Since Orlando is about 2 hours away from where we are currently workamping we decided to take a few days and visit the Universal Studios parks, mainly to see the Harry Potter stuff. One thing that kinda bothered us is that the Harry Potter theme is actually split between two different parks. If you want to see the entire Harry Potter ‘experience’, you HAVE to buy tickets to BOTH Universal Parks. Fortunately, since we are now Florida residents, we were able to get a discount at the parks and at Universal’s Cabana Bay Hotel.

We drove down on a Sunday afternoon after work. This gave us time to check in, eat dinner, and walk to Universal’s City Walk which is about a mile away on the Garden Walk, a nice paved walkway that goes from the hotels to the parks.

The next morning, we took the complimentary shuttle to Universal Studios. Honestly, we had expected something similar to Disney’s Hollywood Studios – and were somewhat disappointed. There were areas that were set up to look like famous cities, like New York and San Francisco, but they were just fake fronts and looked nice, but not ‘real’. At least at Disney, if there was a storefront or something, you could actually go in. We also expected to see attractions that had to do with movies and how they were made (like at Disney), but there was almost none of that. We did enjoy Diagon Alley, which is one part of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

We also caught a street performance by the Beat Builders, who used construction equipment to make music. It was a fun show, and Candi really seemed to enjoy watching for some reason?!?! (Can you say HUNKS!)

The next day, we went to Universal’s Islands of Adventure to see Hogsmeade, the other half of the Harry Potter experience. We definitely enjoyed Islands of Adventure more. In addition to Hogsmeade, other sections of the park include Marvel Super Hero Island and Jurassic Park. We had a great day there and even got to ride some roller coasters!

Of course, any vacation has to include eating! We ate dinner at The Toothsome Chocolate Emporium & Savory Feast Kitchen at City Walk. The food was good and surprisingly, reasonably priced. They also had amazing looking desserts, but we had already decided to try the famous Voodoo Doughnuts. We stopped there on the way back and got doughnuts to take back to our room. Sadly, we didn’t think they lived up to the hype. They were good (I mean, they ARE doughnuts!) but no better than any other doughnut shop we’ve been to.

The next day it was time to return to Welaka for our final month here before moving on to Texas.