Easter weekend with Dali and Harry Potter

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This past Easter weekend my little sister came down from Chicago to visit so we spent some quality time with her at the local attractions.

She flew in late Thursday night while Game 5 of the Canucks/Blackhawks series was still on so we left the airport and went right over to Champp’s at International Plaza to get a drink and watch the rest of the game. The place was empty so we had the bar pretty much to ourselves and the bartender put the game up on the video wall for us. Unfortunately for my sister, the third period turned out to be the boring period even though the Hawks won 5-0 to cut Vancouver’s lead to 3-2.

Friday we went down to the new Dali Museum. St. Pete has been home to the Dali Museum since 1982, but the beautiful new building on the waterfront just opened this past January (01.01.11).

I’d been to the (old) museum several times before but it’s still a cool experience, getting to see Dali’s work up close, and a lot more of it is on display now that they have more room. The free self-guided audio tour is great (I highly recommend you listen to the special kid versions, as narrated by Dali’s mustache. Hilarious!).

Late in the afternoon we met up with the rest of the family and hit the road for Orlando, hoping to make it through Tampa before the weekend traffic got heavy. Unfortunately, we got stuck in a really big backup due to an earlier high-speed chase that ended up in a crash on I-4 East. After some frustrating attempts to get around the traffic via back roads and just getting stuck in more traffic, we were finally back moving at speed on the highway. Since our drive was taking longer than expected we ended up stopping for dinner on the way instead of waiting until we got to the Orlando area. Eventually we made it to our hotel in the touristy area of International Drive. After checking in, we walked over to the World Bowling Center to bowl a few frames before turning in for the evening.

We got up early Saturday morning so we could get to Islands of Adventure right as the park opened at 8am. With it being Easter weekend, we knew the park was going to be crowded and wanted to be able to explore the Wizarding World of Harry Potter before the lines got really long. So we made a bee-line for the back of the park, past the Hogwarts Express through Hogsmeade, to get in line for the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride in Hogwarts Castle. It only took us 40 minutes to get through the line, which was great, and the ride was amazing. A little scarier than I had anticipated, knowing really nothing about it ahead of time. Filled with fast-paced broom/flying sequences and a healthy dose of antagonists (dragons, spiders, dementors, etc.) it is one intense ride! Next to Hogwarts castle is the less-intense Flight of the Hippogriff, a family-friendly traditional steel roller coaster. We rode that right after getting off the Forbidden Journey ride and only waited 20 minutes. So far our early arrival at the park was definitely paying off.

While waiting in line for Olivander’s (to see the wand choose the wizard), we sampled butterbeer (frozen and regular) and pumpkin juice. Butterbeer is basically a variation of cream soda with a yummy butterscotch whipped cream topping. The pumpkin juice is like drinking a pumpkin pie and one bottle was enough for the four of us before we had enough (I would definitely get butterbeer again though). After getting through Olivander’s and Dervish & Bange’s, which were terribly crowded, tiny little shops filled with all the Harry Potter merchandise you can imagine, we headed for the next roller coaster. The last time I had been to Islands of Adventure was when the park first opened back in 1999. I remembered loving the Dueling Dragons inverted roller coaster from back then. It made sense to have it re-themed into the Harry Potter area as the Dragon Challenge (a reference to the Triwizard Tournament challenge in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” My daughter loved this ride, and the wait was only about 5 minutes so we went on it twice (although our second wait was a whopping 20 minutes since we wanted the front car). I love the part near the end where the two “dragons” run head-on into each other and turn into upside-down loops at the last minute and you see the other riders’ feet fly by below you.

We spent a little more time wandering around the other shops in Hogsmeade like Zonko’s and Honeydukes (where my daughter bought a solid chocolate frog) and it was nearing lunch time. We considered grabbing a bite at The Three Broomsticks but since my daughter is a vegetarian there weren’t a lot of options for her there. So we bid farewell to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and continued on to explore the rest of the park.

For the rest of the afternoon we walked around the rest of the “islands” like Jurassic Park, Toon Lagoon, Seuss Landing, and the Lost Continent. Despite the heavy crowds, the wait times were really not bad at all! In fact, the longest line we waited in was for Spider Man and that was only 50 minutes. My daughter also enjoyed The Hulk roller coaster, which I knew she would since it’s a launched coaster like the Aerosmith ride at Hollywood Studios (her favorite Disney coaster).

By late afternoon, it was getting hotter and more crowded. We decided we had done everything we wanted to do, and since we ended up getting annual passes and could come back, we called it a day and headed back to St. Pete.

I took my sister back to the airport Sunday afternoon for her flight home and we got stuck in another traffic jam, this one because a truck drove off the Howard Frankland bridge into the bay. As it turned out though, her flight was delayed due to weather in the area and shortly afterward it started pouring. Just like during her flight here, the Blackhawks game was on while she was in the air but she made it back to Chicago in time to see the Hawks even the series with Vancouver and force a Game 7. She said Midway airport exploded in cheers when Ben Smith scored the OT goal (and then tonight my Lightning did the same thing, beating the Penguins 4-2 and forcing a Game 7 in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, go Bolts!).

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