After full week of work and a quiet Friday night, the Florida Tourist experience began with a Saturday afternoon flight on Frontier with only the clothes on my back. I’ll will just state that this flight was pretty bad. Not in a flying service or turbence experience, but a personal headache sinus block type of experience. The last 30 mins of the 90-minute flight, I prayed for any type of relief as I felt my eyes and frontal lobe pounded in a cracking pulse and the flow of blood felt like it could pop at any moment.
Somehow I survived and was picked up by Alexis and her parents at the Orlando Airport. They were traveling around the greater Florida Area the week prior looking for the best sprinter van deal. No van was purchased yet, but we had nice say at an AirBNB in the timeshare capital of the south US.
In December I was hoping for warm breezes and sunshine, but no mother nature had left the icy grip descend down in to Florida. That Saturday night, we all coldly shuffle through the Disney park mall, looking for a bite to eat.
Saturday was our day to become theme park completionist at Universal Studio at Florida. We got they’re their 30 mins before the gates opened. The air was chilly and cold, and the hope was that much of the normal tourist crowd would be put off by the effects of the weather. The crowd of people was impressive, but the gates opened, and we took off to ride the attractions that were known to have large wait times. Harry Potter and escape from Gringots was the 1st. I will say the immersion of the area was something great to behold. 1 by 1 we were knocking off the rides by noon we had most of them completed. Standout rides were the Mummy, Harry Potter Train/Rides, and the Rockin Coaster.
We rapped but the day by experience pretty much the entire park walking about 7.5 miles. Best food item was the Butterbeer
Monday, we went to the next themepark that is connected to Universal Studios called ‘Islands of Adventure”. Unbeknownst to me, they also has another entire Harry Potter town of Hogsmeade and Hogwartz. The train we rode the previous day, connected the 2 parks, but they actually connect the 2 Towns as well. We took our time and rode all the big-ticket attractions, but still avoiding a lot of the wet and wild ones. One of the little known but extremely neat experience was the Raptor Encounter. We got to walk up and get our picture taken with a real Velociraptor. Also, scream at the top of your lung on the Hippogriff ride is something that I highly recommend to any Near night time, we made our way back to Hogsmeade and caught the laser light show that is broadcasted against Hogswartz. Memorable ride, Harrypotter, the Hulk, and king kong.
The next morning, I got the red eye back to Charlotte, with no head-explosions.
