Take a look at some of my pictures from my trip to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida. For Harry Potter nerds like me, the place is perfect, like being transported inside the books.
The village of Hogsmeade is fantastic, with everything from the Honeydukes sweet shop to Ollivander's wand shop. Employees wear wizards robes and refer to us as "muggles" (hmph). In Honeydukes they sell all kinds of treats including Bertie Botts Every Flavor Jelly Beans (vomit and booger flavors included), Chocolate Frogs, and Ton Tongue toffee. Zonkos joke shop has chattering teeth, Remembralls (just a display of course), screaming yo-yos and more prank stuff. Filch's Emporium, carries goods confiscated by Filch such as pet dragons, and Dervishes and Banges carries biting books, Hogwarts robes, and tourist stuff for us muggles.
Inside Ollivander's wand shop, the wands are stacked to the ceiling and the wandmaker appears as a character right out of the movies. He actually does magic by making things move around and wands fall out of their shelves, and he even chose a boy out of the crowd to demonstrate how the wand chooses the wizard (suspiciously similar to the scene when Harry shops for his wand).
We had lunch at Three Broomsticks, a pub-like restaurant where they served fish and chips, Sheppard pie, and chicken salads. The decor stayed true to the books and the service was, as the British say, lovely. Outside Three Broomsticks was the best treat of all: butterbeer! A delicious drink, as perfect as I imagined. It was cold and non-alcoholic, and tasted like butterscotch-flavored cream soda with delicious hot foam on top.
Outside of Hogsmeade is the fantastic Hogwarts castle, full of magic and wonder. There are moving, talking portraits of wizards on the walls (all grumbling about the tourist muggles). We passed the hourglasses which show how many points each House has (Gryfindor in the lead of course) and the Sorting Hat which gave us its wise words of wisdom.
The Common Room is lit with hundreds of candles in the ceiling and leads to the Forbidden Forest journey, an absolutely magical interactive 3D ride in which Harry leads us through the Forbidden Forest, the Quidditch fields, save us from dementors, spiders, and I think even Voldemort. Best ride I've ever been on.
Outside the castle there are the dragon roller coasters. We had our choice from the Hungarian Horntail or the Chinese Fireball. We took the fireball and the ride was thrilling, with lots of twists and turns and amazing speed.
Overall, Harry Potter fans will not be disappointed by this visit. If anything, I wish they had expanded the park to include more- I could see Azkaban make a great haunted boat ride, and where were all the house-elfs?! But the trip achieved what I would guess is the goal - to make me feel as if for a day I lived in the world of Harry Potter.
