Florida Day 5: Half Marathon and Universal Studios

Sunday morning came bright and VERY early.  Anna needed to be at the race no later than 4am, and the one and only part of the race she was concerned about was getting there on time.  Now, I can totally understand this as a concept, because in general I am the same way (I may not have been kind about it at 3am though).  The original plan was that I would get up with Anna and drive her to the race, and then we'd be back probably by 9am to wake up Spence and start the day.  Well the 15 passenger van changed that plan slightly, becuase I refused to drive it.  Flat out refused.  So Spence and I drove Anna to the race and then slept in the van.  Not before we got some cute pictures of her though!

After the race we headed to Universal Studios and HARRY POTTER WORLD!  I am a huge Harry Potter fan, I love the books and think the movies are fine (movies are never quite as good as the books in my opinion, ever, not just for this series).  So I insisted suggested that HPW be our first stop at Universal.  By suggested I mean I death marched speed walked threw elbows through crowds walked quickly to HPW first thing in the morning.  It was awesome. 

 

Seriously, how cool does Hogsmead look??

In line for the ride inside Hogwarts

It's the Sorting Hat! And it was singing to me.

Spencer on the ride inside the castle

Hagrid's house

In line for the Hippogriff ride, it was short but fun!

We are in line for the dragon roller coaster, it has 2 different roller coasters that are all intertwined, we all got off this one feeling woozy (both coasters did that to us)

Anna is VERY excited about the red dragon.

We explored the other Islands of Adventure, there were some pretty fun rides throughout the day.  However by about 5pm the early start, and (for Anna) the half marathon plus the fact that we'd been gogogogogogoggooooo for about 5 days straight killed our energy levels.  We decided to leave the park (we'd seen and ridden everything we wanted to) and I'm not going ot lie we were in bed by 9, asleep by 9:02.  The next day we flew home!