How I Spent My Christmas Vacation
Jan. 1st, 2019 05:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennaria...featuring Harry Potter World Universal Studios Orlando, and also the new SpiderMan movie. No, the new new one.
Universal Studios: really really wants to be Disney World! Not quite there yet. The best part really is the Wizarding World (to give it the official name): they've done their damnedest to give you full immersion, and it's pretty damn effective. Even the wait lines take you through Hogwarts (for The Forbidden Journey), by Hagrid's hunt (for the Hippogriff coaster), into King's Cross or Hogsmeade station (for the Hogwarts Express), or via the marble halls of Gringotts (for, er, Escape From Gringotts). The one catch is that everyone else wants to go to the same part of the parks, so even if you're there super early, so are a few hundred of your new closest friends.
Well, also one other catch, which was likewise true elsewhere in the park, and not true at Disney. The rides are not built for larger than average people. They have sample chairs near the entrance, before the line, so you can find out before you wait for possibly ludicrous periods of time...but Wife had to cram herself in for the Gringotts ride, and wasn't able to ride Forbidden Journey at all. (Or the Hulk coaster, to name another headliner elsewhere in the park.)
At the end of the day, though, she came home with McGonnagall's wand, and I came home with Snape's (...I'd planned on Neville's, but Snape's appealed to the Victorian in my soul), and also we spent several delightful hours pretending to be wizards and taking photos.
The Hogwarts Express. We rode it both ways, twice. ...not in a row, to be fair.
Hogwarts, against the morning sky. Not pictured: the aforementioned crowds. (If you showed up early enough, The Forbidden Journey was practically walk-on! ...except for the part where first you had a ten to fifteen minute walk through Hogwarts, and everyone always stopped to try to take photographs. :wry:)
In Diagon Alley, they had a Travel Agency, with a set of Magical Destination posters. Sadly, they did not have said posters for sale, not even as post-cards, so I had to try to photograph them. (Other possible magical destinations included London (...?), Scotland, Paris, Uganda, New York, Scandinavia (gorgeous poster with the Northern Lights, could not get a shot without glare interference, boo), and the Amazon.)
Other good points: the food was mostly good, although better at CityWalk than in the parks. We did try butterbeer (better hot than cold), pumpkin juice (like heavily mulled cider), and pear cider (absolutely delicious). Also, the Amazing Spiderman ride was Wife's favorite ride in the whole park, even above the Harry Potter rides. Which is a good segue to...
SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, which was our 'original New Year's plans fell through, let's go see a movie' choice. I'm a weeper, so I teared up at the Stan Lee cameo and cried like a baby at [plot point]. I'm actually a little bit surprised it was PG as opposed to PG-13. But the scene that starts in the church yard is a thing of hilarity and beauty, and I heart Miles Morales so hard even if I spent several scenes slumped in my chair going oh sweetie no. Also Wife wants to use the very beginning studio intro in class for all the things it does right - aesthetically, it fits into the rest of the film amazingly. Overall: both pretty and it thought about what it was doing and how, which is a thing I don't see often enough.
Universal Studios: really really wants to be Disney World! Not quite there yet. The best part really is the Wizarding World (to give it the official name): they've done their damnedest to give you full immersion, and it's pretty damn effective. Even the wait lines take you through Hogwarts (for The Forbidden Journey), by Hagrid's hunt (for the Hippogriff coaster), into King's Cross or Hogsmeade station (for the Hogwarts Express), or via the marble halls of Gringotts (for, er, Escape From Gringotts). The one catch is that everyone else wants to go to the same part of the parks, so even if you're there super early, so are a few hundred of your new closest friends.
Well, also one other catch, which was likewise true elsewhere in the park, and not true at Disney. The rides are not built for larger than average people. They have sample chairs near the entrance, before the line, so you can find out before you wait for possibly ludicrous periods of time...but Wife had to cram herself in for the Gringotts ride, and wasn't able to ride Forbidden Journey at all. (Or the Hulk coaster, to name another headliner elsewhere in the park.)
At the end of the day, though, she came home with McGonnagall's wand, and I came home with Snape's (...I'd planned on Neville's, but Snape's appealed to the Victorian in my soul), and also we spent several delightful hours pretending to be wizards and taking photos.
The Hogwarts Express. We rode it both ways, twice. ...not in a row, to be fair.
Hogwarts, against the morning sky. Not pictured: the aforementioned crowds. (If you showed up early enough, The Forbidden Journey was practically walk-on! ...except for the part where first you had a ten to fifteen minute walk through Hogwarts, and everyone always stopped to try to take photographs. :wry:)
In Diagon Alley, they had a Travel Agency, with a set of Magical Destination posters. Sadly, they did not have said posters for sale, not even as post-cards, so I had to try to photograph them. (Other possible magical destinations included London (...?), Scotland, Paris, Uganda, New York, Scandinavia (gorgeous poster with the Northern Lights, could not get a shot without glare interference, boo), and the Amazon.)Other good points: the food was mostly good, although better at CityWalk than in the parks. We did try butterbeer (better hot than cold), pumpkin juice (like heavily mulled cider), and pear cider (absolutely delicious). Also, the Amazing Spiderman ride was Wife's favorite ride in the whole park, even above the Harry Potter rides. Which is a good segue to...
SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, which was our 'original New Year's plans fell through, let's go see a movie' choice. I'm a weeper, so I teared up at the Stan Lee cameo and cried like a baby at [plot point]. I'm actually a little bit surprised it was PG as opposed to PG-13. But the scene that starts in the church yard is a thing of hilarity and beauty, and I heart Miles Morales so hard even if I spent several scenes slumped in my chair going oh sweetie no. Also Wife wants to use the very beginning studio intro in class for all the things it does right - aesthetically, it fits into the rest of the film amazingly. Overall: both pretty and it thought about what it was doing and how, which is a thing I don't see often enough.