A new adventure was upon us. We'd read the books (okay, I was a slacker, but at least some of us had), we'd seen the movies (yes, I can check that one off), and finally on this day we would experience the glory of Harry Potter in theme-park form. The mysterious "WW" on my schedule for the week stood for "Wizarding World" in my very feeble attempt to keep our destination for this day a secret from the kids for as long as possible.
We were up decently early, but let I Judy get a half-hour head-start in getting ready while I slept in a little longer. Hey, I'd be driving and it made sense that I be as well-rested as I possibly could, right? Gram and Poppy emerged from the master suite as we finished up breakfast and whatever else we needed to do to get out the door, and I think that they were kind of excited that they had a day off from all of the "excitement" that we'd been putting them through for the past several days. We said "see you later" to them at about 7:15am and drove the family truckster out of the Kidani parking garage with Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure programmed in the GPS.
The drive itself was uneventful until we got near Universal Studios and the GPS took us to some road that obviously was
not the parking lot or even the entrance to Islands of Adventure, and proudly declared, "You have reached your destination". So smug, that danged GPS. I was able to turn around in a hotel parking lot and somehow backtracked and found the parking garage without further GPS assistance, if you can call it that. (Picture Luke Skywalker turning off his computer to make his final strafing run on the Death Star...yeah, that was me turning off the GPS and finding Universal Studios on my own.) Okay, I don't know how I just got sidetracked onto Star Wars references, we'll try to keep this Harry Potter-themed. It was like I was given a faulty Marauder's Map and...oh nevermind, we parked at about a quarter to 8.
We emerged from the parking garage and followed the flow of the crowd into the Universal City Walk area.
I saw one of Cynthia's (eandesmom) favorite restaurants, Margaritaville, and took a couple of pictures. And I can say, with these photos now being over a year old, I have absolutely no recollection of taking these! While preparing this chapter I was like, "wow, I saw Margaritaville (apparently)"! I wondered if next I would see pictures of myself carrying a baby in a backpack and having a Mike Tyson tattoo on my face. Oh wait, there I go again, let's keep this limited to the Harry Potter movies.
We made a quick pit stop and then continued on to our destination.
I'm sure you've seen this sign at the entrance of Islands of Adventure in other trip reports, but that didn't stop me from taking my own picture.
Absolutely. Bring it on!
The theming is pretty incredible in this area that you first enter. The detail definitely rivals Disney here. My only criticism would be that there's a lot going on, visually. It's kind of busy, but definitely impressive.
Well as you know, we were making a bee-line for Wizarding World, so we breezed right past Seuss Landing. I was lucky to get a non-blurry picture of Horton Hears a Who. (Or is it "Whom"?)
Boy, did I have to read that story a lot when my kids were tykes. But I didn't mind. Nobody, I mean nobody, can turn a phrase like Dr. Seuss.
"Find that" sneered the bird
"But I think you will fail"
And he left with a flip
Of his black-bottomed tail.
And I remember that I'd put dramatic pauses in-between those last three words. Good times. But alas, those days are gone.
Formerly-little Lauren (a dead-ringer for Cindy Lou Who, when she was but two)
Said "I want to see Wizarding World! Seuss Landing won't do!"
And Marlene and James both chimed-in with "Us too!"
See what I mean? Dr. Seuss makes it look so easy.
The next area that we blasted through with barely a moment to pause for a picture was The Lost Continent. But we'll return later in the day.
Ah yes, and then we reached Hogsmeade, the entrance to "the Wizarding World of Harry Potter" section of the park.
One of the first things you see upon entering is the Hogwarts Express, and we were tempted to wait to get a picture in front of it, but we knew that we needed to get back to the Forbidden Journey ride, where the line was growing by the second.
We didn't stop at any of these shops yet, we'd save that for later in the morning, but we did kind of "take it all in" as much as we could as we walked through this area. The theming is just absolutely amazing here. They did such a good job in recreating these scenes from the movies and books. Unbelievable.
The use of forced perspective really gives you a sense that you're approaching a huge castle. They learned that lesson from Disney and learned it well.
We made it into the building and oh my, creatures were flying past me, this way and that. I got spun around I dont know how many times. It was sensory overload! I was scared out of my wits. Such frenzy!
Oh wait, you misunderstand. I'm not describing the ride yet, we'd just had our first encounter with....lockers. Everybody's in there trying to cram their stuff in their locker and quickly get on to the next thing, whether they're coming off of the ride or trying to get to it. I'm sure the lockers are assigned so that everybody's not in the same area at the same time, but it's still a madhouse. And the whole locker thing is so prevalent at Universal and so, ...not at Disney. I guess it's because Disney doesn't have the major thrill rides like Universal does, where you really can't take all of your stuff onto the ride, but still, it seems like you're getting nickel-and-dime'd to death as you go throughout the day. Anyway, the need to store you stuff is justified for this ride, but the room with the lockers is a nightmare and a half.
We managed to get all of our miscellaneous stuff stored in a couple of lockers and then set off to get in line. Once in the hallway, we quickly realized that we had to make a choice: regular line or single rider. I hadn't thought this one through ahead of time. Judy was leading the way and made the call -- we didn't care if we rode together and we'd have more time to see the park if we went single rider, so single rider it was. But, people were literally running past us in the regular lane and to get to the single rider lane she had to push her way through like a fullback. If only she had a
Beater's bat, right? (See there, I finally worked in a Harry Potter reference.) Frankly I was a little surprised at how aggressive she could be, but we all dutifully followed our lead blocker and made it to the line.
As we went through the shorter, single rider line I realized that we were missing all of the impressive sights that were in the regular line. Duh! But we did at least get to see the Sorting Hat, and I took a picture with my cell phone (my good camera was back in the locker).
I can just hear it shouting out: "Gryffindor!!!"
When we reached the loading area, we really did get split up and matched-up with riders who were short a person or two for their cars (for lack of a better word), as we should have since we were in the single rider line. I was a little worried that James might not be okay with this idea, but somehow he's recently become a thrill-ride junkie and will now go on things at Six Flags that scare the carp out of me, so this wasn't a problem. Anyway, when my turn came I sat down in the contraption next to three other wizarding wannabees and got strapped in good and tight. We moved off and the floor seemed to fall away...
Up next: Forbidden Journey Spoiler Pic
Link to next chapter
Thanks for the link! 
for an upcoming hucifer trip to Disney World! Can't wait to read the newest adventures of the Transportation Goddess!!! 
