This is a long one, You've been warned.
Fantastic!Vacations are fantastic, this vacation was fantastic. The last week-long vacation that Laura and I took was our fabulous trip to Spain and we were overdue for some new travels.
Choosing this trip was weird for us, I really have had no real strong desire to visit florida and still don't. Alas this is where my grandmother lives and after a new recent appreciation for the brevity of life and learning more about my family and its member's history, we decided to make the trip to spend some quality time with my grandma.
Rodad Trip!
We started off visiting Amanda and Andy in Nashville. We always have tons of fun hanging out with them, they are really good at finding new and interesting things for us to do and see. We kicked it off with a really fantastic and historic letter press printer, Hatch Show Print. This place is like small slices of fun Graphic Design, music, and old thing love. I loved it and want to go back to buy a giant print someday when I have more wall space to decorate.
The rest of our day was spent enjoying Cheese, Beer, Wine, and other localish delights. It was fantastic! It reminded me of the different beer festivals I went to in Duluth, only with good food mixed in. For some reason Amanda expected us to only spend a couple of hours there but we shut the place down and finished the evening with some full sampling glasses and big smiles. Afterward we headed over to Fat Bottom Brewing for yet another brew and another growler to add to our collection. One of the highlights from the Cheesefest was The lusty monk hot mustard. If anyone sees it in a store it would make a fantastic Christmas present for me.
Sunday was a travel day, we made it into Florida this day after a Pit-Stop at Team Davis' house. It was nice to see them and we were happy and excited to go a bit out of our way to spend time with them.
Monday we met up with my Grandma in Sarasota Florida. We spent quite a bit of time just hanging around with her and talking about this and that but also had plenty of time to get out and do our own thing.
One night we made it out to Siesta Key and happened to catch a sunset, and the obligatory sunset sequence.
The next day we hit the beach, slathered on the Sunscreen, hunted for seashells, built a sandcastle, watched pelicans and other birds, and played in the water a bunch.
Laura and I were both most excited for our adventure into Universal Studios. When I was just a wee lad we went to Disney World and ever since I've always been curious about Universal after numerous friends got go there. In fact, this year I really wanted to go back to Disney mostly because I know so much of the characters and other foundations of the park, but Islands of Adventure had the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and I would be foolish to ignore the joy that I've had with that series both written and visual. After a facebook survey (and a bit of online reading) most people seemed to agree Universal appealed more to adults, disney to kids (or adults with kids). Also after trolling the internet a bit I found out Universal Studios (not Islands of adventure, which confused me initially too) hosts one of the top rated Halloween events in the country if not the world. So we got ourselves tickets to that to make for one epic and exhausting day.
I didn't look up anything about the Islands of Adventure park ahead of time and didn't pack a ziplock bag for my camera to keep my camera waterproof and couldn't find one the day of. So I didn't bring it with. Part of me wishes I did, the other part is happy I got to experience the whole park with my eyes and not through a lens.
So Universal Studios is awesome. Really awesome. Specifically, Islands of Adventure is awesome when you visit in early October on a sunny and 80 degree Thursday. I did TONS of research to find out how to do the day the cheapest. We were initially planning on splurging a bit staying at one of the on site resorts but HOLY SHIT it's expensive, for just two people for two nights it would have been over $600, so we ended up at a hotel across the street for about $400 less and a very similar travel time. We were also planning on purchasing an express pass to skip the majority of the lines. Thanks to a couple of well timed tips I found out waiting until you get into the park to check it out before you buy the express pass is the way to go. We didn't end up buying one because our longest line was less than 30 minutes and we only did that twice for the same ride that has no express pass line. Everything else was around 10-15 minutes tops, we walked right onto many rides with no wait time whatsoever. My favorite ride outside of Potter-land was the hulk, we did it twice and didn't wait for more than 5-10 minutes either time. We saw a couple of performances that were really fun and were a great way to give our feet a break.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter could be it's own epic blog post but without pictures and this is already getting long its not. This is a section within Islands of Adventure and is outstanding in so many detailed ways. It's also the only part of the Islands of Adventure I wish I had brought my camera for. I'm still so excited about it so I'll try and go easy on the massive amount of details that made it great.
There are two rides that I thought were amazingly fun, the forbidden journey, and the dueling dragons roller coaster. The forbidden journey is one of the most popular rides in the Islands of Adventure, for good reason too. It also has the longest wait time with no express pass line. Just getting to the ride itself is a real treat, most of the line is in Professor Sprot's Greenhouse, then you're led through the Hogwarts castle, you get to see some cool things you'll remember from the movies, including some talking portraits and a word from professor Dumbledor. Ron, Hermione, and Harry also have a part in a classroom that sets you up for the story you follow in the ride. The ride itself is a real thrill, I can't describe it here and do it justice but it's worth the wait, completely.
The rest of Harry Potter Land is in the details. The park is set up beautifully like The village of Hogsmeade. The highlights are Zonkos joke shop, The Three Broomsticks/The Hogs head, Ollivanders, and the Butterbeer. Worth noting is Moaning Myrtle hangs out in the bathrooms, which is actually really nice to have her blabbing when you're trying to poop:)
After we hit the rides we got a couple of Butterbeers. Based on a tip from a friend we got a frozen and chilled one. They are both different and good in their own ways, Laura preferred the Frozen one and I the Chilled. They taste kind of like a cream soda with a nice butterscotch aftertaste, complete with a ridiculous and everlasting foam head that even though you drink it, there is still a good quarter inch of yummy froth on the bottom of the cup when you're done.
I'm now determined to make my own alcoholic version on principal, and because it was so damn good. Its going to be a mighty challenge.
We split a shepherds pie from the Three broomsticks which was really good and got to try some of the Hogs Head Brew which was pretty tasty, it reminded me of newcastle, not remarkable but exciting since you can only enjoy it there.
After lunch we headed over to Ollivanders where things got really exciting. Ollivander is a wandmaker in the story and he helps Harry with picking out his first wand. "The wand chooses the wizard." In his shop they allow small groups of about 20 people at a time (this was one of our longest waits of the day). Once inside Ollivander chooses one lucky person in the group to help select the wand. As we were steping into the shop Laura started to feel very unwell and had we not just stood around for 45 minutes to get in we would have peeled off and sat down with some water and shade. So we headed in soon after the door was shut Mr. Ollivader chose me to go through the wand selection act. *pause for excitement* ME! I had such a hard time containing myself. I also had to leave Laura in hopes she wouldn't pass out during the performance. (she didn't, but only barely) After he measured me up and talked about wands a bit he pulled one out for me. With the first wand he asked me to make a wand box float off a shelf and instead of floating the shelf collapsed. Not the right wand. The next wand was a short wavy one that I thought was pretty ugly, I tried to ring a bell with it and instead I rang about 30 of them loudly. Also not the one for me. Then Mr. Ollivader said this was curious, and pulled another box from his shelf and gave me one made of (resin) Holly with a dragon heartstring core. It looked cool! Then as he handed it to me angelic muisc played, I started glowing with light, and my shirt billowed in a wind...a wand had chosen me! Mr. Ollivander then told me that this wand would choose a Tustworthy, Honest, and Loyal person (I think it did well). The whole time I was thinking how awesome this was and how unlikely the 9 foot tall giant who wasn't anywhere near 12 years old (although I felt like I was) got chosen to be a part of the show.
Laura and I had joked a whole bunch about getting wands while we were there and decided it would be a waste of money, mostly since we don't run around pretending to be magicians very often. But I was the chosen wizard. Mr. Ollivander found a wand for me, the wand chose me. $30 later I was the proud owner of a new wand, because lets be honest after being part of show there is no way you could not buy it. At least now I had a bag to carry my souvenir butterbeer mug in.
Harry Potter Land Enchanted me, We did all the rides we wanted to multiple times and had a ball. Would I go back? Absolutely, but I'll be waiting a long while. At least until the fabled expansion (possibly diagon alley?) opens.
That night after dinner at the worlds largest Hard Rock Cafe (which was phenomenal) we headed over to Halloween Horror Nights 22 for a scare. I found a packaged deal where adding HHN to your day at the park was over half off the gate price (pretty much the only one day savings that exists for Universal) This was SO COOL! I'm a giant scaredy cat and was stressing out Laura right away because I didn't want to be scared while we picked out what houses to hit up and couldn't focus on anything.
One great tip we had was if everyone walks one way, go the other way to get into some of the haunted houses quicker. We walked to the farthest point away in the park and pretty much walked right into the first two houses (of 7) and got nice and scared. But this is where we hit our snag, after the first two hours there it got PACKED! We had been kicking around the idea of getting express passes for this to skip the lines but since the first half of the night the lines were a breeze we opted to save $100 and wait in the shortish lines. Turns out all the rest of the houses had crazy hour or more long lines and we couldn't justify buying the express pass for only another couple of hours plus we were exhausted. So the last house we went into was probably over an hour of a wait and it was one of the least scary, but this is comparing the best haunted houses around against one another. The scary people had fantastic makeup and costumes, the houses were designed with great details and had me on edge throughout every one.
HHN isn't just a bunch of haunted houses though, they have these big scare zones on different parts of the roads and people do a great job of chasing you around and scaring you. One part a guy actually reached or jumped out of the bushes at people. Since it's so dark and crowded the scary people blend into the crowd really well and can scare you even better. My favorite and scariest part was when we walked through the escaped female convicts with chainsaws and fog zone, one girl said "how did you get so tall!! how about we fix that!!!" She fired up the chainsaw and chased me, I'm not sure if Laura stayed with me because she was scared too or if I was dragging her unable to loosen my grip.
Since the lines were so long we ended up catching a funny, sexy, vulgar, and fantastic magic show by the 20 Penny Circus. The best part about HHN is they have some of the Universal rides open as well and we got to try out a couple of really cool ones in between haunted houses. We ended HHN by riding a really cool roller coaster that was actually seemed to last really long, for a roller coaster. We walked back to the hotel exhausted and happy after such a fun and completely fantastic day. A word to my future self or people thinking of visiting HHN, buy the express pass, its worth every penny.
After that we began our long long trip home. We made a pit stop in Asheville, North Carolina because I kept hearing about all these breweries that were being announced and built there. After spending one day there I think its one of my favorite cities ever. I can't wait to get back to check it out more thoroughly There are tons of great places to grab a drink, listen to some music, eat really tasty food, there is local food, there are hills, mountains in fact, there are trees everywhere, there are even hippies!!(I miss hippies) My quick glimpse of the culture was that of a relaxed mountain town like Anywhere, Colorado. Laura and I picked up three growlers from different places to take home and add to our now respectable collection.
Altogether the trip was great, we got to spend some good quality time with my Grandma, Sister, and each other. Our epic day at Universal was unforgettable and exciting. The driving got really old by the end of the trip but it worked out just fine, having 6 and 18 hour audio books really helps that. I love travelling and am happy we got to add some new pins to our map. If it weren't for TripAdvisor, and google maps on our phones we would not have been able to have the same fun trip.
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| Our last day of vacation was spent with a cuddly Jinx, a new brew, and bloody marys. |
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