Orlando report, while I still remember...

Time is slipping by; I went back to work this week, and am figuring out how to juggle and/or coordinate things. Emily tried out for Girl's Choir(which is a chapel choir, which means things I'm not sure I yet understand) for the third year in a row, and got in this year, much to her delight. This means she has rehearsal after school until 5 on Wednesdays (which is good, no after school care that day) and before school at 7:45 on Fridays (which is good, I get to go to work early, but this Friday we nearly forgot, which would have been a fatal error and she is convinced would have meant she was kicked out of choir, but I remembered at 7:20, five minutes after she got out of bed, and we made it...). Joseph does not have Chemistry, because of a scheduling conflict and a full class, so he has one open period this year, and is enjoying sleeping in on Tuesdays and planning two groups of Dungeons and Dragons followers. He is the dungeonmaster, which means he makes up the plot, kind of, and it seems to involve quite a lot of more careful notetaking than I've ever seen him do for school...

Step back three weeks, to Orlando...We spent one day at Harry Potter Wizarding World (or, more correctly, at Islands of Adventure, which includes HPWW), and one at Disney World Magic Kingdom. We stayed at one of the hotels affiliated with Universal, so we could just take a water taxi to HPWW, and got in an hour early, at 8 a.m. This might not have been Joseph's ideal plan, but I dragged him out of bed and we did go early, because I had insider's tips from the night before in the hot tub, when I talked with several young men who worked at HPWW. They said go to Olivander's Wand Shop first, because it has the longest lines, and then the Forbidden Journey, which is the Hogwarts Castle ride. So this is what we did.

As you can see in some of the early pictures, when we got there it was to a very empty park. There were a couple of dozen people from the park hotels, all making a beeline for HPWW. Islands of Adventure consists of six different themed areas--Dr. Suess (which Emily and I enjoyed), Marvel Comics (where Joseph went after HPWW), Tune Lagoon (old fashioned comics like Blondie and Popeye), Jurassic Park, Lost Continent (sort of vaguely classical mythology) and HPWW. Each has a few rides and/or shows, and lots of shops...

Harry Potter Wizarding World was very well done--it consists of an entry with a very small bow to the Hogwarts Express--part of a train and a little station, and a street that is kind of a blend of Hogsmead and Diagon Alley--it has many shops and two restaurants, the Three Broomsticks and the Hogs Head, though really they are the same building. Some of the shops are just storefronts, but there are plenty you can buy things in...a candy shop (Honeydukes), a joke shop (Zonko's), Flourish and Blotts, which should be a bookstore but is miscellaneous souvenirs...and Olivander's, the wand shop, where we did start. They let in a few people at a time into what is essentially a show in the shop, where Mr. Olivander picks and child (Emily was disappointed not to be picked, but enjoyed it anyway) and he goes through the process of having the child test out three wands, in roughly the sequence Harry experiences in the first book--the first wand makes all the wand boxes bang and rattle, the second collapses some shelves, and the third glows and makes magic happen...then you all move out and the parents of the chosen child get to buy the wand, if they so desire...and everyone else can buy a wand, of course. We have wands, so we did not need to buy one.

Emily was wearing Quidditch robes--the red and gold robe Sue Wine made, with minor assistance from me, for Joseph's long-ago Halloween costume. He wore it several years, and Emily has been making good use of it lately. Joseph just wore one of his regular Harry Potter t-shirts, and acting nonchalant...

Then we sped on over to Hogwarts, it still being before 8:30 in the morning, and there was no line for the Forbidden Journey, which actually turned out to be something of a disadvantage. They have designed the ride so that you walk through the castle, presumably slowly if you are in line. We kind of dashed through, not taking sufficient time to appreciate the detail, which included talking pictures and interesting magical instruments. We went through Dumbledore's office, which had a hologram of Dumbledore talking, and the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom, where Harry, Ron and Hermione were talking, and dashed onward. Later, Joseph and I went back and realized that these were setting up the premise to the ride. We were students, going to a History of Magic Lesson (boring, taught by a ghost), and Harry, Ron and Hermione were scheming to fly us out of the castle to escape the lesson (the Forbidden Journey). We arrived in the Griffindor Common Room and sat in chairs (the ride) and took off. The ride was a bit harrowing. If I hadn't been worried about Emily being traumatized, I would have enjoyed it a bit more, but really she was ok, an parts of it were fun...I liked the parts where we were flying on a broomstick, following Harry out over the castle and landscape. I wasn't as fond of the parts where we were approached by dementors, giant spiders, and a dragon...I think Emily had her eyes shut through much of it, but somehow she seems to remember more of it than I do, or at least with more certainty about what happened when...They took a picture of us during it, and Emily has her eyes shut and her hands over her ears, I am gazing upward as if praying or god knows what, and Joseph looks carefully composed. Come to think of it, I bought a download of the picture, and so will get it sometime and post it if I can. Emily claimed to be very embarrassed by it, but did take the hard copy we bought to school last week...

All the rides these days dump you out into a shop, where you can spend hundreds of dollars, if you wish. We accummulated many odds and ends, but resisted early in the day. After the ride, we went to the Three Broomsticks for breakfast, including the first taste of butterbeer, which was a very sweet version butterscotchy creme soda. Then we wandered around Hogsmead as it got more crowded, and by 9:30 had basically seen it all...there are two more rides in HPWW, but they are both roller coasters and neither of the kids were very interested in going on them. Emily and I went to Suess Landing, where we enjoyed the colorful kiddie rides and went on Cat in the Hat three times and the CaroSeussal twice. There were almost no people there because all the new people had dashed straight for HPWW. Later we walked around the park with Joseph, seeing Captain America and Dinosaurs and all, and had lunch at Mythos, which claims to be the best theme park restaurant in the world. That may be true (the competition is not all that stiff); it was kind of like a real restaurant.
After wandering the now-crowded shops of Hogsmead and buying more Harry Potter stuff (two new shirts for Joseph, Emily's first HP shirt, a quill, keychains, cards, a Gryffindor cap and luggage tag...), we dragged ourselves back to the hotel to rest. Joseph and I returned later in the afternoon for a second look. It had been a cloudy but warm (for winter) day. I think it would be miserable in summer. At 6:00, just as Joseph and I were leaving to go back to the hotel, it started pouring, complete with thunder and lightening so that the water taxi did not operate and we had to wander around trying to find the other shuttle back to the hotel, getting thoroughly soaked and returning to find Emily hiding under the covers. We got room service and holed up in our hotel room, looking at our loot.

The next day, we had a more leisurely morning, not rushing to get to Disney World. Joseph might disagree, since anything that involves getting up before 10 seems like rushing to him. We took a cab to Disney World, which is a city, if not a county, of its own, about 20 minutes from where Universal's domain is. There are four theme parks and two water parks and thousands (probaby tens of thousands, really) of hotel rooms and hundreds of shops in Disney World. We went to the Magic Kingdom, the traditional Disneyland-ish park. With Fairy tale castle, Small World, Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, etc. No Matterhorn, though. It was pleasant enough...neither of the kids is really into wild rides, though; Joseph went on Space Mountain, and Emily and I wandered around and enjoyed a Buzz Lightyear ride that involved shooting things. I dragged both kids to Small World, where we found they do have a small New Zealand bit, and to the Haunted Mansion, which was a bit much for Emily. So she didn't go on Pirates of the Caribbean, which was probably a good choice. We had lunch that was no competition for Mythos, and enjoyed Mickey's Philharmagic, which was a 3D movie zooming through various Disney shows. I couldn't convince the kids to see the Hall of Presidents...another spin at Buzz Lightyear, some real American ice cream on Main Street, and we were done. Enough theme park for a few years...