One Park Only

If you had to pick one park out of the many amazing theme parks you find in Orlando, FL, what would it be? It was not a hard choice for my kids to make, Universal Studios' Islands of Adventure was the unanimous voice. They were all looking forward to make the journey into Harry Potter's world.

I would say we are very "mild" fans of Harry. The two older boys read the series twice, and I read it once. While watching the second movie, we decided to turn it off and not allow the viewing of the remaining ones. It was a choice we made for our family and I'm not going to dwell on this issue. Although Ethan has not read the books yet, he acquired the knowledge of all the characters by pure brotherly osmosis.

Here starts our adventure

The ride inside Hogwarts was quite amazing. Even while moving along the line you were entertained by all kinds of characters and stages, like snow falling on our heads due to one of Ron's misdirected spells.

Hogsmeade town was really neat! I loved watching all the details, which reminded me of how many of them I had already forgotten.

All of Fred& George's tricks were available to you (for a pretty penny). Since we did not break into Gringott's, we had to be content to only browse.

We did have some spare change for a taste of butterbeer though.

Hagrid's hut entertained us while waiting to get on the "Flight of the Hippogriff".

Our day was not totally consumed by the wizarding world, we had plenty of time and energy to explore all of the park. There were virtually no lines on the "non-Potter" attractions.

The Incredible Hulk Coaster was one of my favorites. It takes the unsuspected by surprise as it launches the car out of the "tube". You slowly start the ascend, being conditioned by other roller coasters to think that it will remain at this pace to the top of the ride. Not so, all of a sudden, in the middle of the ascend, it just launches you out, with enough power to light up all of Time Square! Yeah, I know, not a carbon free footprint, amazing though!

Ethan enjoyed his cousin & brother's good will and attitude as they joined him on more mild rides. Ethan was not that keen on the "hulk" type experiences.