Finally got my letter

After many years of waiting, I finally got my Hogwart's letter! Josh and I took a short trip to Hogwarts this week in order to escape the snow in Kansas City!! (sorry, pictures are limited because I was busy riding scary rides and such)

We left on Monday morning, heading for Orlando Florida. We arrived in Orlando around 2pm and caught the shuttle to our hotel. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel because... of course we did!!! They had upgraded our little room to a King kid suite. This was kind of amusing as we didn't have any kids but it meant that I got a king sized bed for the rest of the week so I was happy. It was about 4pm and we had nothing better to do so we hit up the parks. We bought a two day pass and got a day free which was the only reason we would have "wasted" a day so close to closing time.

We went to the Universal Studios park and saw that they would be closing at 6 instead of 7 that day...BOO! It didn't really matter because there were only about 10 people in the park (slight exaggeration). We also had the Express Pass (thanks Hard Rock hotel) so we didn't wait in any lines. The first ride we hit up was the Mummy ride. It's an indoor rollercoaster ride and probably my favorite in the park. No lines...we just walked up and got on...it was pretty awesome. From there we hopped on the Transformers ride...again, no wait. Josh really liked this ride because the 3D stuff interacts with your car. Next up, the ET ride. This ride was cute and all kinds of silly. Not nearly as thrilling as the other two, but it was good for a laugh. You had to ride a bike to ETs home planet which looks like Willy-Wonka-meets-hallucinogenic-mushroom-land.

Then we took a stroll though Springfield and road the Simpsons's 3D ride, which was really funny (as one would expect from the Simpsons!)

A quick stop in Moe's Pub

Met an old friend

After the Simpsons ride we continued our leisurely stroll through the park. It was 30 minutes until closing time and the Disaster! movie ride/experience was running it's final show. We watched as "film makers" cast the "film" with audience members and then filmed a few scenes. We even got to see hologram Christopher Walken, who is one of my favorites. The experience ends with us in a subway car during some kind of Disaster! It was very corny, and very cheesy, but still very fun! They did manage to shock us with some of the effects!

We grabbed a quick dinner after we left the park and then headed back to our giant room to watch movies (batman begins) and our vacation standard, South Park. We had a big day planned for Tuesday, so we turned in early.