Epic Sisters Trip

Glenn gave me the greatest Christmas present ever: A trip to Universal Studios Florida to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter with my sister Mallory.  We are Harry Potter fanatics and we were SO excited to see this park together.  It was once again, a perfect sisters trip and I'm so glad that my sweet husband is willing to make room in our budget and his vacation time for me to take a break with my sister.  We had an incredible time and every time I take a break from being a mom I realize how much I need it once in a while.  I come back to my "job" so refreshed and ready to be better.

Mal and I flew in on a Wednesday night at the end of April.  We walked down to Universal Studios and ate dinner at Hard Rock and talked about our game plan for the next day.  My husband, being the genius that he is, planned our trip at a great time of year when the crowds are really low.  That, and our talent at working the theme park system meant that we waited in very few lines all weekend.  

Thursday morning we got up early, ate breakfast at the hotel, and got ourselves to Islands of Adventure right as it was opening and we raced to the back of the park to Hogsmeade.  We were totally dorking out all morning.  In general I still think Disney has Universal beat on the theming in different lands and story telling in lines but Hogsmeade is absolutely incredible.  Everything was so beautiful.  I love the way they built it so that as soon as you walked in the gate it is nearly impossible to see anything outside of this Harry Potter world.  The rooftops hide everything outside from your view and the smells and music make the experience so complete.  

We'd read that the Forbidden Journey ride was the best and always had the longest lines so we ran to the end of the street and got in line.  That first time we decided to wait in the long line, mainly because it winds through the whole castle and there is so much to see along the way.

It was probably the coolest ride I've ever been on.  Over the course of the weekend we rode it 17 times.  And by the end we were trying to figure out how they did it.  There were sections where you were moving to the action on a screen in front of you and then you'd move from the screen to an intricate set and then back to a screen.  Universal had a few rides like that but this one was so seamless and just plain cool.

After we waited in line that first time we jumped right back in the single rider line, which is how we rode most of the rides for the rest of our trip, and we basically walked right on over and over again.  We totally took advantage of the single rider line.  There's no way to really use that as a family because you can't send the kiddos on their own, but my sister and I were able to ride most everything in the parks and only waited a few minutes.

We loved all the detail in Hogsmeade and wished that Diagon Alley was open when we went so we could see it too!  The crooked rooftops and chimneys, the snow and icicles, the shop windows with crazy things moving on their own inside.  It was so well-done.

Oh the butterbeer.  They have a soda and a frozen butterbeer and while both are delicious, the frozen was our favorite.  While Mal was living here over the summer we tried several copy cat recipes and while some were close, none were quite as good as the real thing.

This is the rooftop of the Three Broomsticks.  We ate lunch there the first day and it was such a cool environment.

Honeydukes was another favorite.  There weren't very many stores to look through in this land but they were all really neat.  Honeydukes was probably my favorite, but of course, I have a serious candy addiction.

At the end of the day we decided to wait in the line for Ollivanders.  There's a store next to it and then there's a line for the wand fitting experience.  We'd watched the line all day and so when we noticed that it was really short we jumped in.  So glad we did.  They take a room full of people and then Ollivander chooses one of them to come to the counter and wave some wands until they find the one that fits.  Mallory was the chosen one and it was a hilarious good time.  Seriously, we just travel so well.

We liked a few other rides at Islands of adventure: Jurassic park was fun, Spider man, and the water rides were cool too.  But Hogsmeade was by far the best.  

On our second day we went to Universal Studios.  We rode the Despicable Me ride and the Rockit Rollercoaster which was amazing.  We also loved the Mummy.  We rode it quite a few times using the single rider line.  Around lunch time we came across the Fear Factor Live show.  We had both seen the show on TV and were fascinated with what might take place so we asked the casting lady lots of questions about what the stunts would be like and if we'd have to eat anything gross because that was for sure right out.  Then we watched the show and thought, "sure, we could do that."  So we came back for the next casting session and were basically the most fun people there.  It was Mallory and I and a bunch of muscly guys who took themselves way too seriously.  It was hilarious and the crew loved us because we were far from boring.  So we got cast.  They allowed us to wear the boy's wardrobe for religious reasons since the girls ones were far from modest, which was very nice of them.  And we changed into our disposable underwear (true story), got all harnessed up, and went out for our first show.  It was the most exhilarating combination of terror and excitement that I've ever felt and how amazing to be doing this with my sister.  There were three stunts and people get eliminated at each stage.  The first one is the endurance hang.  They put you on a scaffolding 3 stories high, you go out on a ledge, hold onto a V-shaped bar angled downward and when the audience counts down the ledge drops out from under you and you have to hang on.  I was the second person to fall and Mallory nearly beat everyone so I got eliminated and she moved on to the next stunt.  In stunt 2 you're put in teams of two.  One of you grabs bean bags out of an eel tank and the other is hoisted up in the air holding a bucket and trying to catch the bean bags. Whoever gets the most wins an advantage in the second part of the challenge which is an octopus throw.  The winning team from the last challenge gets an extra octopus.  The person on the ground now holds the bucket and Mallory was hoisted up and had to swing like a pendulum and try to throw the octopuses into her teammate's bucket.  I was watching from the "greenroom" trailer and cheering her on.  It was awesome.  Their team lost that time and they had to take the walk of shame.  After the show we walked out and one of the girls in charge of casting asked us if we wanted to do it again because they had some empty spots in the next show.  We said sure, headed back to the trailer and got dressed again!

It was awesome.  Everyone was so happy to see us.  We made our little intro videos and totally made light of ourselves which won us a lot of fans because we were having so much fun.  This time we both made it to round two and once again Mallory was swinging and throwing octopuses and this time I was catching them.  Or rather, not catching them.  I could not catch those darned octopuses for the life of me.  So we were once again eliminated.  At the end of the show we were walking out and the same casting girl, named Katie, came out and asked us if we could come back tomorrow and she's cast us again because they all liked us so much.  Well SURE we will!  So we rode some more rides and just couldn't believe how much fun we'd had so far.  We went back to the hotel that night talking about funny responses to the hosts questions and funny things to say in our intro videos.  We're such goofs.

The next morning we went back to Harry Potter land.  We took a picture in the chairs outside of the ride that were there for people to test whether they fit or not before they got in line.  How sad is that?  They had test seats outside of nearly every ride which means it must be pretty commonplace that people wait in line and then don't fit in the seats.

We rode the Forbidden Journey several more times then headed over to Fear Factor for our next show!

We got in again and once again got dressed in our disposable underwear.  Good times.  The crew were excited to see us again and we made our intro videos and proceeded to hand out water cups to our fellow competitors and make jokes while they sat there staring at us.  Once again, I was the second person to fall and Mal made it to the second round.  Then she made it to the final round and she got to do the stuntman's challenge.  It's a race up a ladder, reaching out on ledges to release flags along the way.  Then you slide down a pole and run to a car.  You climb in the car, turn it on and it gets raised up in the air.  When it's all the way up she had to climb out on the hood, release three flags, climb back into the car, get a rocket launcher, aim it at a target  on the set and fire and of course, Mallory won!  The third time really is the charm.  Everyone in the trailer was cheering for her and so excited when she won! As was everyone backstage and everyone in the control booth.  It was so fun and we felt like we had made a bunch of friends by being willing to make complete idiots of ourselves for two days.

After we got dressed we got a picture with our favorite casting girl, Katie.  She was so sweet.  We totally bonded.  Later that afternoon we came back to just watch the show one more time because we just loved it.  And at one point the host saw us in the audience and when he was about to start a stunt he said, "Contestants, are you ready?  Audience, are you ready?  Kim and Mallory, are you ready?"  And we screamed and I'm sure the rest of the audience thought we were idiots but it was so so fun.  We were even recognized at dinner that night by the people at the next table and they said they were rooting for us.  What a hilarious good time.
Mal and I had the greatest time together.  We rode the Men in Black ride and asked the workers for tips so we felt like insiders and got better every time.  We rode the Mummy ride several more times, ate some incredible food, which was surprising for a theme park, but true.  What theme park has gelato?!  It was delicious.  It's just so nice to do something like this with someone who is so like me.  Every time we had to make a decision about what to do or where to eat we both felt like doing the same thing so we never felt like we were missing out on anything and we got to have these amazing experiences with our best friend which is pretty wonderful.
We ended our last day back at Islands of Adventure riding the Forbidden Journey a few more times.  Bless that single rider line.  The people at the front of that line knew us too.  They saw us so many times over and over.  We shared one last butterbeer and took our time walking out of the park.  It was perfect.  Three days of theme parking and because we were able to use the single rider line so much and the crowds were so reasonable, we were able to ride and do everything that we wanted to plenty of times.  It was wonderful.
Thanks so much to my honey for giving me an incredible trip and wonderful memories with my sister and a much-needed break.  Hopefully we'll be able to go on many more sister trips in the future.  We just do it so well.