Wizarding World

My whirlwind trip was great.... well, productive at least.

The culminating part was really the trip to Universal to see Wizarding World (I know... I'm 29.  So what.).

It was great.  We were only there for two hours before it got way too crowded and way too hot.  We went on the dragon ride (one of them) - which was SO FAST.  Then, we waited in line to go through Hogwarts for that ride.  The wait was around 75 minutes and I recommend, waiting in the "single riders" line.  It cut out wait by over half and really, you can't see the people you are riding with anyways.  The most fun part for me was less the rides and more seeing how well they recreated Hogwarts and Hogsmeade.  Because it really was great.

I took a few pictures of Hogsmeade stores, bought a couple chocolate frogs, and caught a few photos of Hogwarts and the stuff inside.  They had talking paintings and the sorting hat.  I tried to take a tiny video of the animatronics of the sorting hat, because it was pretty impressive.

Here's the photos I got:

 my favorite part of touristy photos - OTHER TOURISTS IN THE PHOTOS... :)

 Hogwarts

 HoneyDukes (Also combined with Zonko's)

 HAHA, this photo kills me.  The girl in the pink was yelling to her friend behind me "can you see me?"

 The line to get into Olivander's was 90 mins long.  Just to meet "Olivander" and essentially buy the same wand you could buy at any gift shop (or the airport).

 Sorry, it was dark in Hogwarts waiting in line.  But the sorting hat was pretty awesome.  Here's the video.  It's hard to see, but the animatronics were kind of amazing.  He gave safety instructions.

I'm glad I could check this one off my bucket list.