Every few years, Mitcher’s department at work has a conference hosted in Orlando. His paid-for flight to Orlando was enough of a motivation for us to plan a fun weekend trip there!
We started trip planning with a few friends. You may remember Brandon and Matt from my post about when they visited us in Sydney. Well, Brandon and Matt were also part of this conference, and they had similar ideas about wanting to spend the weekend in Orlando. So the four of us began to brainstorm how to spend our week, and it resulted in a very fun weekend away!
Fine dining
The guys’ conference ended mid-day on Thursday, and since I had to work, I arrived just in time for dinner. We went with Norman’s, one of the highest rated fine dining establishments in the area. The atmosphere had a relaxing, but sophisticated vibe, and the food was well-thought-out and perfectly presented. The meal started off right with an bread cart brought to our table with our bread and bread-accompaniment options: we had a choice of four different olive oils, two different balsamic vinegars, and two types of salt, plus butter. Each dish after that was equally impressive, ending with the finale, which was jello covered by a big pile of cotton candy. The juxtaposition of eating cotton candy with our fingers and the waiter cleaning up our crumbs with a crumb-catcher, was absolutely delightful. The entire meal was the perfect start to our trip.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Did you know that Mitcher and I first met by talking about Harry Potter? I wouldn’t call it a meet-cute exactly, but our mutual love of Harry has stayed with us — in fact, our wedding cake had a golden snitch on it.
So when Brandon and Matt said they wanted to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I’m sure you’re not surprised that Mitcher and I agreed. I’d been to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter two times already, but I knew I’d enjoy the visit for a 3rd time.
How to visit Harry Potter World
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter actually spans two different Universal parks, so if you want to see it all you pretty much need to commit to buying a 2-park pass. Each side represents different areas of Harry’s world, so they’re completely unique experiences:
- Universal Studios Orlando is home to the Hogwarts castle and Hogsmeade. This side was the original Wizarding World of Harry Potter that opened in 2010. The main attraction here is the virtual reality ride found within Hogwarts castle.
- Universal Studios Islands of Adventure is home to Diagon Alley, including Gringotts Bank. This section of Harry Potter World opened in 2014. The main ride here is found within Gringotts and is another (more updated) virtual reality roller coaster ride.
In order to get between the two sides of the Harry Potter World, you actually board the Hogwarts Express, which transports you from one park to the other. How fun is that?
How we spent our time at Harry Potter World
In addition to Brandon and Matt wanting to visit Harry Potter World, other work friends of ours decided to visit too, so we were able to spend the day with Courtney and Chris too. Given that I had visited Harry Potter World twice already, I guess you could say I was the resident expert. So I recommended that we start on the original side, the one with the Hogwarts Castle.
Hogsmeade is designed as if it’s winter, since many of the key parts of the Harry Potter books and movies were centered around winter trips to Hogsmeade, so it was fun to see the buildings covered in “snow”, even though we were there on a 90+ degree day.
Up first, we visited Hogwarts castle for the virtual reality ride inside. The ride itself makes you feel like you’re flying around Hogwarts on your broomstick with Harry, so there are plenty of twists and turns. But even before you get to the ride itself, you have to wander through the Hogwarts castle, and as you wait in line there are plenty of fun things to look at, like the sorting hat, the Fat Lady, and newspaper clippings with moving photographs. Luckily, each of the 3 times I’ve been, there was very little line, so we were able to get on the ride pretty much immediately. When Mitcher and I visited four years ago, he got motion sickness from the intense virtual reality ride inside the castle. So we planned ahead and luckily, the motion sickness tablets Mitcher consumed kept any ill feelings at bay.
Up next on our list was butterbeer! Butterbeer is a beverage that has always intrigued fans of the Harry Potter books – because we want to know so badly what it tastes like! The butterbeer served at Harry Potter World meets any and all expectations that I had about this delicious beverage: butterscotchy, a bit fizzy, with hints of root beer and huge amounts of sweet foam on top, this stuff is delicious. You can get it in normal form and they also offer a frozen version. Our crew tried both types and everyone agreed that butterbeer lived up to the hype.
Other than the ride, the main thing to do on this side of the park is visit the shops.
Ollivanders wand shop is one of the shops not to miss: When you enter, a lucky person in your group is chosen to interact with Ollivander, who helps you choose a wand (or, rather, as Harry Potter fans know, the wand chooses you). When I visited last time, I was lucky enough to be chosen for the fun activity, but on our visit this time, we got to watch a few children get their wands chosen. Once you exit the interactive show, you can purchase wands. You can purchase replicas of your favorite characters’ wands (I, personally, have Dumbledore’s wand), or pick unique designs. You can also choose to make your selected wand interactive: Throughout the park, there are areas set up for spells to be cast with the interactive wands. Little medallions on the ground denote the specific spell and the wand flicking motion you’re meant to use, and if you do your spell correctly, you’ll make something in the park move, whether it be making a fountain turn on, or making a suit of armor snap to attention. I was happy to learn that my wand, purchased from Ollivanders four years prior, still worked, so we each took turns trying out the interactive wand.
After our butterbeer-drinking and wand-shopping, we decided to take the Hogwarts Express over to the other side of the park. The Hogwarts Express is not only transportation between parks, but also a ride in and of itself: you can see Harry and Ron flying the Ford Angelina through the Forbidden Forest outside your window, and hear Hermione asking for sweets from the trolley through the frosted glass of your carriage car. The coolest part is that the ‘ride’ is different depending on which direction you’re going, so make sure to ride it both ways.
Once we got off the train, we were transported to King’s Cross Station in London! We saw Platform 9 3/4, and we got to enter the park through the secret brick wall passageway into Diagon Alley. Along the way you can even stop at the Knight Bus and chat with Stan Shunpike and the shrunken head.
Diagon Alley side is the new side of Harry Potter World, and is, in my opinion, the better side, which is why I suggested that we save it for last. Not only is the virtual reality ride on this side more updated, but the park itself has more shade and air conditioning, making the visit in hot and humid Orlando much more pleasant.
On this second side of Harry Potter world, our first stop was actually lunch. We could have grabbed lunch at The Three Broomsticks on the Hogsmeade side, but on the Diagon Alley side, we joined even more friends, Anthony and Brandi, at The Leaky Cauldron, which has all the English treats you would expect. Many in our group went for fish & chips, but Mitcher and I shared the big ploughman’s board.
After lunch, we went to check out Gringotts. Gringotts Bank, the location of the big ride, is such a cool building. It has a dragon on top which actually spews fire every 10-15 minutes. The ride itself takes you on a train track down into the deep caves of the bank, where you eventually escape trouble with the help of the dragon. The ride is less disorienting than the ride in the Hogwarts castle, but just as exciting.
Similar to the other side of the park, we had fun just checking out the shops, drinking some butterbeer (and real beer) and enjoying being in Harry’s world. The buildings in Diagon Alley were done so well and made us feel like we were really there.
For all of us, Harry Potter World would have been enough to keep us happy all day long. But we did make a few stops at other rides in the Universal parks. Some of our favorites were Kong Skull Island and The Incredible Hulk roller coaster.
Though it was a long day, it wasn’t over yet! We said goodbye to Chris, Courtney, Brandi and Anthony, and made our way to our evening event: Medieval Times.
Medieval Times
I’m sure everyone is familiar with Medieval Times, right? It’s a dinner theater show filled with horse riding, jousting, sword fighting, and other knightly activities, and it’s set place in an actual castle.
We knew we were approaching an evening that was completely cheesy, so we just leaned into it. We all proudly wore our crowns supporting “our” knight: The yellow knight. We splurged and bought kingly horns out of which to drink our beer; they even have a neck strap so you can be hands-free! In short: we were ready to have a fun time at the dinner theater show.
During the show, we were served food, and to make it more medieval-like, they didn’t offer any silverware. So we ate our fried chicken like kings, enjoying every messy second. The show itself, which was loosely based around knights fighting for a place of honor from the royals, involved plenty of interesting horse tricks and fight scenes. And though the Yellow Knight didn’t win, we still had a blast cheering him on and booing our rival knights, (which is where I learned that Matt has the loudest and most powerful boo I’ve ever heard).
Day 1 ended with more drinks back at CityWalk outside the Universal Parks – what a great end to a wonderful day!
Disney’s Magic Kingdom
The next day was all about Disney. Brandon, Matt, Mitcher and I had originally planned to go to a beach, but we decided we were too tired from our long day at Universal that we didn’t want to put in the early morning drive to the beach. So instead, we visited Disney’s Magic Kingdom!
It had been a good 10 years since I was last at Disney World, so we were really looking forward to the trip. However, on this day, the heat was even more intense than the day before, so we were a bit uncomfortable. But despite the sweating, we had such a fun day! Our favorite rides were: Splash Mountain (which brought back so many memories of my childhood trip to Disneyland), Space Mountain, and Peter Pan. We also stumbled into what we thought was a Beauty and the Beast ride, but what ended up being an interactive “play” that put members of the audience on stage. We all thoroughly enjoyed when Belle chose Brandon to be a knight in the play alongside all the little kids.
We made dinner reservations at Tony’s, which is meant to be the Italian restaurant where Landy and the Tramp shared spaghetti and meatballs. We saw a beautiful pink sunset over a bottle of red wine and pasta.
We stayed through the firework display, which is, of course, a completely magical experience.
I’m always so impressed by Disney – every single one of their actors, in costumes, or in the parades, is so energetic and fun. And they put on so many little shows and presentations – it really creates an experience like none other.
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All in all, I think we did a pretty good job of spending a weekend in Orlando. We had a good variety of high class fun, cheesy fun, and fun with our favorite movie characters. And it was a great way to reconnect with our Kansas City friends who we had missed so much while over in Sydney!
Traveling Barnions 