Post Florida

On Sunday last, Becca came up from Sarasota to rendezvous with me at ICFA. We swam, said Hi to the alligator, talked to everyone and sundry, ate pretty good barbecue, and left way early on Monday morning to relocate to our new hotel and then go to Universal.

Harry Potter World is splendid: it's not huge (allotting two days was about 1 1/2 days more than we really would have needed under even the best circumstances): it had that celebratory feeling of walking into a real place that, frankly, the rest of Universal lacks. I am not much of a roller-coaster fan (read: wuss), and that's really Universal's stock in trade. So it was raining, so our first chore was to buy cheap rain ponchos; accoutered, we went off to Diagon Alley, which is, as I said, absolutely celebratory in its Potterish vibe.

We went on the Gringotts ride, which we loved--just roller-coasterish enough without being too scary for me--and wandered through Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes and a couple of other shops, and bought some chocolate frogs for Julie.  Then we took the Hogwarts Express to Hogsmeade (it is one of Universal's craftier moves that the two Potter campuses are spread over two parks and therefore, if you want to see both, you need a two-park ticket) which was fun--out the "window" you see the landscape changing, various characters flying by on different magical beasts, the Knight Bus zipping northward, and through the frosted "glass" of the train corridor you see the silhouettes of Harry, Hermione, and Ron moving about.  Oh, and dementors. Those things are scary.

Got to Hogsmeade, which is sweet--not quite as adorably itself as Diagon Alley, but adorable. And then there's Hogwarts looming over the town.

Here we made our first mistake: we rode the Hogwarts ride, which is an effective combination of motion and film, guaranteed to make even the cast-iron stomach queasy. Becca loves roller-coasters, but this ride got to her: she tried valiantly to be all right, but we cut short our visit to Hogwarts, headed back to Diagon Alley, and she spent half an hour being sick into a convenient trash can.  Poor weeble. We tried to recover (got some lunch to replace the Lost Breakfast, watched the Universal Monster Make-Up show, walked around a little bit) but it never did quite take. So we retired to our hotel and watched a couple of Harry Potter movies, went out for a fairly good burger, and called it a day.

And the next day we went to Sarasota, which was a whole different and lovely trip, and I'll go on about that later.