Wizarding World of Harry Potter

My co-worker, Ashley, and I went to Orlando for a work event last month and took a day off to explore Universal Studios together before the conference!  Here we are at the airport with all of our bags... yikes.

It had been a very long time since either of us had been to Universal, and with the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter, we knew we wanted to check it out.  We got park hopper passes so we could visit both of the Universal parks, and we were glad we did since mid-January is a low attendance time and we zipped through all of the lines.

Here we are in the land of Harry Potter!  Neither of us had read the books, so I'm sure we didn't understand quite everything in this "world" but it was very well-done and detailed!  We had fish and chips for lunch with a Butterbeer to top it off (some sort of cream soda slush-- everyone was getting it so it seemed like a big deal), tried on the school uniforms with matching wands, and went into all of the cute Harry Potter-style stores.

This is what I sent to Nathan while we were there:

I LOVE roller coasters but for some reason this one, Rockit, was not going to happen in my book.  I don't really like the idea of looking straight up into the sky before a big drop, but Ashley convinced me and we went.  And it was awesome!  You pick a type of music then a song within that genre and while you are zipping through the air, you get to listen to that track.  Great idea :)  What was the track I decided on??  Born to be Wild.

For dinner we ended up at one of Emeril's restaurants called Tchoup-- it's an asian fusion restaurant.  I started off with some sort of potato soup bites that were chemically formed into balls on a spoon (they melted in your mouth like soup) with a bit of pork and truffle oil.  Then it was time for some Asian style escargot and my absolute favorite, the banana bread pudding.

It was a fun day with a good friend!