Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Charlie is currently obsessed with Harry Potter. I mean obsessed. He has read the series at least twice if not three times now. He’s read every spin-off book he can find on prime reading – including a cookbook. Sometimes we are concerned that he can no longer tell the difference between muggles and wizards. Universal studios has an entire section of the park devoted to Harry Potter. They have recreated diagon alley and hogsmeade. There’s a hogwarts castle and you can get butter beer. You can even cast spells with a wand around the park.

When we realized we were going to be making a stop in Florida on the way home we told Charlie about Harry Potter world. We had him write us a persuasive essay as part of his school work on why we should all go. The introduction: Hello Mom and Dad,I want to go to harry potter world at universal studios because I love harry potter and I want you to know why. There is so much things to do there. I bet you that you and dad will want to go straight to it after you read my book. He made a very compelling case in the next four chapters so on Monday we packed our bags and headed to universal studios.

We started the day off bright and early (for us). We were at the park gates as they opened at 9am. We got in line to enter and Charlie’s head very literally exploded. He got a nosebleed he was so excited! Because the girls aren’t tall enough to ride most of the big rides in Harry Potter world and they all had crazy wait times first thing in the day we thought we would start off with some easier ones along the way. We hit up ET, the Simpson’s and Men in Black before we ate our packed lunch perched on a kerb. We are very fancy.

After lunch we headed into Diagon Alley. There was so much to see and so many people that it honestly was just hard to take in. We wandered through Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes, headed to Ollivanders to get our wand and then watched the dragon on top of gringotts breathe fire before heading into the bowels of the bank to help Harry Ron and Hermoine escape. As a reward for our successful mission we stopped and had our first taste of butter beer before catching the hogwarts express to hogsmeade.

The Hogwarts Express was probably my favourite part. It was so well done. You would swear you were on the actual train. Hogsmeade was also super cool. It looked completely magical. There were three rides inside Hogsmeade, but unfortunately the girls were not tall enough to ride two of them. We decided to divide and conquer so that the girls and I could do their ride while Charlie and Jacob rode Hagrid’s motorcycle roller coaster. In the line to ride the Flight of the Hippogriff Nora made friends with the lady behind us and Sarah offered to be Nora’s responsible companion so that we could all ride together. We have been very pleasantly surprised by how friendly everyone has been.

We rounded out the day with some rides in Seuss ville and then one last trip to diagon alley to grab some gag gifts from Weasleys. We left the park at close (9pm) and grabbed some dinner at hard rock before ending our very large day.