Day 6 - Thursday 20th February 2020
We got up about 6.30 am so we could get to Universal Studios in plenty of time for Early Entry. Today was Freya’s unofficial 12th birthday as her real birthday was the following Monday, the day after we returned home to England. As we had done in 2019, we suggested that she choose a day of the holiday to have her ‘birthday’ as her actual birthday would be spent jetlagged, cold and in school. Of course we still celebrated on the real day, but a birthday in the parks in the sun is obviously much more fun. In 2019 her unofficial birthday had been spent at Magic Kingdom and today it would be at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure with dinner at Antojitos.
Once the girls were up just before 7 (with much coaxing on our part) Freya opened the birthday cards we had brought with us...
...and then went to the Club Lounge with Mat to get some breakfast. She was very happy that her birthday breakfast consisted of a chocolate donut and cinnamon roll.
Mat got a coffee and a peanut butter bagel and Seren got a jam bagel.
We set off about 7.45 am...
...and were in the park at 8 am. It was lovely and warm but overcast.
We headed straight to Diagon Alley...
...but Escape from Gringotts was down. Amusingly there were about 17 Team Members (no exaggeration, we counted) standing outside the ride entrance. You can see a few of them in this photo:
After about 15 seconds of standing there wondering what we should do I suggested that we finally do Ollivander’s as we have never done it in seven trips to Florida. The girls are big Harry Potter fans but we’ve always used Early Entry for the rides, and the lines at Ollivander’s are always long later in the day. Everyone was up for it because it was a new experience and there wasn’t a lot else to do besides wait however long it would take for Gringotts to open or walk back round to Minion Mayhem where I expect the queue would have been building quickly, being the only ride in operation at this point.
We got in the short line outside and were probably behind about ten or fifteen parties.
Lots of people were joining the line behind us because of the lack of other things to do, and the number of people seemed to catch the TMs off guard. They were asking everyone to squish up and fill all the available space. While we were in the line the girls were asking about what happens during the show and I told them that Ollivander picks a child to participate and then they get to test out a few wands with some special effects. Seren was all ‘That’s so cool, I want to get picked.’ Freya on the other hand was saying ‘Oh no, that sounds so embarrassing, I wouldn’t want to do that in front of everyone.’
Within a few minutes we were squeezed into the holding area where a TM told us some Harry Potter ‘Dad jokes.’ The dads in the room appreciated this and it passed some time.
Then we were taken through into the wand room. We were among the last people to be let in so I assumed we wouldn’t be able to see very much but a Team Member was moving everyone into place to make sure children were at the front and could see. She beckoned us forward and to the far side of the room where there was a little space, and directed Freya in front of me, putting her at the very edge of the front row. Ollivander began speaking and within a few seconds he had called Freya forward saying that she was here for her wand and asking her name.
We thought it was funny that she had been the one who didn’t like the idea of taking part but there she was doing spells in front of the entire room. I managed to film the whole thing and Mat took some photos but it was difficult to get good photos on our phones as the room was so dark.
The whole thing was really good and Freya was so cute. I was so happy that we had finally done it today on her ‘birthday’ and that she had got picked.
At the end we hung back as everyone else left and a Team Member told us to wait in the corridor between the wand room and the shop. She brought the wand out to us and then kind of directed us into the shop which is the exit for everyone. She never actually said ‘you can buy the wand’ so I wonder if anyone has ever actually just walked out with it after it ‘chooses’ them in the show, thinking it’s a prize for participating.
The shop was extremely busy as not only was everyone coming through from the show and hanging about, but a lot of people were entering the shop from Diagon Alley because the ride was still down. Not surprisingly Freya was keen for us to purchase the wand that ‘chose’ her, so I said Seren could have a wand too in the interests of fairness. She already has Hermione’s wand at home and Freya has Ginny’s and Luna’s but none of those are interactive as they’re old and / or from Warner Bros Studios in Leavesdon. She wanted to choose an interactive character wand for her second. She spent some time looking at the wands of Neville, Ron and Draco as they are her favourite characters and she decided Neville’s looked the nicest. She’s very indecisive though and this took a good few minutes. She also helped a family spot the wand they were looking for. As I said, the shop was very crowded and the rest of us were just hanging about in the way. Mat was getting increasingly fed up with being in the shop so I did have to hurry her in the end.
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Mat and Freya joined the line to pay and Seren and I went outside to take a few photos.
Mat wasn’t exactly over the moon at the cost of the wands when he came out of the shop ($55 plus tax each), and we vowed to make some time for the girls to do some of the spells around the Wizarding World before the end of the trip.
This is the one day of the trip I have no notes for (I’m sure I made some but they have disappeared so I’m blaming my phone for that) so I’m not sure if Gringotts was back up and running by this point or not. I think it might have been but we decided to come back later.
We walked round through San Francisco to the restrooms we like in New York...
...and then had a quick go on The Mummy which was now up and running as it was after 9 am.
Starbucks was calling at this point as we hadn’t yet had coffee, so we headed to Starbucks just up the road. Freya was itching to go on The Mummy again, so the girls left their stuff with us and went off to ride for a second time. Mat popped in to get the coffees and I asked him to get me some barbecue flavour potato chips that looked tasty (they were) as I hadn’t had any breakfast so far.
Mat and I sat on the pavement and drank our coffees. While we were sat there a Team Member walked past and asked if I was a Weasley because of my ‘orange’ hair. I was a little bit confused as my hair is brown with a few blonde highlights but he was a sweet guy and we had a little chat, although he assumed we were Universal noobs for some reason. The girls came back at about 9.30 and we were still drinking our coffees so they asked to ride for a third time which was fine with us.
While we had been sat there I had suggested that we make riding Hagrid’s the priority now. Having failed to ride yesterday because the ride went down while we were waiting and then stayed closed for most of the day, I didn’t want us to run out of time to ride it before the end of the trip. If the same thing happened today, we would have at least had two more days to ride it but I felt like we needed to try again today. We checked the Universal app and I think the posted wait was around 110 minutes.
Continued below...