Where dreams come true: Orlando, Florida

Florida is one of the states of the United States which I think non-Americans have a little more knowledge of – even if it is very limited. Spring break, CSI: Miami, Theme Park Central, the beach, old people retiring in Florida. It all doesn’t really seem to mesh logically at all; and yet this is the outside perception. Two of my closest online friends have been living in Florida, when I originally booked my trip the hope was to meet both but life intervened and didn’t want both meetings to happen. That’s life – I bitched and moaned and then all I could do was move on – complaining wasn’t going to solve anything or make anyone feel better. So by the time that it came to booking specifics, I knew that Orlando, Florida was an essential destination. My friendship with Jess sprung up kind of randomly, really. We’d both been around on Fan Forum, specifically at f251, for a while and exchanged occasional PM’s and what not, and then suddenly the PMing was all the time and it became AIMing and then next thing I knew, I was booking this trip to the US to include a stop in Orlando and in fact Orlando was pretty much a ‘it must happen regardless of the prices of flights’ sort of thing.


Jess has been this endless source of support for the longest time, in ‘the fandom’, in my normal life, in the lead up to my trip in a trip planning capacity. And I was nervous but excited to meet her (and so I started singing a song about being nervous but excited – people just stared at me! There was zero choreography, ZERO!) because for me it’s an even bigger deal meeting the people who I’m close to online. Worst case scenario is taking someone who you adore online, meeting them in real life and not clicking and then it’s all just muddled and not good. With Jess – at least from my perspective – the worries were entirely paranoid and ridiculous. From the moment meeting her outside the Orlando International Airport to the moment of departure I felt nothing but really happy to be in her presence. I landed around 7pm and so by the time that we went to grab dinner (my first experience at Chilli’s) and went back to her place that was pretty much night 1 completed.


We had two very specific days planned out – one being Islands of Adventure at Universal on Friday for the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter; the other being Magic Kingdom which we decided would be best to attend on Sunday, to space out the theme parks. I’d talked about wanting to go to a Floridian beach and we tossed around other ideas but by the time we got going on Thursday (this being June 17) I decided that I’d rather just stick to her local area for a look see – we had a HUGE day planned for Friday, wanting to arrive at the park REALLY early. We went to First Watch for breakfast (yum!) and then I was taken on a tour of UCF (The University of Central Florida) where I was really fascinated by Greek Row and looking at all the sorority/fraternity houses. After the UCF tour we then went and did a little shopping – I’m officially an Old Navy addict, just so you know, especially their sale items. The standard Orlando thunderstorm of the afternoon hit and so we went back to chill at Jess’s for a while, and went back out for dinner later on at an Italian restaurant. We’d had plans to start our movie marathon but it just didn’t happen – we both got online and this is what happens when you get two moderators who are obsessed with a blue eyed man who is in Maui... we got distracted lol. We’d also planned to try to be asleep REALLY early but also, that didn’t happen – we’re both late night people, so even with plans to wake up at 4am, we were awake after midnight.


Yes, you read right, plans to be awake that early. When I was trip planning, I was looking into the Orlando theme parks and I realised that the Harry park was opening when I’d be in the country and when it came to booking my itinerary, it actually worked out pretty nicely. Harry Potter fans are hardcore, we knew that being there early was critical. And so, a brief nap later and we were stumbling out of bed, forcing ourselves to get going. We were aiming to arrive at Islands by 5:30am. We were pretty much on schedule – so was everyone else in the universe. I’m no stranger to the sitting around all day for a fangirl type experience thing, but never before have I seen so many people awake and going at 5:30 in the morning – and we were probably, like, a thousand people back from the front or something like that. It started out just being this MASS of people waiting outside at City Walk. There was no logic, no queueing, no barriers. Basically I was prepared for stampede when they opened things up. The park wasn’t due to open til 10, the ribbon cutting ceremony was at 9am and part of why we had wanted to arrive so early was in the hope that the first however many people would get to attend the ribbon cutting. It wasn’t completely light when they started letting people through to have their tickets checked and what not, and then it was this stampede of people toward the Wizarding World, taking the longest route possible throughout the park. We then wound up stationed in another queue for a few hours. Masses of people on the path sitting around uncomfortably trying to work out what was going on. Between different people around us going to talk to staff members, we deduced that we were in ‘group 3.’ There was a group who was in for the Today Show taping/the ceremony – to this day I’m not quite sure if these were only like VIP guests or if there were general people who were hardcore and arrived at 1am there. They’d get let in, then group 2 (who were somehow queued up from a different direction) and then our mob. I realised only at this point that being the dumbass I was, when I’d taken my memory card out of my camera the night before to check something on my computer, I hadn’t put it back in. Thank freaking God that Jess brought her camera, she’d briefly contemplated not bothering and just relying on mine. We were both on Twitter following things – learning that evidently the queue behind us was snaking throughout the whole park. We were being told that we’d get in around 11am, 11:30am but we were let in a lot earlier than that. We could hear the ceremony going on, with cheers and screaming and stuff. Group 2 started to be let in (we could see them) creating a mosh pit because of course we all stood up and surged forward in anticipation; someone starting to lead a ‘let us in’ chant. Amusingly I heard a guy behind me read a Tweet I’d made out loud haha – I’d been using a #wwohp tag. And then finally, they let us in.


I don’t think I can explain the surreal feeling of first entering The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. You literally feel like you’ve been transported into the series. It is just so... it’s so intricate! Every nook and cranny of the architectural design. We were walking through Hogsmeade in awe heading toward Hogwarts castle – which also happens to be the flagship ride. We got into the queue; it was healthy but not insane – outside people were talking about how they’d heard the queue for Hogwarts was going to be up to 5 hours. The majority of the queue you’re being ‘entertained’ by the walk – you’re walking through Hogwarts castle, literally, there’s stuff going on around you on all the walls and everything. The ride itself is seriously the best ride I’d ever been on anywhere. I... a part of me wants to be super specific but another part just wants everyone to go experience it and to plan your lives around going at some point.


The gift shop that you walk out into after the ride was insanely packed with people fawning over merchandise (Filch’s Emporium) and we fought out way out to head toward The Dragon Challenge which is evidently just a remake of an old rollercoaster – the exact some coaster just with different decorations – but for me it was new. I was annoyed – it was Goblet of Fire based, there were signs and stuff with like Go Krum, Go Fleur, Go Harry and NOTHING for Cedric – HELLO?!?! I mean, Rob Pattinson bias aside, Cedric is SUCH an important part of Goblet of Fire! The rollercoaster itself was really awesome though. The final rollercoaster was like a kiddie coaster, the Hippogriff something or other and you get to go outside of Hagrid’s hut on the way to the coaster. It was fun and cute.


By now, the queues in Hogsmeade to get into stores were absolutely freaking ridiculous. You had to queue for like, at least 25 people, just to get to the drink stall. We got to go into the Weasley twins joke shop and also the lolly shop, both were SO PACKED and half of it was just people loitering around hiding from the heat. This is Orlando on a hot day in an area where there’s little shade and obtaining a cold beverage requires an hour wait in a queue. We decided that we had no choice but to brave the line for The Three Broomsticks for lunch – it’s the only cafe/food place in the Wizarding World and once you left the area, there was no getting back in. At this point, Jess literally went light headed – it was like such a sudden turn from just being like ‘shit it’s hot’ to ‘omg I feel faint.’ We were waiting in a hot sun, no way of getting cold water, no staff members out looking around to check on guests. I was freaking out a little – I knew that we just needed to get indoors and sit down and the only way to do that was to brave the queue. I held our place while Jess sat to the side on the ground in the shade. We did ask one girl whose job was literally to stand on the back door of one of the shops in Hogsmeade and stand there; we were enquiring if she knows anything about the wait time and she knew nothing about it and I pointed out that my friend was light headed and frankly she didn’t seem to care. I should’ve written down her name to make a comment on her.


We made it into the building and she lightened up a bit once the air conditioning hit in but then the queue kept going inside the building for a bit and it got hot and stuffy again and when we were just a few people from the front of the line and THEN they started to hand out cups of cold water (not to the people outside suffocating in the heat) and she’d had no more than a sip of water and she like, had to drop to her knees, that was how light headed she was. With Jess on her knees and me in panic mode, I said to the hostess who was about to send us through ‘MY FRIEND NEEDS A TABLE NOW.’ Luckily someone of importance was walking by at the time and finally we had their attention. Once at this point, the regular procedure is to line up to order your food, then line up to receive your food, then line up to get a table. THE WHOLE DAY WAS JUST LINING UP. Jess was taken to go sit down at a table and I looked after the food process, I went back to check on her after I’d ordered and she was like, practically passed out on the table. She was sooooo white. I’ve never seen anyone that white in my entire life. In line with her special diet I got her the chicken salad, I got fish and chips. The serve was massive and I gave her a bit of my fish because her chicken was gross – and on top of being gross she found a bone in it. Seriously, The Three Broomsticks wanted to kill her, the heat exhaustion didn’t work out so they tried to choke her to death. They were clearly trying to get people out of the restaurant as quickly as they could but we remained planted still for over an hour. The colour returned to Jess’s face with some food, water and air conditioning. The guy who’d helped us came back to check that she was okay; he offered that he could get first aid if necessary but didn’t really push the matter.


On a separate tone I ordered butter beer and it was delicious.


I was wary to be like, going on rides or whatever but Jess really did seem a lot better and she insisted that she was okay. At this point, there were lines of like, two hours each, to get into Ollivanders and the Owl Post. Ollivanders (the wand shop) was an experience I really wanted to have. You get let in in groups of about 25 and then one person from the group gets selected to have their like ‘wand selecting’ experience – to have a wand chosen for them. Realistically they were going to be like, picking kids and people in costumes, so I knew I wasn’t going to get to actually have the experience. I was wary of waiting for either one – as much as I REALLY wanted to, I hadn’t seen the rest of Islands of Adventure and plus the queues were out in the sun and Jess said she was feeling better but I didn’t think that standing for two hours in the sun again would be the way to go about recovery. We went on the Hogwarts ride again – the wait time was about 45 minutes at the time, the longest I’d seen it at all day was 120 minutes – and it was just as awesome the second time, if not better. We looked in the gift shop again (this was a process. It takes five minutes to walk directly across the shop because you have to fight through people) and Jess debated about which shirt she wanted to buy as a souvenir and lamented the lack of Ron specific merch – I agreed that it was a bit ridiculous, in fact on the whole I was not impressed with the merchandising.


Bidding farewell to the Wizarding World was hard. We didn’t know at that point what the line was like outside, we’d only really heard bits and although we hoped to go back in at night there were no guarantees and so we had to prepare for the fact that leaving was probably leaving for the last time.


I really enjoyed all of Islands of Adventure, I didn’t get to do everything but we hit all of the main rides – Spiderman, a couple of water rides (the things that Jess does for me ;)) and so forth. I don’t know what to say? It was fun? Lol. It’s a theme park. Lots of waiting around. Oh, I can comment that as I walked out of the Wizarding World with my Pumpkin Juice (I prefer Butter Beer, as an fyi) I was having people around me asking allll about the park, wanting to know details. I imagine most of them had arrived at human hours, been told ‘it’ll be a 23908328 hour wait’ and decided to just enjoy the regular park. Even late in the afternoon though, there was still a giant queue snaking throughout the park to get into the WWoHP.


We decided to head out to City Walk for dinner – City Walk is like, this strip of restaurants and bars that line a massive area between the parking lot and the Islands of Adventure. We tossed up a couple of options and I’m not ashamed to say that I wanted to go to NBA City because that’s where Troy Bolton would pick.


Excellent choice.


As we were being seated, we found out that Dan Radcliffe, Tom Felton and some other Harry Potter cast members had been at that very restaurant just hours earlier, watching a soccer game on the TV.


Just. Hours. Earlier. Dan. In. Same. Restaurant.


THUD.


OH MY GOD.


We were being served by a err... friendly... man named Shawn. Who took it upon himself to put his number into my phone and flirt incessantly and blatantly and lewdly. As a result of this we got free drinks so hey, no complaints there! Anyway because he was distracted he didn’t seem to care much when Jess was enquiring about the presence of the Harry Potter gang and if I’ve learnt one thing about Jess it is that she has no shame and she like, flagged down another waitress to ask if she knew anything about it. She wound up going to get the guy who’d served them – and he talked to us for ages about it, up until when our food arrived and he said he’d come back to talk to us again after we’d finished eating, which we did. This lucky guy, he’s the biggest HP fan and he got called into work and then found out that he was going to get to serve them – it was like it was ment to be or something. He was a lovely guy and so I really felt like it was kharma coming around. He told some cute stories – my favourite was that Dan tried to order a drink and he had to say no ‘I know you’re not 21 buddy’ and Dan had forgotten that you have to be 21 in the US. He’d found out that they were going to see The Blue Man group and giving them details of where they all go to drink after work and the cast was all, yeah we might come by. So Jess and I were contemplating what level of stalking effort we could possibly go to. We were talking about hanging around the back door of the Blue Man Group but Michael (the guy who’d served them) said that it’s actually fenced off.


Anyway we wound up going back into IoA briefly – by the time we finished up dinner (which was longer than originally planned with all the chatting/flirting going on) it was nearly park closing time but we did manage to walk back through to the Wizarding World again. We tried to enter in through the place we’d entered through the first time and we were told that the park was closed. And then we went in through the other way and there was no security or anything. So we were able to have a look around at night (very pretty) and attempted to get into one of the queues we’d skipped out on earlier but they had them cut off so no one else could join the queue at the end. Anyway so a few more photos later and we bid farewell to the Wizarding World – this time for good.


We did go and check out Cigarz, the bar where Michael had told us he’d tried to convince the cast to come along to and we went in and it was this TINY bar. Even if they had contemplated going, I can imagine that they would’ve had some sort of security with them go and suss it out and realise that it was not the environment for them to be in – no way to have a secluded private table or to attempt to have any sort of anonymity at all. We’d looked into Blue Man and figured that it would end at a particular time and logically if they were going to come, they’d probably come straight over.
Michael had Jess’s number and he’d said he would text if they turned up or whatever and we never heard from him so we can only assume that, as suspected, that didn’t happen. We went for a drive then and found the hotel that they’re staying at – Jess seemed up for going in but I was like, seriously? We’ve been up for like sixteen hours, they’ve been up early, EVEN IF we managed to get into this fancy hotel it’s not like they’re going to be wandering around in the lobby or in the hotel bar – it’s more likely that they’re in bed, or if they’re up then they’d be hanging out in one of their rooms or something. There’s a line between nothing ventured nothing gained, and complete insanity.


I didn’t even check my e-mail before going to bed which speaks highly of just how exhausted I was; because I constantly check my e-mail. We decided to not set an alarm and to just allow our bodies to wake up when they desired – which was about twelve hours later, at midday.


Saturday’s agenda was to chill, relax, and to go to the Florida Mall. What was the statistic I read? One of the world’s largest single story malls? Yes. To add to the things that I’d already bought on Thursday, I bought a cute top from Forever 21 and I couldn’t resist MnM World. Pretzel MnM’s – best thing ever, so I’ve learnt. Of course it started raining right before we left and Jess was wearing slippery shoes so she had to like, cling to me as we went back out to the car haha. We stopped to grab food from Pita Pit and headed back home where we watched HSM2 and HSM3 :)


On Sunday, I visited a place where dreams come true, the happiest place on Earth – the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld. Now I went to Disneyland Paris back in 2008 but Magic Kingdom – totally kicks its butt! Jess has been to these theme parks a lot and Magic Kingdom she’s been to very recently a few times so she’s very familiar with the best way to navigate around, the most efficient things to do. I was and still am highly astounded by this whole fast pass thing – we don’t have such a thing – and it really does save you a lot of time. For those who aren’t familiar, the more popular rides have a Fast Pass ticket booth thing. It has advertised that you can return, say, in 1.5 hours time between 12:30 – 1:30 with your fast pass. Fast Pass ticket holders then have about a ten minute wait. So, for example, we would get a fast pass for one popular ride, go on another popular ride and stand in the 1 hour line, and then it would be perfect time to go back to the other ride and have only that short wait. Perfect. By I guess maybe 1pm, we’d done what Jess labelled as the ‘best’ rides in the park – like the main roller coasters, Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Spiderman. I didn’t go on every single ride but I pretty much got to visit the majority of the park. Jess put up with me insisting that there HAD to be HSM merchandise SOMEWHERE (only crappy kiddy sunglasses) and going into all the shops on a hunt. Yes, I know, it’s all over at Hollywood Studios where the mini HSM2 stage show thingy is on. Blah blah. She also subjected herself to rides that she is scared of/thinks are ‘gay’ (I won’t specify more because people would be MORTIFIED, I certainly was) all for me.


In comparison to our MASSIVE day at Universal, Magic Kingdom was over with early, we left an hour or two before the park closed. I honestly felt rather theme parked out. Instead we were able to grab dinner from a non-theme parkesque eatery (Jimmy Johns which was yummmmy) and continue our Zac Efron movie fest – Hairspray and Me and Orson Welles. I’m ashamed to say that I was drifting off during MaOW; I LOVE the film and I love him in it but I was just utterly exhausted.


I cried at the airport on Monday when I was dropped off.


My final words for Orlando is that Jess is an amazing, sweet, sassy, wonderful woman who is so brave and so strong and anyone who thinks they can get away with talking shit about her anywhere in my vicinity will be on my hate list. Seriously. I’ve had the absolute pleasure of meeting her and I consider that to be the primary means of being able to judge a persons character. No we don’t agree on everything – life would be boring if we did – but that doesn’t prevent us from getting along regardless. Sometimes two mature adults can agree to disagree without needing to resort to pettiness.


I’ll step down off my soap box now.


Hogwarts was absofulutely incredible; Magic Kingdom really is the happiest place on Earth; Orlando is awesome and Jess is the bomb.