Universal Studios – The Traveling Maker

Day 6 and 7 – 10/12/2022 and 10/13/2022

The next 2 days were spent at Universal Studios. We concentrated primarily on the Harry Potter and Jurassic Park parts of the park but also went through a show called Poseidon’s Fury that was about the Greek god, Poseidon.

Day 1:

Today we went to the main Universal Studios area to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley theme park. We looked around a bit and then got in line for the Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts ride. Fortunately we had the Universal Express Pass which allowed us to get in a much shorter line. While waiting in line we got to see the Gringotts bank with animated bankers as well as a small skit. The ride was amazing and felt so real.

After the ride we went back out and saw a long line for Ollivanders which is the famous wand shop. We didn’t want to wait in that line so we walked around and looked at some of the shops and structures in Diagon Alley. We got to see the famous Knight Bus.

While on this side of the park we decided to go ride the Men in Black – Alien Attack ride. That ride was so fun. We basically rode along and had a laser gun for each person. When aliens would pop out we had to shoot them with the laser, similar to the scene in the original movie where Will Smith shot the little girl with his laser. Curt expected to do very well at this but was really embarrassed when Debby more than doubled his score. It was very entertaining standing in line for this ride as we got to go through the MIB Headquarters and see all the various weapons and aliens in it.

There was nothing else in this section of the park that we were really interested in so we went and boarded the Hogwarts Express train at King’s Cross Station to the Hogsmeade Station. We sat in a small passenger room where various Harry Potter scenes were displayed in the exterior windows. In addition there were shadows in the room doors that appeared as though people were moving around outside the door. There was a shadow spider crawling up the door and one of the human shadows grabbed it and ate it. Ewwww!

Once we arrived at Hogsmeade Station we made our way to the Mystic Fountain. It was talking to a couple of young girls. It asked them to tell a joke, which one of them did and the fountain laughed and squirted a large bunch of water out to soak them.

Then we went to the Harry Potter area on Islands of Adventure called Hogsmeade. The buildings all had fake snow on them. The line for Ollivanders was much shorter here so we went to this one. They did a small performance where a wand got to choose its owner with one young child. Then we moved into the gift shop where we were able to buy wands and other various gifts. They had a huge assortments of wands. There were also 3 animated brooms. This is where we bought wands and a Gryffindor water bottle.

Next we went on the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride. This was probably the best ride of all that we went on the entire trip. It felt just like we were flying on a broomstick behind Harry Potter. While waiting in line, we went through the Hogwarts School where there were a lot of talking paintings. It was sort of a roller coaster but didn’t really have any large drops and it was all in the dark with various scenes taking us through the adventure.

Finally we stopped at the Triwizard Spirit Rally. This was a fantastic dance show put on a small stage. It played out as the guys school versus the girls school. The girls did a sort of ballet style dance and the guys did a Russian style dance.

This finally ended the day and we went back to the room for some much needed dinner and relaxation.

Day 2:

The next day we went directly to Islands of Adventure. The plan was to ride the Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure however the Express Pass could not be used for this ride. We got there at the very opening and it already had a 2 hour wait. It was hot and we decided it wasn’t worth the wait so we skipped that ride and moved on.

At this point we had completed all the Harry Potter adventures we were interested in so we moved to the Jurassic Park section of the park.

We started off looking through the Jurassic Park Discovery Center. This was primarily designed for children and had many interactive displays but it was still interesting even for us older children.

Next we went to the Jurassic Park River Adventure ride. On this ride we rode in a boat that took us through an area that looked like Jurassic Park. There were many animated dinosaurs. At the end it went down a large drop into water and soaked all of us in the boat.

At this point we went to lunch and found it really interesting that all through the Jurassic Park section they looked like fossilized leaves and other various things imprinted into the cement.

After lunch we went to a production called Poseidon’s Fury. We followed an archeological guide as he took us through the Temple of Poseidon. There were many special effects as we went through the temple and saw Poseidon battle the evil Lord Darkennon. While going through the temple we got to go through a tunnel of water where the water was spinning so fast around us that it made a tunnel to walk through.

At this point it was very hot and we were really tired and decided to call it a day. As we were leaving the park we saw some interesting statues and even got to see Bubba Gump Shrimp company, the one started by Tom Hanks in the movie Forrest Gump.