Because Emily wanted to have a Harry Potter birthday party this year, and because we were just finishing book four and I was contemplating a break from the books because the themes were getting a bit dark, I thought about doing this big trip this year. Emily turned seven this year and is therefore a bit young to get her Hogwarts letter but I loved that she was totally enthralled in the magic of the Hogwarts universe and therefore started dreaming of a trip to Orlando to Harry Potter world. And then everything just came together perfectly. She had the day off from school on her birthday. I had the weekend off as well as the Friday off from work. There were direct cheap flights on Flair Airlines. There was a Canadian residents deal at Universal. It was like the universe said "Come on just do it already!". So I did. I booked the trip to blow my little bookworm's mind and didn't tell her about it.
I had to keep the secret for months which was a VERY difficult task for me. I meticulously planned the trip which helped me through the winter as I didn't find it as long or as exhausting because I had this great thing to look forward to. I'm not big into springing surprises on our kids but our middle kid (aka the drama queen) LOVES to react to things so I thought this was my chance. Again thank goodness for Pinterest where there are ideas and tools for everything. I told Cian the day before and I was a bit worried he would feel left out but in true Cian fashion he told me she was going to love it it. There isn't a jealous bone in that kid's body - he is such a better person than his mother.
I asked our neighbourhood Facebook group if someone would like to drop off Emily's Hogwarts letter and lots of people offered to help which is a testament to how amazing our neighbourhood is. The "witch" who came to the door was excellent and surprisingly Em was a bit nervous at first but certainly started to warm up to her. When in finally sunk in what was happening she was STOKED. This is a kid that loves the details so she scoured all the "paperwork" and loved that I bought a new suitcase (we needed a new one) that sort of looked like a trunk. Cian's gift to her was Hogwarts lanyards that we kept our tickets in and a "I Solemnly Swear I am Up to No Good" T-shirt as well as a bag of Dumbledore's favourite candies "Sherbert Lemons" for the trip.
We left very early in the morning for our flight and wore the matching Marauder's Map infinity scarves I had made us for the trip. (Thanks to my neighbour Karalyn for letting me use her sewing machine as mine had died). We got our coffee and snacks for the plane and 3.5 hours later we were there! I can't recommend a one-on-one trip with your kid enough. It was so fun to let her pick what she wanted to do and see what she wanted to see. I had very little agenda once we got there other than to start our Hogwarts adventure the following day on her birthday. Kids don't care about so many things that adults do. She loved eating at Denny's and sitting by the pool and watching TV in the hotel room. We stayed in a pretty budget place since it was close to Universal and I figured we would only sleep there (which was true) and she thought it was luxurious.
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| "We solemnly swear we are up to no good" |
Our first day was the day we got there and we did some non-Harry Potter rides (since we were saving it for the birthday the following day). Our first ride was Spiderman which was a fast 3-D ride. Disneyland had taught me that Emily loves rides so I wasn't too worried about it. She was excited as she loves Spiderman but this first ride was a doozy. Spiderman lands on your car and things move very quickly and she shut her eyes and hated the whole thing. I thought that I had made the most terrible mistake with this trip as I knew the Harry Potter rides were fast and scary too but she loved every fast and scary ride at Disneyland. This was the highest anxiety of the whole trip but I hadn't taken into account that we had been up since the early hours of the morning so she was doing a whole lot of new things on very little sleep. We went over to the Jurassic World area and there was a kids ride called Pteranadon Flyers which was new I think since Keith and I were there in 2014. She LOVED this (and truthfully I thought it was a bit scary). The Pteranadon is above you and there are two swing-like seats hanging underneath it. The kid sits in the front and an adult in the back and the track is above the Pteranadon. It takes you high above the park and then you swing down but the swing sideways is pretty wild. It's lots of fun but Keith would have hated it (he doesn't really like heights). We also did the classic Jurassic Park water ride but I covered Em's eyes for the T-rex which I was super thankful I did because it's more realistic than I even remember. She loved the big drop though. We did some Seuss rides and then by the time we got back to the hotel room it was very late in the evening. We watched the Harry Potter rides on Youtube before bed to prepare for the following day and I think that really helped her enjoyment of the next day's events as she knew what to expect.
The next morning was Emily's birthday. We had breakfast by the pool at the hotel and then got our robes on for our Harry Potter experience. We are both in Gryffindor house. She had her birthday button and when we got to Universal the person at the gate was so incredibly kind and had everyone at the gate sing her Happy Birthday. Then they gave her a Universal Happy Birthday pin. If you love your birthday and you want lots of acknowledgement on your big day - you should go to a theme park. They know how to do it. Everyone wished her happy birthday - all sorts of people who work there and also lots of other people (kids and adults) that were visiting the park too. It was pretty awesome.
We made it to Diagon Alley as we had decided that we wanted to go to Diagon Alley first and then ride the Hogwarts Express to Hogsmeade and the castle just like Harry Potter would have done :P. We got to the back of the park where Diagon Alley is and it was as amazing as I remembered. She was stoked that you can walk through the brick wall and enter a magical land with a fire-breathing dragon on the top of Gringotts Bank. It was hard to know what to do first but we figured we would replicate Harry Potter's trip and go to Ollivander's. She loved looking at all the wands and I had heard about the experience where Ollivader picks wands for people and I found the small line up outside the shop. We had to go through 3 times and I would have spent all day there to get her picked for a wand because it was magical. The first time we went through and got a new Ollivander actor he picked her right away so I told her that was the real one. It was incredible - they have done an amazing job of figuring out how to infuse magic into the wand experience and I was happy to spend money on her interactive wand after that. We spent a lot of the next two days doing spells throughout Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade.
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| Diagon Alley |
We had lunch at the Leaky Cauldron - fish and chips and frozen butter beer. I had anticipated one meal being enough for the two of us and it was plenty. That way we could also enjoy some of the amazing snacks. One of the people at the Leaky Cauldron made sure that Emily knew about the spells in Knockturn Alley so we went there after lunch to check it out. It's amazing how they make it night in there and noticeably cooler with spooky spells and shops.
 
After a few more spells in Dragon Alley we went to Kings Cross station to take the Hogwarts Express. The line was long but we were armed with snacks from home. We had our Bert's Every Flavour beans and I even had made a chocolate wrapper that said "Open in case of Dementor Attack" We headed through Platform 9 3/4 and off we went. They do such a good job of making the train a magical experience and it feels just like the books.
  
Once in Hogsmeade we checked out Honeydukes and all the shops and spells available there. Em was the perfect age for the interactive wand because although kids and adults older than her had them and were doing the spells too she truly BELIEVED. She corrected other kids if they didn't say the words while they were doing their spells as she wanted to "help" them and she was laser-focused when it was her turn. Worth every penny.
We headed over to Hogwarts castle and it was going to be yet another wait but she was up for it. We saw the mirror of Erised and she knew all the other details they had placed in the line. Herbology class, the pensive, the Fat Lady, the sorting hat and the house points tracker to name a few. She always pointed out to people who were wearing other house colours that Gryffindor was ahead (which is sort of a Gryffindor things to do). When we passed the entrance to Dumbledore's office she would say "Sherbert Lemon" knowing that was the password in first year (she tried this each time). She is the exact target audience kid for whoever planned the park. I was a bit worried about Forbidden Journey - the ride in Hogwarts - as she just made the height cut off and I knew it was kind of a scary ride but we had watched the video and talked about what to expect and she wanted to go. I had forgotten how much you get thrown around and indeed at one point your feet are higher than your head. There are fire-breathing dragons, spiders, Dementors and the Whomping Willow and while I was riding it I was thinking "What did I do - this is too scary!" but when we got off the ride she was literally boucing that she thought it was AMAZING. She said "Don't worry Mom I closed my mouth when the Dementors came so they couldn't suck out my soul! I didn't even close my eyes!" I am pretty sure I closed my eyes at some point. She loved loved loved it. Victory!! Before heading home for the day we rode the Flight of the Hippogriff. We were sure to bow our heads at Buckbeak and it was nice to have a fast and fun rollercoaster to finish off the perfect birthday celebration in a magical land.
Em grabbed a pink birthday donut at Voodoo Donut and we headed back to the hotel because she had really wanted to have a dip in the pool before bed. I was trying to figure out how to get dinner into her and get a swim in but then we found out there was a pool bar! We got "margaritas" (mine didn't have quotation marks actually - it had tequila) and cheese pizza by the pool which facilitated our evening swim. It was an awesome end to a pretty perfect day.
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| Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and home of Emily's favourite ride The Forbidden Journey |
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| Hagrid's motorbike |
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| Hogsmeade |
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| Our Marauders Map T-shirts |
We took the Hogwarts Express back to Diagon Alley (the ride is different depending on which way you go). She wanted to ride Escape from Gringotts again and loved it even more the second time. We even ventured out of Harry Potter world a little bit. We got the promised Starbucks which was excellent and we had spaghetti and meatballs at a nice little "New York" Italian restaurant. Emily indulged her mom's nostalgia and we went on the E.T. ride and she was excited to get the front row red bike (Elliot's bike!) with E.T. in the basket. We will have to watch that movie soon.
We went on the Minions ride, saw Shrek 4D and went on the new Fast and the Furious ride (I didn't think the last one was as good but she wanted to do the Mummy rollercoaster and I wasn't sure that wouldn't be scary). Our hearts were always drawn back to Hogwarts though and we spent lots of time there checking out the shops and doing spells.
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| Practicing spells in Hogsmeade |
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| Can we be in the Order of the Phoenix? |
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| Eating Harry Potter's favourite ice cream from Florean's - chocolate and raspberry! |
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| A real fire-breathing dragon - Emily's favourite creature |
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| Escape from Gringotts - my little ride junkie! |
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| Dinosaurs won't stop this girl's magic! |
We then planned out what we still wanted to do before the park closed. We really wanted to take in the fireworks in Hogsmeade so we got in place to see that around 8pm at the first show. They do a wonderful job of displaying the house colours on the castle. The fireworks were beautiful. Em wanted to try the Pteranadon Flyers one more time before leaving and that was where we were headed after the fireworks but I could see that the Forbidden Journey only had about a 30 minute wait so asked her if she could do any ride again what would she want and immediately said the Hogwarts ride so I pointed out that we could do it before park close and she was psyched! We ran there right after the fireworks and had our last hurrah in the castle. We then had enough time to run to the Jurassic Park area and fly on the Pteranadon flyers twice! It was cool to be in the rock formations at night running full blast to try to get our last ride in before the park closed. We saw the next Hogwarts fireworks show from high atop the park suspended from a Pteranadon. What could be better?
We then had time to get souvenirs for her brothers after the rides had closed. She picked a velociraptor cup for Cian and a Hogwarts T-shirt for Sam. She asked for a Harry Potter notebook and Golden Snitch pen and who could resist- they were super cute. Little did I know that she would spend the entire flight home writing in that new Harry Potter journal all about her trip so that she could share it with her Grade one class. On the first page she wrote "I had a wonderful time at Universal Studios...." <3. In the immense planning that went into this trip I was worried I had built it up too big but it was such a special thing to do with her. I wanted to solidify her love of magic and reading and bravery and do something really special with her and I think that was accomplished; being a mom is my favourite adventure.
"It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live" - Albus Dumbledore
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| The Hogwarts Nighttime Spectacular |
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| She wrote about her trip all the way home |
