31.08.2012 – 31.08.2012  33 °C

Day 3 in Orlando and guess how we started our day….. Shopping! No joke, none of the three of us would normally do this quantity of shopping but stuff at the outlets is so cheap so we can’t help ourselves!

Today was my day at the outlets, I was desperate to find some more t-shirts for my trip down to Costa Rica/ Central America. I finally found some likely suspects in Sacks 5^th Ave… Sounds good doesn’t it??? 🙂 In reality, I got some nice shirts at a great price so I couldn’t complain at all!!

D picked me back up at lunch time (they actually got sick of shopping and decided to come back and pick me up..), we had a bite to eat and a bit of a rest before we hit Universal Island’s of Adventure for our second day. This time around we didn’t head straight up to Hogwarts but instead walked in the opposite direction towards the Popeye world. The first ride we hit was a white water rafting ride on Popeye’s raft. SUPER DUPER fun! Actually, probably the best rafting ride I’ve ever been on. The rafting part of the trip doesn’t get you that wet its all of the water that gushes down from everywhere else as you take the raft thru the course.. At one point we passed under an open pipe that was just pouring water out… By the end of the ride I had gone from completely bone dry to absolutely drenched.. More drenched than you would ever get from just walking in a rain shower! Every particle of clothing was wet!!! All I could think was, thank goodness I’d given anything precious to M to mind cause anything resembling electronics would have been fried from this ride!

So, completely soaked, we continued our wander up thru the park towards the Jurassic Park area. We bypassed the other flume ride in the park (I decided I needed to get fractionally drier before I tried anything resembling water again) and continued up to try and get on this overhead flying ride in Jurassic Park. When we arrived at the ride we discovered that unless adults were accompanied by children they were not allowed on! M&D actually tried to find a random kid to take with them on the ride so they could have a go… Considering the issues around stalking children I didn’t think this was a very good idea but they did try for a while… Funnily enough, no children were riding this ride unaccompanied so they lucked out….

They might have lucked out in Jurassic Park land but we lucked in back in Hogsmeade. D and I rode the Hippogriff Rollercoaster twice! It’s not a big drop style roller coaster more a roundy roundy up and down style (I guess you’d say kiddies.. I’d say heaps of fun). We also spent some time actually going into some of the Hogsmeade shops, we checked out the owl post office and the wand shop, Zonko’s joke shop and Honeydukes sweet shop. The shops are all decked out as I sort of imagined them to be decked out in the books. You can’t buy any pukin’ pastilles but you can buy Bertie’s every flavour beans! (For the record I didn’t buy any sweets… the prices were off the scale!). The store that was doing the best trade was Ollivander’s wand shop. People were actually lined up outside (minimum twenty minute wait) to see a wand demonstration. The wands on sale were replicas of the wands used by the characters in the series… No real dragon heartstring wands in this store! More alarming was the price tag for each replica… fifty dollars a go… and the number of people who had purchased their very own HP wand….. I’m starting to think there are a lot of people in this world who need the escapism that is HP….

Our second last stop for the day was down at Poseidon’s Adventure. It was a walk thru “tour” of Poseidon’s lost temple.. Very weird start, that fortunately ended up worth the thirty minute wait. We entered this very fake looking archaeological dig where we were then whisked away by some evil spirit into Poseidon’s lair… Pretty lame… Fortunately the last part of the “tour” was far better than all of the previous “rooms in the temple”. The last stop was a pyrotechnic battle between Poseidon and his arch enemy (name escapes me) where good old Poseidon saves the day and rescues all of us “lost souls” from the clutches of the evil spirit! A very forgettable experience!!! J

Our last stop was into the Spiderman 3D adventure. It is a hop in a car style ride complete with 3D headset. Most 3D rides make me super ill and I really would rather do anything but take them but the Spiderman one is one ride that gave me shivers and thrills rather than an upset stomach. I’m glad M chickened out on this ride because it was another HP fly thru style ride and she would have felt unwell. All in all, a great way to end our three day adventure at Universal!

My day ended with me trying to organise my suitcase and my new pack. My suitcase is heading home with M&D laden with pressies and discarded clothes.. Sadly, my pack is a lot fuller than I thought so I had three different goes at trying to pack all of my belongings into my new bag.. After taking out more clothes (here’s hoping I don’t completely freeze in Canada) and using different packing cubes I eventually got all of my belongings into my new pack (and old suitcase) ready for our trip in the Caribbean– bring on tomorrow and the next phase of this ever exciting trip!

Song of the Day– Cat Stevens, Wild World