"Thunderbolts and lightning! Very very frightening!"... a trip report (FINISHED!!!)

[DisDreamz]

Late to the party as usual!

Hope you're having fun on your mini trip. It's hot and muggy down here (hopefully for you the parks won't be packed, but having gone many times in the summer--I wouldn't count on it). Can't wait to hear all about it though.

Our WDW trips overlapped AND we were also at IOA on the 14th!!! Can't wait to hear about if you experienced the torrential downpour we did. All I'll say is that we thought we were wet after riding Dudley DoRight's (or whatever that water ride is called), but that was nothing to how wet we were when we finally left the park for dinner.

 

[burly]

Have a nice trip. Look forward to more when you get back.

KIM

 

[luckylady]

Whew I'm all caught up now. HMmm June 14th we were on out way and ya last July we were one of "those" people who got in early. LOL good thing the line for WWoHP was sooooo long. Hope it wasn't to bad this year.Loving all the pictures. Can't wait for you to come back and write more adn so we can also hear about Disneyland trip.

 

[disneylovin24]

Just started reading your TR and I am enjoying it very much! Love all of your pictures!

Can't wait for more

 

[goofy's_gurl]

You are lucky ones to be getting in the park early. My family went on the 20th of June an got in early too!! Hope you have lots an lots of pictures of harry potter land!!!

 

[wingedjojo]

Late to the party as usual!

Hope you're having fun on your mini trip. It's hot and muggy down here (hopefully for you the parks won't be packed, but having gone many times in the summer--I wouldn't count on it). Can't wait to hear all about it though.

Our WDW trips overlapped AND we were also at IOA on the 14th!!! Can't wait to hear about if you experienced the torrential downpour we did. All I'll say is that we thought we were wet after riding Dudley DoRight's (or whatever that water ride is called), but that was nothing to how wet we were when we finally left the park for dinner.

I wasn't expecting low crowds but it could have been worse.

How freaky awesome would it be if we happened to pass each other and not know it? When I post my pictures up, you should totally see if you can find yourself.

Ah...the rain. As evident by this trip report's title, it had quite an effect on us.

Have a nice trip. Look forward to more when you get back.

KIM

Working on the next installment now!

Whew I'm all caught up now. HMmm June 14th we were on out way and ya last July we were one of "those" people who got in early. LOL good thing the line for WWoHP was sooooo long. Hope it wasn't to bad this year.Loving all the pictures. Can't wait for you to come back and write more adn so we can also hear about Disneyland trip.

Lucky! Did you stay at one of the onsite hotels or did you do some sort of Harry Potter package? At least the long line had interesting things to look at.

Just started reading your TR and I am enjoying it very much! Love all of your pictures!

Can't wait for more

Thanks!

You are lucky ones to be getting in the park early. My family went on the 20th of June an got in early too!! Hope you have lots an lots of pictures of harry potter land!!!

I love how they let people in early. It's like they were giving us a little reward for getting out of bed earlier.

 

[blabbermouth]

Great report! You and your sisters are so funny, it looks like you have a lot of fun together. The T-Rex food looked pretty good, and I loved all of their dishes (random, I know, but they were neat!). What an outrageous drink you ordered, sounds yummy though.

Look forward to reading about WWOHP, I'm a late adopter, just started the books this winter! Just started the 6th one yesterday, so I'm almost done. Then there's the movies!

 

[keri125]

Just found your trip report! You guys all look like so much fun! I love the way you seem to take boring "waiting" times and make them fun instead of whining! Those are my kind of travelers!!! : Can't wait to read more!

 

[wingedjojo]

I'M BACK (finally)! And ready to do another installment in this trip report.

My brief trip down to SoCal was fun and educational. I just started a report for that and the link is down in my signature. It hasn't gone very far yet (well, more like it hasn't gone anywhere at all) but I hope to write both here and there.

Alrighty then, back to the report!

~*~*~*~
Welcome to Hogwarts: part 1

I last left off with us caught in a leader-less mass headed straight to Harry Potterland. Normally I don't like it when people move in packs because somebody somewhere is moving slow, blocking traffic and creating gridlock. Not this morning. Perhaps the early morning has given people extra energy or maybe they were hyped from the early admission but everybody was speed walking like no tomorrow (now that's my kind of pace). We got to the Harry Potterland entrance (located at the VERY back of the park) in no time. I found it quite entertaining that at the land's entrance they had set up barricades to direct flow of traffic. At least they weren't limiting the number of people going in and out. There wasn't any time for pictures, just a quick snap of Hogsmeade before we decided to book it for The Forbidden Journey (or the castle ride as we like to call it).

As we passed by the gate entrance to get into the ride, the posted time listed 45 minutes. By my calculations, hotel guests had maybe 30 minutes ahead of us and those who haven't gotten to the park yet probably believed it didn't opened until 9am. Given the situation, 45 minutes wait time seemed almost unbearably crazy and here I thought Peter Pan was the most unreasonably long line ever.

Getting a locker, having our stuff squared away, and getting back into the line wasn't as big of a nightmare as I thought. I knew there was no way we could go bag-less into the park if we didn't stay onsite but I had envisioned having to wait for a locker then getting back into an ever growing line. While it was pretty chaotic in the locker room (cramped, lots of smelly bodies, people who didn't understand how things worked, etc.) there was always an empty locker available. It took maybe 5 extra minutes (tops) to go from entering the locker room to getting back into the original line. Not too bad.

The line going through Hogwarts was pretty cool. The details were amazing, there was always something to look at, and the best thing of all: AC. I just love it when rides have lines that provide visual entertainment and AC; makes it so much more bearable if I have to be standing around for 30+ minutes.

I didn't bring my camera the first time we went on but I did have my phone. Surprisingly, there were some decent shots that turned out.

It would've been interesting had we been able to hear house elves talking/working behind this door.

The next following pictures were taken when we stepped out of the AC and into the green house section of the line.

After a couple of twists and turns, we get to enter the castle/AC again!

One of the more animated rooms was either the History or Defense Against the Dark Arts room (it was very confusing because the chalk board said Defense Against the Dark Arts but the projections of Harry, Ron, and Hermione was talking about Professor Binns and History class). Again, the details in all the little knick-knacks and artifacts placed all over the castle really gave the whole place a little extra oomph.

Right before we boarded the ride vehicles, we passed by the Sorting Hat. Whoever was clever enough to think of using him to tell us the safety instructions instead of just using a random person over a PA system, kudos to you.

The ride was AMAZING!!! There were some darker scenes in the ride that I thought might scare Ma but she loved it as well. The technology used and all the special effects put together really made this an exceptional ride experience. It was everything I had hoped this ride to be. Two thumbs way up from me.

Having gotten that first ride out of the way, it was time to really look around and start taking some pictures.

Like at the Magic Kingdom, there were the obligatory castle shots. First up is one of my more favorite pictures (and currently being used as one of my desktop backgrounds).

Then I tried to up the artsy level a bit and vary the ways I framed the castle.

There were a couple of close up/detail shots:

Mom also took a group shot in front of the gate entrance. If you will look closely, in the time it took for us to start the ride and get off, the wait time had increased to 90 minutes.

 

[wingedjojo]

Welcome to Hogwarts: part 2

For the moment, we were going to leave the castle behind us and look around the rest of Hogsmeade. First we came across this little open area with banners. I think this is where they host a small show that showcases the students of the other wizarding schools. They didn't have a times guide saying when they'll do it but I'm pretty sure they didn't do one that day because of the numerous thunderstorms (more on that later).

And before anyone starts thinking I'm super full of myself and only posts pictures of myself, nobody else would pose with me.

Going back towards the entrance of Harry Potterland, got some scenic pictures in.

Then we decided to go check out some of the stores. Before I get to the pictures, I just want to say a couple of things. I know J.K.Rowling had a lot of say in how this place with built and more power to you that you wanted to keep the place authentic. BUT and this is a really big but; I really wish you allowed these stores to be made bigger.

Here are my reasons:
1) From a business point of view, making the stores so small makes NO sense. So much no sense that it's nonsense. This is an amusement park whose sole purpose is to entertain and collect revenue. Bigger stores = greater traffic = better sales. If a person walks by and sees a super crowded store (which it always was because that's how tiny it was), they are less likely to go in and spend money. Tiny stores mean tiny profits.
2) There is no personal space. So many people in so little space means there's no room for a person to look at things or to just stand there and ponder: is a $10 piece of hollow chocolate frog worth it? Although...now that I think about it, that might be a good strategy for moving products. If a person has no space nor time to think about whether or not something is worth it, they might just jump the gun and buy it now before the line got longer or more people came in. With a 50/50 chance of that happening, there might actually be method to this madness.
3) How is this wheelchair accessible and fire safe?

Rant aside, here are some pictures of Zonkos and Honeydukes (they're connected). I didn't take many pictures this time around because of crowding but we did come back later. Zonkos was really cool. While I do admit that in this particular case the small spacing gave it a really good atmosphere, I would still have preferred more space. Some of the products were really funny and I only wish that they would work in real life.

In front of the entrance to Harry Potterland they have the Hogwarts Express prominently displayed. With a quick shot of that and the physical entrance to Harry Potterland, we decided to exit this particular land for the time being.

We randomly turned down an area and found this bridge that connected Harry Potterland to Jurassic Park land. Turns out that this bridge had a very good vantage point of the back of Hogsmeade and a different angle to the castle. It was a super quiet area and we didn't see many people crossing it so we took our time and just admired the view.

Speaking for myself, first impression of Harry Potterland was that it was much smaller than imagined but the atmosphere and the mood it created was top notch. The major ride went above and beyond expectations and the whole place was (for lack of a better word) magical. My only regret is COMPLETELY forgetting to check our Buckbeak around the Flying Unicorn ride. COMPLETELY forgot until we got back home.

 

[JH87]

I am so glad I came across this TR! It is so entertaining so far. I love all your pictures and it seems like you have lots of fun with your family
I LOVE the nails! Very cute. And I am the same way with alcoholic drinks with meals....for some reason I only do that on trips too. I guess it's more fun, and more of a reason to pay so much for a drink.

 

[wingedjojo]

Great report! You and your sisters are so funny, it looks like you have a lot of fun together. The T-Rex food looked pretty good, and I loved all of their dishes (random, I know, but they were neat!). What an outrageous drink you ordered, sounds yummy though.

Look forward to reading about WWOHP, I'm a late adopter, just started the books this winter! Just started the 6th one yesterday, so I'm almost done. Then there's the movies!

The three of us didn't always have such a good relationship. I think it was once Jess and I started going off to different colleges and all of us being apart that we realize that without each other, life is boring. I also used to be hella mean (and I mean REALLY mean) to the two of them and only in recent years have I started to let them physically/mentally abuse me (all in good fun though).

That drink from T-Rex was DELICIOUS and I swear I'm not an alcoholic.

The only thing about starting any book series late is all the party poopers out there who try to ruin the ending for you. I hope that hasn't happened to you (or ever will) because that just spoils the fun.

Just found your trip report! You guys all look like so much fun! I love the way you seem to take boring "waiting" times and make them fun instead of whining! Those are my kind of travelers!!! : Can't wait to read more!

Thanks! We try our best to entertain one another.

 

[disneylovin24]

Love all the pics of the Wizarding World

 

[goofy's_gurl]

I love all the pictures of Harry Potterland. I just wish it was open like it should have been on my gradbash night (2010)... But I agree with you on the store issue.

 

[wingedjojo]

I am so glad I came across this TR! It is so entertaining so far. I love all your pictures and it seems like you have lots of fun with your family
I LOVE the nails! Very cute. And I am the same way with alcoholic drinks with meals....for some reason I only do that on trips too. I guess it's more fun, and more of a reason to pay so much for a drink.

I so agree with you on the "pay so much" part. Why are drinks so expensive? And they're TINY! At least girls have it easier and guys will buy them for you occasionally.

Love all the pics of the Wizarding World

Thanks! I totally want to go back and take more now that I've reviewed them all and know what I can improve on.

I love all the pictures of Harry Potterland. I just wish it was open like it should have been on my gradbash night (2010)... But I agree with you on the store issue.

I know it was about summertime that it opened and since it was called a gradbash night, it must have something to do with graduation which happens springtime-ish so you probably BARELY missed it! That sucks! Did you get to go back and visit it afterwards?

 

[wingedjojo]

Café Stoo-pendous[sic]

Last we left off we had wandered out of Harry Potterland and were making our way into Jurassic Park. Once we crossed the bridge we were back in the time of dinosaurs.

All together now: OOOOOoooohhhhhhhh!!!~~~

So of course we had to stop and use the bathroom first. Damn Edward. I swear we stopped more times for him to use the bathroom than for anybody else and WE were the girls.

While we were waiting, we found a nice shady spot to sit and rest. Look at our lovely group of ladies.

Lovely ladies with their lovely hats...

and their lovely shirts…

lovely facial expressions…

and…

OH MAI GAWD JESS’S PINKY TOE POINTS SIDEWAYS???!!!!?!?!?!?!

For some reason, we found this extremely hilarious. Like REALLY hilarious. We were rolling on the floor laughing (well, not really but almost). We looked at everybody else’s toes but only Jess’s seemed to be that sideways bent. Lovely.

Once Edward got out of the bathroom, we continued further into Jurassic Park. We took a picture in front of the sign at one point; not exactly sure when. Oohh look! One of the few times I actually wore my sunglasses.

The first attraction we experienced in this particular land was the Discovery Center. It’s not so much an exciting must-see attraction as it is a large building with glorious AC. It was insanely humid and hot. For the most part of this day we spent looking for ways to strategically be in AC without wasting too much time. This was one of those times.

We played some of the little games they had but for the most part it was pretty boring. I know “power of imagination” and all that jazz but there’s no way any of those eggs were real dinosaur eggs. They looked faked beyond words.

Prior to the trip, I was randomly reading about Islands of Adventure on Wikipedia and found that they had something called Triceratops Discovery Trail. State of the art animatronics triceratops that you can get up close to and is so lifelike you would believe it’s real? That sounded totally awesome!!!

Too bad it’s only opened seasonally and apparently the summer is not the right season.

Bummertown.

Population: me.

Instead we went to go ride the River Adventure ride. Ma didn’t want to get wet so she stayed at the Discovery Center. There was no line at all. I think so many people were going straight to Harry Potterland that it left all the other lands pretty empty. So after walking right onto the ride, we proceeded to get mildly wet.

I stayed almost completely dried somehow. I only experienced light sprinkles and you couldn’t even tell that I went on a water ride.

Both Jess and I wanted to go on the Pteranodon Flyers but we were all too tall and none of us had a small child to exploit. One day I’ll get nieces/nephews or godchildren and I’ll kidnap them just to go ride this ride. It looks like SO MUCH fun and it’s not fair that just because we’re a LITTLE too tall we don’t get to go.

There wasn’t anything else we wanted to do in Jurassic Park so we meandered over to Toon Lagoon.

Again, nothing in this land interested us. Back in 2007, we had gone on the two water rides here. We didn’t get wet so much as we took completely thorough showers with ALL our clothes on. With the exception of our mom, we can tolerate water rides for the most part but again, these are not water rides. They’re community baths with clothing being mandatory. So we passed.

I forgot what time it was but according to my pictures, it was about time for lunch. Not sure how we decided but we ended up heading to Seuss Landing for food. To get there, we first had to walk through Marvel Super Hero Island.

When Disney first bought Marvel, I immediately thought about Islands of Adventure. Namely…how’s that going to work out? Since Disney owns it now but Universal has been using it for years, do they have to pay royalties to Disney? Will they keep the characters? Switch to DC characters? I guess they’re keeping things as they are for the time being.

So walking through Marvel land, we saw Captain America!!! Edward and I decided we MUST have a picture with him.

It was pretty funny when Edward took this picture. Captain America handed him his shield to hold and Edward had the most difficult time trying to get his arm through the little arm loops in the back. Captain America was just standing there watching him struggle and it was quite comical.

After I took this picture, I thought it would be an interesting project to have every character that I pose with put up the peace sign with me. Stay tuned to see how that turns out.

We passed by The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man and thought we should go ride this right before lunch. If we decided that despite wanting to go eat, the line probably wasn’t that long. I remember it not being walk-on but it was probably at least half an hour. Not too bad considering it was midday.

To get to the ride vehicle, we first had to walk through the Daily Bugle (the newspaper Peter Parker aka Spider Man worked for) or as I like to call it: the Daily Beagle.

Notice the pin-up calendar? This will not be the last time this trip we see one.

There were a bunch of funny signs hung up along the line.

I enjoyed this ride. I remember when it first opened, it was so ahead-of-its-time in terms of technology and now that it’s compared to the Forbidden Journey ride in Harry Potterland, it doesn’t seem so technologically advanced anymore.

Afterwards we started heading towards Seuss Landing again. Here we are in front of the official sign for the island:

When we came here back in 2007, a tour guide told us that in this particular land, there are no straight lines. The world of Seuss is so whimsical and quirky that it mustn’t have any straight lines because Seuss land is not serious enough for straight lines. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any.

Lunch was at the Circus McGurkus Café Stoo-pendous. The food there is pretty average and not so variable or memorable but the atmosphere is cute and the name of the place is cool.

If I’m remembering correctly…

Jan had the pepperoni pizza.

Jess and Edward each had a burger and fries.

Ma and I shared the cheese pizza.

They’re personal pizzas but, at least for me, they were too big. I knew I couldn’t finish one on my own so I wanted to share it and Ma didn’t want to eat too much either.

While we were eating, a guy and some Dr.Seuss characters came out to put on a show. The non-character guy read a Dr.Seuss story (forgot which one; probably the Cat in the Hat) and the characters sat around him and acted character-y. Then afterwards they had some sort of ho-down and did a little dancing number.

After the dancing, the characters split up and went either outside or stayed inside for photo ops. I chose to take one with the Cat in the Hat. Remember how I wanted to ask characters to do the peace sign with me? Well, here’s me asking:

And here’s how it turned out:

I guess it was too hard for him to do a peace sign with four fingers…so he didn’t. I was so disappointed. Oh well, there will be other characters.

As we began to finish up lunch, we started discussing what to do next. So…guess what we did?

 

[Belle83]

Love the downtown disney pics. I'll have to try T-Rex, the food looks great. Glad you enjoyed Harry Potter, it was a highlight of our trip. We got wet on JP too, but the people in the middle and back didn't seem to at all.

 

[wingedjojo]

Love the downtown disney pics. I'll have to try T-Rex, the food looks great. Glad you enjoyed Harry Potter, it was a highlight of our trip. We got wet on JP too, but the people in the middle and back didn't seem to at all.

The food WAS great and the portions were HUGE! Gosh, with me talking like this all the time, they should be paying me.

Yeah...I think we sat in the middle-ish so we didn't get drenched.

 

[wingedjojo]

Concerning Mini Walking Walruses: part 1

Since we were already in the area, exploring Seuss-Landing seemed like the most logical solution. The Cat in the Hat ride was right next door so we hopped into line for that. It was actually a decent long wait, probably around 40 minutes or so.

The line is pretty neat in the sense that you get to walk through a facade of the house from the story which then leads into the ride vehicles. I don't have a picture of the house but imagine the front of it just sitting in the middle of the area where everyone is lining up. So as you're going through the line, you walk from "outside" the house to go "inside." Does that make sense? I'm reading it back to myself and this entire paragraph doesn't really seem to make sense. Oh well.

Now and then, lines from the story would either get projected onto random wall space or they’ll be painted on walls/things. At this one particular spot, they had painted a couple of lines and the word "mother" was at the perfect height so that it looked like it was labeling our mother.

The ride itself was not all that great. I remember it being much more impressive the last time I rode it back in 2007. This time around, everything seemed...not completely functional. It was like some features of the ride were either turned off or broken. Everything looked like it needed some sort of upkeep and it was just sad.

The ride empties into a gift shop. There was a lot of themed merchandise and a bunch of funny hats. So we had to do a family funny hats picture.

Next up was the Caro-Seuss-el. Is it weird that even though we’re all so old we still enjoy something like a merry-go-round? Ma didn’t want to go on because she’s a party pooper. It’s probably because she’s embarrassed about climbing aboard a rotating animal or that she’s afraid she won’t be able to pull herself up. Or maybe I’m just making up these mental anxieties for her. In all reality, she probably doesn’t like spinning rides (which would make sense since she doesn’t like the tea cup ride either).

I picked a cow. Of course I would. If you pushed down on its ears, it blinks. I guess that’s what made this ride a little bit different from the other merry-go-rounds in the sense that some of the things you ride are interactive.

Jess rode next to me. On what, I have no idea. In fact, I don’t really know what everyone else had chosen to ride. I only say mine was a cow because it looked like a cow. For all I know, it isn’t a cow.

Edward was to my left.

Jan rode in front of us for some strange reason because the rows were in sets of four ride animals. I think she said it was because she wanted to film us but she didn’t film us during the ride…so I don’t know.

Here’s her creeper face again.

And some action shots of the wild ride.

At some point we found an egg in a random corner. It was really odd/interesting because it was almost hidden away in a corner. We weren’t sure whether or not we should climb up on it but then we read a sign right next to it that practically said “climb away!” So Jan and I took that as the cue to start making stupid poses.

 

[wingedjojo]

Concerning Mini Walking Walruses: part 2

Since we were in a picture-taking mood, we went over to The Street of the Lifted Lorax.

The Lorax is one of my more favorite Dr.Seuss books. It’s pretty much a PSA about saving the environment. It’s a good message and it’s a cute story. Plus, the Lorax looks like a mini walking Walrus and that’s just funny.

They had these microphones set up where you can actually listen to the story of the Lorax. I’m not sure if they play the whole book though.

As a throwback, here’s me doing the EXACT SAME THING 4 years ago:

Trying to get into the house of the Once-ler (the antagonist of the story)…

…because he was the bad man who cut down all the trees.

What trees you say?

Presenting…

the TRUFFULA TREES!!!

Jan confused about what I was doing and giving a “oh well” kind of face.

I love truffula trees because they look like cotton candy on long sticks. Not because I’m a hippie.

With that out of our system, we went back to Marvel Super Hero Island to go ride the Incredible Hulk Coaster. In 2007, Jess and Jan were still unsure about roller coasters and hadn’t gone on this. They were much braver this time around and were beginning to develop into adrenaline junkies.

We were PUMPED for the ride!

Line wasn’t too bad. It was even shorter than the Cat in the Hat ride if I recall correctly. We found ways to pass the time.

Before long, we were strapped and buckled in, ready to go.

I just LOVE this ride. It’s so much fun. I’m pretty sure Jess felt the same but not so sure about Jan. I think she enjoyed it but not enough to go again? I don’t know.

So where was Mom this entire time? Sitting in a comic/souvenir shop in the AC waiting for us.

We went to go find her and went about looking for something we could all do and enjoy as a family (plus Edward).