There's one sure way to get the Tadpoles out of bed without complaint and that's to offer them a trip to Universal Studios' Wizarding World of Harry Potter. They were up and ready to go and a little past 7 am, which is some kind of record. The day looked set fair; well, hot, really, so we filled a backpack with drinks and set off. At the gatehouse to the campground, we reported last night's power issue and the woman there seemed quite relieved that we were going to be out for the day, I suppose because we weren't going to be giving her earache all day.
The campground is situated about an hour north of Orlando but the run in on the Florida Turnpike was easy. $1.25 to get onto the Turnpike and 50 Cents to get off it, which seemed a trifle odd to me. Mind you, without the trailer we were able to hit 70 mph with no concerns and the gas consumption was about half of that with the trailer, which is something that our poor, hard pressed wallets approved of. Talking of money, though, any visit to a theme park is surely a modern equivalent of daylight robbery. The tickets had cost us $84 each and were good for one day in one half of the Universal Studios theme park offering. To park the car cost $15 (the first and probably the last parking charge of the whole trip) and once inside, any food, drink, candy or souvenirs were so extortionately priced that we stopped even looking. Obviously we looked at it from the grown-ups point of view but the Tadpoles just couldn't see it our way. After blowing the best part of $200 on souvenirs, they set about destroying $50 each on candy, which for the most part was gone by bedtime. Still, I'm just a grumpy old adult; what price can you put on a fun day out? Answers on a postcard, please.
We arrived just about as the place was opening and made a slow walk over to Hogsmead and Hogwarts Castle, through the garish Comic Book streets and Jurassic Park sections of the place. The castle certainly looked true to the Harry Potter Films, even the scale was impressive. Hogsmead looked a little incongruous with it's snow covered roofs glinting in the Florida sunshine. Of course, it was wall-to-wall people, all very excited about being there and looking everywhere except where they were going. Call us nasty old adults but we took the first opportunity we could to shove the Tadpoles onto a ride so that we could escape for a while. The line wait was listed as 20 minutes but it was nearly an hour before we saw their green faces go by on the Dragon Challenge after they'd been hurtled around, upside-down and around and around for two minutes. The small Tadpole had been terrified but hey, it's all character building, isn't it?
The best ride, The Forbidden Journey, was out of commission with no hint of when and if it was to be working, which was a bit of a bummer. Without the ride, there was no access to the castle and that is about a third of the entire Harry Potter extravaganza. It was also the only ride that Mrs T wanted anything to do with so you can imagine the pursed lips, can't you? We mooched about a bit, took some pictures and ate in the Three Broomsticks pub. Given that alcoholic drinks were on sale (One drink per ID only!), I suppose it did qualify as a pub but think of that spiteful, malevolent influence we were subjecting all the dear little children to; tut, tut, Universal, shame on you.
We were just about to give up on the Forbidden Journey, Mrs T actively interrogating the poor park staff about when the ride might be functioning again when Bingo!, they called that it would be open right there and then. There was a bit of a line, which we jumped into pretty sharpish, and it just went straight into the castle without any hold up at all. We had fun getting two lockers for the bags, with fingerprints taken in the general melee, and then we were walking through the castle and enjoying the exhibits there. A young family climbed through a fence at one stage, not really jumping the line but joining it without seeing that all but one of the kids was too small to ride, so you can guess what happened to them when they reached the end of the queue (snigger). The ride itself was really quite something, a mix of roller coaster (although it wasn't), animatronics and amazing video effects. Of course, I began to suffer a bit of motion sickness but the ride wasn't that long so no one had to clear up any, er, outpourings; well, not from me, anyway.
After that we thought we'd head for the entrance, via a log flume ride we liked the look of. It was so hot, though, that when we saw a 45 minute wait posted we decided that enough was enough and made our way to the “Port of Entry”. Why is it that Theme Parks are the place in the US where you have to walk any distance? Sweating indecently, it must have taken us 20 minutes to get back to the car. Doing that walk, in amongst the crowds, the endless and horrifically expensive shops (of which there thousands) and the weird smells of candy, fried food and chlorinated water, I realised that I am a grumpy old toad and really don't like theme parks. Still, the Tadpoles were happy.
Heading back to the campground, we were hoping that the power problems were fixed and when we were greeted warmly at the gate with a “we've fixed the power problem” we were already visualising our afternoon nap. Sadly the first message was followed by a second “but it's going to happen again” so bang went the nap thoughts. The park staff suggested we move to another site, one with a sewer connection and working power, so we agreed and then set about hitching up and dragging Towed Haul around the campground. It was hot and sweaty work but we re-pitched on site number 8 and re-settled ourselves. The sewer connection was a bit too far away from our outlet valves, at least if we wanted the awning up (no, don't rain!), so there was no gain on that front, but the site had an open aspect and the power worked!
Too late for a nap, we headed out to Dennie's, that gourmet breakfast restaurant with “all you can eat” pancakes. Yes, I know it wasn't breakfast time but they are open 24 hours, which is a novelty in these here parts. I had Georgia Peach French Toast with bacon and a hash brown; it sounds awful but I really liked it. We also put away a mountain of pancakes and the bill for the trip was well under $40, which was excellent. We followed that with Internet Ice Cream at McDonald's then headed home for a well earned snooze. Apart from a few drops of rain as we left Dennie's, it was our first dry day of the whole trip, which is quite something six days into it. As I've said before, at least it's warm rain, which makes things a little more bearable.
Tomorrow is a trip to the Kennedy Space Center, but a slow start is anticipated. I note that we missed the last ever flight of the Shuttle by only a week or two but I'm sure it'll be very edjumacational for us all. Indoors, too, which will be good in this heat.
Look for Saturday's installment, coming to a blog near you!
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