in the hat section of your report was fantastic

Loved the pics you shared with us on the cat in the hat ride
One of my favorite sections in the park

Hope you will share more pics on the picture thread!

Captain Brad was one of the true highlights of our trip! He made those 5 minute boat rides so much fun!

Oh, sure, I'll have to go check out the pics thread and add some photos! We are usually only there for a couple of days, so we don't get too many pictures, but DH more than made up for that on this trip. He took so many!!

Sounds like a great time at Islands of Adventure. We've done the same thing before. There are some great water rides in that park, but they all get your really wet, so the best way to handle it is by just wearing your swimsuit! Too bad you didn't get on Kong though.

We usually skip them entirely because I hate being wet, but this seemed like the perfect opportunity to get them all in at once and then get changed into dry clothes right after! It ended up being a lot of fun and led to some new experiences for all of us, as none of us had done Popeye & Bluto's before (maybe DH had a long time ago?) and DS had also never done Dudley Do Right's, and it had been a long time since I had been on that one.

Smart idea dressing in your bathing suits and getting the water rides done right away! Those rides really do get you soaked! Sounds like you all had a blast!

We were completely drenched!! I would have hated to be stuck walking around like that for the rest of the day, so I'm glad we got them all done in one morning.

When we went last February, we weren't staying on site, but we did the same thing, made a special trip just to do the water rides. DD wouldn't go on rickshaw falls, but we did the other two. Bluto's is a total soaker! Love the ride but the timing has got to be right. I think a lot of people don't believe a theme park ride is going to get you THAT wet.

I was really surprised how soaked we got on both Dudley Do Right's and Popeye & Bluto's! Like, I knew we'd get wet but I wasn't expecting that level of soaked!!! So yeah, you're probably right and that's why people are going on in their denim. lol

Good thinking doing those water rides all at once and going back to change! Looks like a lot of fun!

It was really fun, and definitely the smartest way to do it!! lol I hate walking around soaking wet and waiting to dry off.
 


Just caught up! Both the Three Broomsticks and the Leaky Cauldron have delicious food. Your seat outside looked so peaceful. It's not everyday you get to drink butterbeer and stare at Hogswarts!

That Spider-Man interactions sounds hilarious. Glad you managed to take Paxton to it before it closed for the night.
Why was he in front of a green screen? Do they offer photos where they insert a "spider-man-like" background? Man, I know nothing about character meets at Universal!

Whoa, you guys got soaked on those water rides!
I was so happy to see Paxton with his strawberry icee. Victory!
 
Just caught up! Both the Three Broomsticks and the Leaky Cauldron have delicious food. Your seat outside looked so peaceful. It's not everyday you get to drink butterbeer and stare at Hogswarts!

That Spider-Man interactions sounds hilarious. Glad you managed to take Paxton to it before it closed for the night.
Why was he in front of a green screen? Do they offer photos where they insert a "spider-man-like" background? Man, I know nothing about character meets at Universal!

Whoa, you guys got soaked on those water rides!
I was so happy to see Paxton with his strawberry icee. Victory!

I still haven't managed to eat at the Leaky Cauldron, but we love Three Broomsticks!! Definitely the best QS in the Universal parks.

The green screen is changed to a comic book background if you have the Universal Photos. I thought about doing it for this trip since we would have more days, but there really aren't that many photo ops that aren't ride photos, and I just didn't feel like we would need ride photos that bad to pay the money for it. We don't do many other character meets either, but it's one of the only ones that has some kind of enhanced background for the My Universal Photos. Most of the other character meets just happen out on the street.

We got completely drenched!! I had to keep reminding myself it was okay, because normally I try NOT to get that wet at the parks!!! But it was a lot of fun to get to do those rides, for the first time ever or at least the first time in a very long time.

He was THRILLED to finally get that strawberry Icee after many many fakeouts!! We always had our eyes out for them, and would hurry over to a stand when we saw a red label on the Icee machine, only to be faked out many times by something like watermelon, strawberry kiwi, or even alcoholic strawberry ones. lol Some of the stands actually had a list of where different flavors were available, so once we learned that, it helped a lot!
 
It has been a crazy couple of weeks with the holidays, but we had a fun time seeing family, and getting to take the kids to ride on the Polar Express in New Orleans for New Years Eve! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday as well, but now I'm ready to head back to September at Universal Orlando!

Day 4 Continued: Friday September 22nd

It was about noon when we were entering Universal Studios, so our first order of business was finding some lunch. We headed over to Richter’s Burger Co., a place that used to be a go-to for me and DH but we hadn’t been there in a long time.


After ordering our burgers and filling our cup at the Freestyle machine, DS asked if we could eat upstairs, so we headed up to find a table.


Once he saw how small it was up there, DS suddenly changed his mind and asked to go back down. Uh, no way are we carrying this food all the way back down! I think he didn’t realize it was going to be so small and cramped up there, and that all of the tables were right against a railing so it made him a little nervous, but he was fine.



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After taking this photo, I told him to show me his nervous face.


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Once DH and I were finished eating, DS still had his applesauce left so he begged to go downstairs to eat it, so we agreed. Once he was done eating, we headed towards London. DS had been fascinated with this crashed UFO from Halloween Horror Nights, so we finally stopped to take his picture with it.


Then we were ready to head into Diagon Alley to ride Escape From Gringotts!


However, once we got over to Gringotts, we saw it was down, and we had missed the most recent show of Tales of Beedle the Bard, so we decided to go over to ride Men In Black and try Diagon Alley later.


After battling aliens with the MIB, we got another Icee (#3 already!) and headed back to Diagon Alley to do a few magic spots and catch the 1:30 Beedle the Bard show. By now, he was really getting the hang of it! DH put together this video with magic spots in both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade from later this same day.


After having some fun doing magic with DS and his wand, we went over to catch the show.

We could not seem to time this right, as we watched the opening spiel and found out it was the Fountain of Fair Fortune AGAIN! Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great show, but we really wanted to see the Tale of the 3 Brothers! We watched again, but I made sure to find a TM nearby and confirm that the 2:30 show would be 3 Brother before we headed off to make some more magic.


After the show and some magic, Gringotts was open so we went to ride, but even the Express was pretty backed up so it took about 20 minutes in line.



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It was dangerously close to 2:30 by the time we came off the ride, but we still had to get our stuff from our lockers. We hurried as quickly as we could, but still made it over to the Beedle the Bard stage to see they were already halfway through the Tale of the 3 Brothers. We decided to head out of Diagon Alley.



We stopped at a cart for a popcorn and a Coke Icee refill, the found a bench to take a break while we snacked.


While we ate, we asked DS what he wanted to do next, and he asked to do Transformers.


After helping save the Allspark again, we discussed taking the Hogwarts Express over to IOA. But as we were walking over there, the street entertainment group the Beat Builders were just starting one of their shows, and DS had been asking to stop and see them. They are a lot like the Jammitors at Epcot, but they are construction workers instead of janitors. We grabbed a table (and another Icee refill) and sat to watch the show.


There was a nice breeze coming off the lagoon while we watched, so it was another nice little break. Once their set was over, we continued on our way over to the Hogwarts Express, but stopped short when we saw the wait time. The standby wait was over an hour, and the TMs were letting everyone know that even the Express line was about a 40 minute wait. As much as we wanted to ride the train, we certainly didn’t want to wait 40 minutes and our feet could get us over to IOA a LOT quicker, so we decided to walk.


Since we were walking past it, we decided to do Minion Mayhem again before leaving.


It was about 4:30 and the park would be closing at 5 for HHN, so we exited the Studios and headed over to IOA for the rest of the day.

UP NEXT: Rocking With the Super Heroes
 
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Luck was not on your side when it came to seeing the Tale of the 3 Brothers! But it sounds like you all had a great afternoon! And certainly were making great use of your refillable mug for Icees!!
 
It was not your lucky day for catching the Tale of 3 Brothers! However, you guys still packed a lot into your US afternoon. I'd gladly wait in a 20 minute line for Escape from Gringotts. One of my favorite rides in all the parks...

But a 40 minute wait for the Express? Yikes. Good thing it was just you guys and DS and you could hoof it to IOA without having to push a stroller!
 
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This beautiful picture, though! This view just kinda gives me warm fuzzies inside a bit. I'm a Disney girl at heart, but there's something about those bright colours and iconic structures at Universal that just makes me feel excited and vacation-y!

It was dangerously close to 2:30 by the time we came off the ride, but we still had to get our stuff from our lockers. We hurried as quickly as we could, but still made it over to the Beedle the Bard stage to see they were already halfway through the Tale of the 3 Brothers. We decided to head out of Diagon Alley.

Man, it was NOT your day for 3 Brothers... I'd really like to see this show still, too, but we missed out again on this trip.

I can't believe how soaked you got on the water rides! Good call on the bathing suits and changing clothes! Those rides are brutal for getting you wet. Sometimes you fare okay on River Adventure, but the other two are guaranteed to get you soaked I think...
 
Luck was not on your side when it came to seeing the Tale of the 3 Brothers! But it sounds like you all had a great afternoon! And certainly were making great use of your refillable mug for Icees!!

It really wasn't!! We always just kept missing it, even when we knew what rotation it was going to be on. But we still had a great time, despite that.

We absolutely got our money's worth out of those refillable mugs. :rotfl2:

It was not your lucky day for catching the Tale of 3 Brothers! However, you guys still packed a lot into your US afternoon. I'd gladly wait in a 20 minute line for Escape from Gringotts. One of my favorite rides in all the parks...

But a 40 minute wait for the Express? Yikes. Good thing it was just you guys and DS and you could hoof it to IOA without having to push a stroller!

It was really frustrating to just keep missing it!! It's at the top of our list of must-dos when we are at USO.

I totally agree, I didn't mind a 20 minute wait for Gringotts. It's an awesome ride, and it was nice to get a little time to enjoy the queue and check out the details.

Yeah 40 minutes for Hogwarts Express with the EP was absurd! We were NOT waiting that long for it!! It was kind of freeing not to have a stroller to push and keep track of throughout the parks. We definitely moved a lot faster without one. I was a bit worried how DS would do without one for the first time on a theme parks trip, but he really surprised me with his stamina.

This beautiful picture, though! This view just kinda gives me warm fuzzies inside a bit. I'm a Disney girl at heart, but there's something about those bright colours and iconic structures at Universal that just makes me feel excited and vacation-y!

I totally agree, I get so excited to walk up to that huge tower at IOA and the gigantic arch at Studios. It really gets me excited about entering the parks!! Definitely very different from Disney parks where you tend to get that goosebumps feeling once you're already in the park and see the Castle, or Tree of Life, or whatever.

Man, it was NOT your day for 3 Brothers... I'd really like to see this show still, too, but we missed out again on this trip.

I can't believe how soaked you got on the water rides! Good call on the bathing suits and changing clothes! Those rides are brutal for getting you wet. Sometimes you fare okay on River Adventure, but the other two are guaranteed to get you soaked I think...

It really wasn't!! It is really one of our favorite things to do in the Wizarding World. I have still yet to see Celestina Warbeck though in all of our trips, do I'm going to add to our to-do list for next time we go.

I knew we would get wet, but I wouldn't have thought we'd get soaked through and through!!
 
I totally agree, I get so excited to walk up to that huge tower at IOA and the gigantic arch at Studios. It really gets me excited about entering the parks!! Definitely very different from Disney parks where you tend to get that goosebumps feeling once you're already in the park and see the Castle, or Tree of Life, or whatever.

Yes! Exactly!

It really wasn't!! It is really one of our favorite things to do in the Wizarding World. I have still yet to see Celestina Warbeck though in all of our trips, do I'm going to add to our to-do list for next time we go.

Ironically, Celestina Warbeck is one of the very few I actually have seen! Her, and also snippets of the toad choir one.
 
Enjoying your report! Quick question on the mug...I’m considering getting a refillable mug for our trip in June but was it a pain to carry around or deal with lockers?
 
Ironically, Celestina Warbeck is one of the very few I actually have seen! Her, and also snippets of the toad choir one.

I've never really been interested in seeing her but on the DIS Universal show the guys have been raving about her lately, so I think we will try to see her next time we are there.

Enjoying your trip report!

Thanks so much!

Enjoying your report! Quick question on the mug...I’m considering getting a refillable mug for our trip in June but was it a pain to carry around or deal with lockers?

Thanks so much!

We didn't find it to be a pain. We almost always were drinking something out of it, so we were rarely carrying around an empty cup, and it fit fine in my bag for rides that we didn't need to use lockers. When we did need to use the lockers, the cup fit fine with my small backpack. The AP ones had a cover for the top of the straw, but I'm not sure the regular ones did.
 
Day 4 Continued: Friday September 22nd

TM Jaz working the gates announced DS’s birthday over the loudspeaker and had everyone else waiting to get him wish him a happy birthday! DS really loved that. I had started to lightly drizzle on the walk over, so we ducked into the big Port of Entry gift shop to look around in case the rain started coming down any harder.

DS ended up picking a nice leather-bound Gryffindor journal that he wanted to purchase, and we were able to have it sent back to our room so we wouldn’t have to carry it around. While he was looking, he was also tempted by this Hedwig backpack and said he should have bought this for his school backpack! Lol


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Then came a game of “Take my picture sitting on this, Dad!”


We decided to split up for a little bit so DH and DS could go ride Spider-Man while I went to ride The Hulk, but when I got over there, it wasn’t running, so I was able to catch up to them before they got on. Every time we walked through Super Hero Island, DS couldn’t help himself and would always start jamming to the music.


After that, we went over to do Reign of Kong.

The Kong animatronic is probably the best animatronic I’ve ever seen!

We grabbed what was supposed to be a quick dinner at Pizza Predattoria in Jurassic Park, but ended up taking a while to order our food because they only had one window open and a big family with a lot of dietary restrictions was in front of us. But eventually we got our pizza and had a nice dinner in their outdoor seating area. I seriously can’t stress enough how pleasant the weather was for almost all of this trip. I was so surprised and had been expecting September’s worst!


We went over to Hogsmeade to spend some time doing the magic spots over there, and DS was asking to ride Forbidden Journey.


I didn’t want to ruin my stomach by riding FJ so close after dinner, so I grabbed a spot on the stage where they do the Frog Choir show and got this nice panoramic.


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After they rode, DS and I did Flight of the Hippogriff together.


Then we all rode again together.


We walked around doing a few magic spots after that.


I had stopped taking notes by this point, but I think this was the night DH and I devolved into an argument over the Hulk. We wanted to ride on the way out and were discussing if we should do child swap and not have to do the lockers. But then I started second guessing if we could do that since they make you go through metal detectors and I didn’t know if we’d be able to get to the child swap area before going through them. So we decided to get a locker, but then didn’t realize they had different sizes and got one that was too small. So we went over to get a bigger one, but were already snappy with each other by then because DH was aggravated with me because I kept changing my mind and I was aggravated with him for being aggravated with me. So then we ended up just saying forget it and not riding and we left, but we made up on the walk back to the room. Luckily it was our one and only argument for the trip, and it was a pretty minor one at that.

We got back to the resort and went to bed pretty early since Saturday would be our last full day and we wanted to start off with a 7 am early entry!

UP NEXT: But We Just Got Here!
 
Probably a smart call skipping Forbidden Journey after eating pizza. It's an amazing ride but rough on the stomach!

And for about the millionth time, I love all the pictures you post. The ones of the shop fronts are so bright and colorful.

Sorry you and DH got into an argument and it ended up with both of you skipping the Hulk. Sometimes, those dumb married disagreements sneak into vacations.
 
Great time at Islands of Adventure. So nice to be able to do Forbidden Journey a couple of times since the crowds were kind of low and glad the weather was nice for you guys in September. That is certainly a big deal!!
 
Every time we walked through Super Hero Island, DS couldn’t help himself and would always start jamming to the music.

I don't blame him! It's a happenin' spot!


This is a really neat shot!

Luckily it was our one and only argument for the trip, and it was a pretty minor one at that.

I'd call that a win! Sometimes these things happen on vacation. Theme parks are tiring and overstimulating, and that makes it easy to get short with the people we love. Good that you made up quickly though! But too bad about missing Hulk.
 
Sounds like a nice night! DS looks so cute jammin along! I'm sorry you didn't get to ride the Hulk and that is resulted in an agreement, but at least it was the only one of the trip and you got over it quickly!
 

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