Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 12 years and 7 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

We got up early this morning to take advantage of the early (8am) opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Islands of Adventure for hotel guests. Of course almost every other hotel guest was doing the same thing, but since there are only a few Universal hotels, the crowd was still manageable.

My daughter and I immediately got in line for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. It seemed like our wait was shorter overall than our Easter visit but we had more time to see the cool stuff inside the various waiting rooms in Hogwarts Castle (it actually snowed in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom). Definitely a cool ride. After that we hit the two rollers coasters (no lines for those!). By now the park was open to the public and Hogsmeade was starting to get crowded so we moved on.

The plan was to hit all of the water rides at once, so we were dressed in our casual “get wet” clothing. From Hogsmeade we walked over to Jurassic Park and rode the River Ride. My daughter wasn’t thrilled about the scary dinosaurs but the drop and resulting splash at the end was worth it. Slightly damp, we walked over to Toon Lagoon and rode Dudley Do-Right’s Ripsaw Falls, one of our favorite log flume rides. We still weren’t wet enough after that so finally we went on Popeye and Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges … twice! Completely soaked, we walked back to our hotel to change (as planned) but first let my daughter spend some time in the pool.

Showered, dry, and refreshed we walked back to the park to spend the rest of the day riding the rest of the rides (the Hulk coaster, Doctor Doom’s Fearfall, etc.) and seeing some of the shows we hadn’t seen before (The 8th Voyage of Sinbad and Poseidon’s Fury).

By 5pm we were done (again) with everything we wanted to do. We had 7:00pm dinner reservations over at CityWalk so we started walking back to our hotel to relax before dinner. As we were walking on the path back to the Royal Pacific, some dark clouds rolled in and we actually got caught in a downpour! Wet again (this time unplanned) we got back to our hotel and had time to freshen up and get dried off. It was still sprinkling at 6:30pm when it came time to walk back over to CityWalk, but we had umbrellas so that wasn’t really a problem.

Dinner at the Latin Quarter was pretty good, and filling. After eating, we wandered around the neon-lit spectacle of CityWalk for a bit before grabbing a nightcap at Starbucks and then catching the water taxi back to the hotel.

As usual, the weekend went fast … tomorrow we have to head back home.