Day4:
January 17th dawned blue and beautiful and we were up early, eager to squeeze every minute of fun out of our last full day (what? How did that happen already?!)
We elected to walk to the park this morning after spotting a growing crowd at the boat dock. It was another gorgeous few minutes on the way to the parks. Incidentally, I just wanted to share that I found this walk to be completely reasonable. Perhaps it was because we were staying in a room that was already nearest the walking path, but I expected a longer walk. This was great.
[Walking to the parks]
We arrived at practically 8:00 on the dot, in perfect time for early entry at the Studios.
We joined the herd headed toward Diagon Alley, and I lingered a little longer in the vacant areas of the park to soak up some "alone time" with the beautiful day and the gorgeous buildings at this hour.
We made it into DA and found out the Escape from Gringotts was down, and the massive line snaked all the way back to the London waterfront. No thank you! We took this opportunity to do some shopping in the uncrowded stores.
It was nice to browse in Ollivander's with only a small crowd rather than an oppressive one. I didn't pick out a wand but I wanted to scope out the options for my sister. Did I already mention here that I got her a Universal gift card for Christmas, earmarked for a wand (with a little left to upgrade to a power pass
)? It was a bit of a selfish gift as I want to see her do the spells!
We took in the ambiance, watched some little wizards cast spells, and I took a lot of photos. Finally I got the dragon's fire blast against a blue sky!
Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was a lot more enjoyable with fewer folks inside. We browsed (still spent some more time eyeballing those pygmy puffs, but none came home with us) and R selected a chocolate frog.
By this time it was about the hour to start thinking of Hogsmeade, so we exited Diagon Alley and went over to King's Cross. We queued up (well, okay, there wasn't too much of a line) for the Hogwarts Express and R opened his chocolate frog. He got Dumbledore!
Hogsmeade was lovely and not too crowded.
We jumped in line for Forbidden Journey about 9:15. There must have been a small queue as we were done around 9:50.
The tummies were rumbling and we were ready for a snack. We stopped in Honeydukes and then got a frozen butterbeer from the Hog's Head so that we could say we'd sampled all three butter brews. We located an empty table in the mostly vacant patio area behind Three Broomsticks/Hog's Head and enjoyed our selections from Honeydukes.
R chose a pumpkin cake and I chose a cauldron cake ($3.95 each). We also got a chocolate pretzel wand to share ($2.95 - highway robbery, and not pictured unfortunately). With the 10% AP discount we paid $10.40 for the baked goods from Honeydukes and $6.22 for the frozen butterbeer. After trying all three, I like the classic butterbeer best. R likes the frozen. I've seen mixed reviews on the cauldron cakes - chief complaint seems to be that they are too rich or too dark chocolate. Nope, these were perfect by me! I'd like one right now, actually.
[foreshadowing, sky starting to look ominous]
took a look around inside three broomsticks...
[there they are! All three of them!
]
We went to ride Dragon Challenge but after putting our things in lockers, I felt a rain drop and flatly refused to even risk the experience we'd had a few days prior when Dragon Challenge turned into a water ride. Nope, not happening!
We got our things right back out of the locker and made our way to the Hogwarts Express again.
More pictures and lots more food ahead in the next post! (to be continued)...