Day 3
This was a long day but so much fun! We left the room just before 7 am and didn’t return until just before 8 pm.
We were up very early to get ready and have breakfast in the room before heading to IOA for early entry. Only issue was that the coffee maker stopped working when DH went to make his cup. He had to wait about half an hour until the Starbucks in the hotel market opened to get some.
Took the walkway from HRH to the parks again. Stopped in front of the Universal globe to get a picture.
There were only three people in front of us at the tapstiles this morning. Gates opened about 7:45. Unfortunately DD18’s fingerprint wouldn’t scan and the guy on the gate was a trainee so it took a bit of time to straighten out. I didn’t care since it was only a minute or two but DD started to freak out that she was messing everything up for us. Luckily she calmed down once they let her through and we started off towards Hogsmeade.
The only fly in the ointment today was that Hagrid’s was down at opening and didn’t open up until 9 am. So we didn’t end up riding it. We still have early entry tomorrow morning to try to catch it one more time.
Instead, DH and the girls did Velocicoaster again. They were off by 8:05! We then did Forbidden Journey. That was done by 8:30. The only other thing open was Hippogryph and it was already posting a 45 minute wait so we decided to come back to it later when we could use Express Pass.
We looked around the shops a bit and got some Frozen Butterbeers. The plan was to take the Hogwarts Express to USF at 9:00 but it didn’t open on time. I think it was because Hagrid’s had just opened and the line extended in front of the train station. We decided to walk over to USF stopping to ride Cat in the Hat and Spiderman.
At USF DH and the girls rode Rip Ride Rock-it. I planned to do the Minions ride while they were gone but ended up bailing out of the Express Pass line after thirty minutes when I was still nowhere close to the ride.
After rounding up my daredevils we walked around a bit to check out where the Bourne show was located. Several rides were down so we decided to go back to Diagon Alley. On the way we did ride Transformers. It’s a much more fun ride than I remembered! There are several moments where it really feels like you have driven right into the movie screen!
Rode Gringotts again. By then it was after 11 am and a long time since breakfast at 5! Since Leaky Cauldron was so close we tried out the mobile order. Surprisingly easy to use and we got to head right to a table. The only problem was that the app wouldn’t let us check off on preparing the order because it refused to recognize that we were in the restaurant! Had to get a team member to assist.
Lunch was delicious. I had the cottage pie/fisherman pie combo. The fisherman pie was so good!
After lunch we rode MIB then backtracked to Diagon Alley to buy pumpkin pasties. With the hot sun beating down we chose to watch some shows. The Bourne stunt show was super and the Horror Makeup Show was hilarious. Finished our rides in USF with ET. That is one strange ride!
