Islands of Adventure Time! April 2012

The next morning was Islands of Adventure!

Seriously my favorite park ever, waiting in line is an experience. They got so many little details right on all of their worlds. We made sure to leave the house at 7am (4am PST time – ouch!) and arrived at the gates at 750 to wait for the park to be open. They need a better way to let people in because it took a good 15 min of inching up in line and sliding to our left as more gates opened up. We booked it to the right and followed the crowd of people into Harry Potter World!

Oh, was it worth it! You walk into the area and immediately see the Hogwarts Train with the conductor taking pictures of people.

We wandered through the village and saw the lines of people buying butter beer. We couldn’t figure out quite where to go at first. We then realized the long line forming at the HUGE ENORMOUS CASTLE was where we wanted to be. We thought it was a walk-through but after we got in line we realized it was the ‘main event’ ride.

Best thing ever? CHILD SWAP! It wasn’t just any child swap where you sit on the side and watch every person getting off the right. No, they had a little room. With a Harry Potter movie playing. To entertain the children while you waited. So cool! Especially since my kids refuse to go on anything scary. (So did I when I was their age…)

So the ride… what can I say? I get motion sickness. I closed my eyes three minutes into it and peeked out my eye-lashes to stare at the end of my seat and took short breaths. Other than that, it was super awesome.

I was really impressed with the castle. Look how HUGE it is. It was amazing. So perfect!

We got out of the ride and then saw where we could buy wands! We let the kids pick out which wand they wanted. Harry Potter for G, and Hermione for Sam.

Then we stood in line to get a butter beer when a nice woman from England (love the accent!) told us to go into the restaurant, order one from the bar, and sit in the picnic tables in the back. Perfect plan and it was great!

Butter beer is amazing. I cheated and had some sips. OH, it tasted like a vanilla soda. There was regular with a big thing of cream foam on the top, and then their was the slushie version. We all liked the slushie version the best!

After the sickening (thou awesome!) ride, we bought some sweets from Honeydukes and walked through Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. Dueling Dragons was only a 5 minute wait but we decided our stomach’s were not up to it. We were tempted to try the other roller coaster but the kids were antsy.

So we cruised over to Dr Suess world. The kids were already SO tired, so I walked to the front to stand in line for 15 minutes to get a stroller. It was worth it! When I walked back, they had gone on the train – long wait for a short ride but they enjoyed it.

We stopped in to visit the characters.

Then had lunch at Green Egg’s & Ham. MIL got the green egg sandwich… EWW! 🙂 I had a chicken sandwich without the bun! Go me! Except the whole week I decided that french fries were hopefully (probably not, slowly killing myself, but whatever) gluten-free and just kept eating them almost every day.

We then cruised over to the boy’s favorite spot of Super Hero World! Griffin got to meet Spider Man and he was SO CUTE. Soon I will have the video… but he saw Dr Doom outside and was a little scared so when he got his picture with Spiderman, after it was done he had this FULL on conversation with him about how Dr Doom was outside and Spiderman needed to watch out. Spidey told him thanks for letting him know and he would be careful! Here is GG and the green screen but we got the full on photo with the fake picture in the back and it’s in G’s room now. He loves it!

Then, he met some other dude out there. Cryptoman? Cyclops? Maybe Cyclops. GG tried to do the Spiderman hand sign but he quickly corrected him. haha – then GG had the same conversation! Also, Sam met Storm…

After that, hubby had said he didn’t want to go on Dueling Dragons so FIL and I booked it over and it was walk-on! It really is a great roller-coaster but I felt a little sick after! We then found out that hubby DID want to go, so we walked allll the way around the park where they were at in Toon Town. The kids played on the Toon Town boat and then we realized we all needed a snack. So we walked BACK to Hero land for churros and lemon-slushies. I skipped the churro but drank most of the kids drink. Oh well. It was good. It was also VERY VERY HOT! Yowza!

We then walked into Jurassic Park. I really wanted to go on the Jurassic Park ride because I remember it being FANTASTIC. Except everyone ALWAYS gets wet and I knew the kids would freak at the end when we go down the waterfall. We realized there was a great kids place with water fountains, net tunnels, and slides.  The boys went back to do the other side of Dueling Dragons and us girls hung out at the kiddie area.

It was VERY hot at that point but it was the kids favorite part! Sam LOVED getting soaked. GG stayed away from it a bit, he didn’t like getting his feet dirty or getting wet on his clothes… but once Sam got blasted, she was in heaven. I’ve never seen her more in heaven from getting soaked “in my clothes, Mama!”. We probably stayed there an hour or so.

We walked through Harry Potter World again and decided to get ourselves a wand. The Dumbledore wand was too awesome to pass up for hubby, and I looked at all of them and decided I wanted the plain black Ginny wand. I love Ginny, she kicked some butt!

Then we walked out and went to Hard Rock Cafe! I got a martini. Yum. 🙂 Plus some food! Came home, crashed in bed! The next day was fabulous… Stay tuned…