By Brandon Hill on October 10, 2013 • ( Leave a comment )

2013: Florida Spring Break Trip 2013: Islands of Adventure

2013: Florida Spring Break Trip 2013: Islands of Adventure 2 – Harry Potter

My son and I have been to the Disney Resorts in Florida twice already, and so when taking this trip to show Florida to our exchange student, my son and I knew that we wanted to visit Universal Studio’s Island of Adventure Theme Park so that we could visit Harry Potter World. We are both Harry Potter fans and wanted to experience this section of the park. The spread above highlights our time in Harry Potter World.

Harry Potter World Tip: Get to the Park early, and wait for the gates to open – then make a beeline for Harry Potter World to ride the Forbidden Journey. The lines for this ride will get extremely long later in the day, and it is better to wait an hour in the morning, instead of 3 hours in the afternoon.

I followed my own advice and we went straight to the Forbidden Journey and waited about 45 minutes to ride it. Most of the wait was inside the building where there are all kinds of interesting things to look at while you are waiting, and even several cool special effects. This ride is one of the most incredible rides that I have ever ridden and it is easily in my top five ride list. We road all the Potter rides, and even enjoyed Butter Beer – which tasted much better than I thought it was going to.

I purchased the “Harry Potter” words on Ebay.com for about $2.00. I am not sure if the person I bought this from designed them selves or if it is part of a Cricut cartridge, but I didn’t mind spending the money to add this bit of fun to my page. I cut the other design using my Cricut machine as it reminded us of the ornate metal work that was part of Hogwarts “greenhouse” that formed part of the waiting line for the Forbidden Journey.

The red seal in the middle of the pictures on the right hand side is from a scrapbook kit that I purchased in the gift store.

2013: Florida Spring Break Trip 2013: Islands of Adventure 1

This second spread highlights events from other activities during the day at Islands of Adventure. After Forbidden Journey, the biggest excitement of the day was a lightning strike about 15 yards from where we were standing followed by a heavy storm for an hour, and a tornado sighted about 5 miles away. Needless to say, we were locked down in Jurassic Park for about an hour while the storm passed by.