Miscellayneous

Because Criss Angel decided to take a week off during my 30th birthday, my mom and I decided to skip Vegas and fly down to Universal Studios in Orlando for a Harry Potter & Halloween Horror Nights extravaganza. We're both Harry Potter AND Halloween girls, so it only made sense. While it's been over six months since we went, I've thought about it at least once a day since we got home. 

 I have to take y'all back to like 1998-ish? The time where you could call and order vacation VHS tapes for Disney World and Universal and they'd send them to your house for free. I'd watch them on repeat and plan fake trips, but the Universal one had my interest because of the ET ride. I don't know where my bizarre, complicated relationship with ET comes from. As a child, I was so scared of him, but as an adult, I LOVE the movie. A big part of my excitement coming to Universal was being able to ride the ET ride that I had watched so many times on those VHS tapes, and I'm proud to report I did it twice.

Day One · 10/6

We flew in on Friday and I don't know if I love the concept of an airplane. I've flown to Europe before, but I don't remember much of the flight. This whole flight I was ridden with anxiety for some reason, but it was all just fine! 

Day Two · 10/7 · My Birthday :)

Universal is not for those of us with motion sickness. More on that to come, but let's start with how exciting our first day was.

For my birthday, my mom booked us breakfast at the Three Broomsticks and if you would have told 8 year old Layne that, she would have fallen over.

Three Broomsticks is located in the Islands of Adventure with the rest of Hogsmeade and Hogwarts. We had breakfast, got Butterbeer, and decided to hop on our first ride The Forbidden Journey, which was our first mistake. I think this could be a really cool ride, but I wouldn't know because I had my eyes closed the entire time. You're jolted around on a track that is engulfed by a huge screen to make it look like you're flying around with Harry. The queue is INCREDIBLE, but we needed a break after this one.

With a park-to-park pass, you can take the Hogwarts express over to Dragon Alley at Universal Studios, which we did. We opted out of Escape from Gringotts and walked around Dragon Alley exploring all of the shops and catching a show. A park like this is very cool and very surreal for people who grew up reading all about it. It was also very crowded because it was a Saturday, so we decided to check out the rest of the park. 

I think this is where we watched the Bourne Stuntacular show. We had this recommended to us by a girl working at the park and I'd recommend it to everyone. You'll never know what is real and what's on the screen.

Our last big experience of the day was recommended to us. At this point, we are still ins recovery mode from The Forbidden Journey because if you have motion sickness, you know how rough it can be. We ate a little bit and my aunt told us we need to check out the Simpsons ride because we would love it. Neither of us knew anything about it, and we don't really watch the Simpsons, BUT we got fast passes because I had my birthday button on. :)

For my motion sick people, the Simpsons ride is not for us. You're in a cart and lifted into a room with a huge screen where your cart moves along with the screen. Your cart is bench style and it doesn't jerk you around like HP, but it's still not the greatest ride if you get sick.

This caused us to turn in a bit early, around 7, because neither of us were feeling well. We decided to avoid rides with screens, which is almost every ride at Universal. We opted out of Spider Man, Transformers, Jimmy Fallon, etc.

Oh, but I met Puss in Boots and he was just as excited to meet me!

Day Three · 10/8 · Halloween Horror Nights

We took our time getting ready in the morning to head to the park in the afternoon, knowing we were going to be out late because it's HHN, baby!

Let's tie the beginning in here because we found the ET ride and it was my FAVORITE experience. If you're on theme park TikTok like I am, you'll know a lot of people talk about the smell of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World, but we need to talk about the ET ride smell AND queue because it's just so good. You get a card that they put your name on and then you go into a forest where you pass the speak and spell and another alien from ET's planet named Bottanicus. You have to help get ET home, back to his planet of other ETs. You give your card to the attendant when you're getting on the ride and the ride is set up like you're riding a bicycle with the track above you so it looks like you're flying. The cards with your name on them are for the END of the ride so ET can thank y'all personally. 10/10, we ride it again the next day.

We went into and stayed at Universal Studios the entire day. We rode the Minion rides and ate at the Minion cafe. I love Despicable Me, so this was a lot of fun. We rode what I would say is my second favorite ride, The Revenge of the Mummy. I watch a lot of on-ride videos to know what I'm getting myself into, but I did The Mummy blind and it's one of the coolest rides you'll ever go on. It's indoors, there's fire, there's a drop, Brendan Fraser pops up at the end. It's truly a masterpiece.

Come like 5pm, they corral people into certain park areas if you have a HHN ticket so they can remove everyone else from the park. HHN only takes place at Universal, not Islands, so Islands stays open later. Once you're in your section, you can line up early for houses, get some food if your area is open, or just kind of chill until the whole park is re-opened for HHN. We got in line for the Stranger Things house and we waited about two hours in line. At one point, I jumped the touch the guy in front of me's back and he reached back to hold my hand because he worked there LMAO. So, he pointed out where things would pop out from. 

After Stranger Things, we did the Chucky house which was entertaining, but not worth the wait in my opinion. They have themed food for the attractions. Chucky had a food truck, Stranger Things set up Surfer Boy pizza, and the Last of Us had a counter in an alley serving rations.

After the Chucky house, we ran into one of our cousins we haven't seen in a while, which is so funny to run into them across the country when you live relatively close. She told us they do this every year and stay for one night just to do HHN. They got the fast pass for the lines and had done all ten houses by midnight. 

If I could change one thing from our experience, I'd get a fast pass for the houses otherwise you'll spend most of your night in line. I'm not a huge haunted house person as is, especially when they have scare zones you can walk through when you're just walking around the park that can really get you. They had a cool 70s Vampire scare zone and a scare zone with chainsaws. The atmosphere of HHN is unmatched. If I could go every single year, I'd do it.

Day Three · 10/9 · Last Full Day

Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure is the best ride I've ever been on, and I will die on that hill.

We didn't have anything pressing we wanted to see this day, so we decided to make it our shopping and chill day with only one ride on the docket that we were prepared to wait for, Hagrid's Motorbike Adventure.

There is no video to do justice of how fast you go on this ride, then you go backwards, then you go into the Devil's Snare, and the entire time we were laughing and screaming. It was so joyous and wild and wonderful and please do not skip this one if you're at the park.

Outside of Hagrid's, we did the Seuss rides and kind of called it at Islands. Going backwards on Hagrid's triggered my mom's motion sickness, so instead of taking the Hogwart's Express, we walked through CityWalk and ate at CowFish before heading back over to Universal. We spent the afternoon in Dragon Alley where we watched the wand distribution show at Ollivander's and bought wands. We ended our day with one last ride on ET where we met the nicest mother and daughter from Arizona and we were prepared to fly home the next afternoon.

Until we arrived back at the hotel and we realized our wands were interactive.

Day Four · 10/10 · One More Time

My wand is a 2023 collectable wand and when we were settled back in the room, I realized the tip of it is a little sensor which means it works throughout the park at the small windows where you can make things move. It'd be a waste to not try it out, so we went back for one more morning at Hosgmeade to galavant around and try my wand at the different spots around the park.

We also sent out OWL post. You can purchase postcards and stamps and the park will give them a Hogsmeade post mark before sending them out. We sent them to everyone, it's such a cool souvenir.

Then we headed home. <3