Theme park explorers (day 3)

Ahhh the joy of crappy hotels… well, not so much joy, as forced tolerance. I was up at around 4, trying not to move too much, because the mattress actually makes noise when you move. It’s a little like cats being tortured by singing saws… wonderful stuff.

Last night people were chatting outside the window, and it felt like they were standing next to my bed. At least the backing up truck woke Elora and Daan at the reasonable hour of 6 AM. (Meh, they had to get up half an hour later anyway)

Elora wasn’t impressed with the waking time.  We haven’t really suffered from jetlag yet.  She said “Mom, I don’t want to,” but I swear, her eyes said “Bitch, are you crazy??” Then I reminded her we were going to Universal studios, and she suddenly turned into the Road Runner, dressing and getting ready in the blink of an eye.

We headed off to the parks after having a light breakfast of crackers and juice. No greasy bite for us… we left that till later. I don’t know why we’re so hungry here all the freaking time, it must be the constant reminder of food. And the fact that there is so much food we want to try.

Our first park was Universal Island of Adventures.  Elora and I were on a mission, we were going to go on the Harry Potter, Forbidden Journey ride. We speed walked all the way through the park (of course we took the wrong turn, so walked the long way around)

To my delight, Elora loved it. I was so happy. We actually rode it twice in a row. I had to hold her hand throughout though. It wasn’t an easy feat, and I actually have a bruise on my arm from the awkward position I had to hold it in. But it was worth it!!

After the Forbidden Journey we tried the flight of the Hypogriff, which didn’t impress my daughter, because it was too slow and boring. Great… I have created a monster *gulps*

We shared a breakfast plate (just one) in the Three Broomsticks (I think it was) and shared two small butterbeers. Well… Daan and I shared one, Elora drank it all.

We ran around Hogsmeade for a while and it was lovely. We went to Olivanders and saw how a wand chooses its owner, which was grand. Then we decided we were going to get a wand as well. Elora wanted to get one for herself, but she’s got pocket money to spend and aside from clothing, I’m not allowed to buy her anything. *mutters something about teaching a lesson about the value of money* The wand would have eaten up half of her budget. So to make a compromise, I got a wand (because I’m a sad nerd) but instead of getting the one I wanted, I got an interactive one, that she could play with. That way she could cast spells on some of the shops and items would move around. It was pretty awesome.

After looking at many wands (I seemed to like all the evil ones) I ended up with the wand of Bellatrix Lestrange. I almost got Voldemort’s wand, but Bellatrix suited me better. Not that I particularly love the character, it’s just a cool wand.

Not all the spells were easy to cast, much to the frustration of my 8 year old, or most of the other kids we encountered. But it was quite a quest to find all the spell symbols and wave the wand around. We spent quite a long time running around Hogsmeade.

We accidentally found the train to Diagon Alley, which was a real surprise. The ride is absolutely AMAZING. I have no words of how great all the Harry Potter stuff is. It brought us to the other park.

The Escape from Gringotts was every bit as good as the forbidden journey. The animatronics were so lifelike, we thought they were actors from a distance. Everything was so beautiful, it really blew me away.

When we came out it was lunch time, and we were getting peckish again. We decided on more Potter food. Our destination was the Leaky Cauldron, where we shared two meals (toad in the hole, and two little pies, one with fish, and the other mince). Of course we had more butterbeer, though different ones this time. Elora had a frozen one and I had a hot one.

Elora –who had claimed she wasn’t hungry—ate more than half of the meals, and drank most of my butterbeer and most of her own. She truly is a hobbit.

It was gorgeous. The food was okay, nothing spectacular, but the atmosphere made up for a lot. And I freaking love butterbeer.  It’s going to turn me into a butterball, but oh well.

We meandered about the place for a little while, looked in a shop, but in the end we didn’t see even half of it, we wanted to do some rides.

Most of our day had been Harry Potter themed, but now we wanted to see more of the parks. We weren’t in Islands of Adventures anymore, and I wanted to do a few rides that Daan could enjoy.

The first ride we stumbled across was Disaster. I forgot how cool this ride is. The girl who played ‘Lonnie’ and was our host was FANTASTIC. She made me laugh so hard, and she was so witty… it really was awesome. It was cool that Christopher Walken had a part in it too. Elora was tired, and her mood had shifted from ‘everything is awesome’ (try reading that without getting the song stuck in your head… *wicked grin*) to ‘I don’t want this’. I told her to suck it up, Buttercup. We weren’t just going to do what she wanted to do. She agreed, but she did it with a face that spelled thunder. Though once inside she enjoyed it, and was even a little upset that she didn’t get cast for the special roles people play.

We laughed and had fun, but it was about quarter to two, and we have this thing about staying in a park all day. Elora just gets too tired and she gets grumpy, but not just her, we do too. We tend to split it up in morning and evening visits. Then we rest in the afternoon. So it was time to go. But when we walked past the Transformers ride… I couldn’t resist. Elora and I were going in.

She liked it, but wasn’t a fan. I have to admit… I prefer the Spiderman one too, but I really enjoyed myself.

It was time to get to the car. Elora was in a bit of a weird mood, she kept switching from insanely sweet and fun, to a grumpy old man. She had blisters on her feet, and that didn’t help, but because she was being a bit manipulative in using her pain, I was getting fed up with it. We decided to go to the mall, while she wanted to go swimming. In the end we only stayed very briefly at the mall, and we went home to go swimming soon after.

I don’t like the pool here. It’s not quite dirty, but it’s a bit odd. There were some kids Elora’s age and she went to play with them. They seemed so lovely at first, but when Elora accidentally pushed one kid in play, he suddenly completely turned on her, and his sister too… it was kinda scary. Like very chubby children of the corn. Elora was all sad that they were suddenly horrible to her. Luckily it was time for dinner, so we went back to our shitty room and got dressed. I can’t wait to see the last of this room tomorrow, to be honest.

Our dinner was at Chili’s. It was nice but not spectacular. I remembered it being better 2 years ago. At the table we played a game of ‘guess the character’ and we had a lot of laughs. We Noodles laugh a lot, and it seems to be contagious. I’ve had brief conversations with a lot of people randomly through the day, and we often made them laugh too. I really love to laugh.

Btw, a random thought just entered into my head. Florida, we need to have a serious word about your bathroom stalls. I mean… WTF? What’s with the HUGE gaps near the door. You can actually see there’s people in the freaking stall. That’s not cool, Florida. Not cool at all. I’m just damn paranoid when I go to the loo, and I’m not amused.

Anyway, I digress. After dinner we went into another souvenir shops and got some t-shirts for Elora. She was over the moon, because she got to pick her own. I love these stupid little spending sprees. They’re fun.

Now both Elora and Daan are asleep, and I’m blogging. I will have to owe you the pictures for a day that I’m less tired. I don’t know how to put them on Daan’s computer yet.

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. We’re going to go back to Universal for the morning and early afternoon, and by 3 pm, we are going to check into our hotel in Disney. I really can’t wait. A bit of cleanliness will be nice. Daan remarked that this has to be the worst hotel we’ve ever been in. Though I find it highly amusing, 2 nights is enough.

All in all today was an absolutely fantastic and adventurous day. The weather was gorgeous and the parks were fantastic.