We headed towards Seuss Landing since it looked like it had the most rides for smaller children. (As you can see, the park was still decorated from Christmas as it was the week after New Years.)
We hit the Cat in the Hat ride first. It was Avery’s favorite. I’d say its comparable to the Winnie the Pooh ride at the Magic Kingdom.
We made our way through Seuss Landing and rode the carousel since it had no wait at all.
The girls loved seeing the Lorax’s house.
After we made our way through Seuss Landing we headed toward Hogsmeade (aka Harry Potter World to the girls).
Hogsmeade was crazy crowded. The park on the whole wasn’t that bad on the day we went but it seemed like everyone and their brother was in Hogsmeade. You could hardly move and navigating through the crowd with a double stroller was nearly impossible.
We managed to make our way to the Owlery to mail a couple of postcards back home. The postmark says Hogsmeade! They sell stamps there too but I brought my own.
We got to see the talking paintings just like in the movie.
By this time, it was 80+ degrees and the crowd was too much in Hogsmeade so we decided to head back to the entrance.
We did stop and meet Spiderman on the way out.
We headed back to the house and the girls mustered up just enough energy for a swim before bed.
And that wraps up our first day at Universal!
A few quick tips…
- You have to have Park-to-Park tickets in order to ride the Hogwarts Express.
- You have to walk about 20 minutes just to get to the gate at Islands of Adventure.
- Islands of Adventure has a lot of roller coasters and intense rides. They have awesome reviews. I just really didn’t get to ride any of them because I was pregnant and my kids were too small for most of the rides outside of Seuss Landing. I would love to take them back in about 5 years when they are big enough to ride everything.
- Time your visit to Hogsmeade for either first thing in the morning or later in the evening.
- Disney gives you 3 Fastpasses for free each day (plus more when those are gone). Universal has a version of this where you go to the front of the line on almost every ride but you have to pay for it. When I priced it for our 3 days at Universal it was going to cost an additional $90 per person…so we passed on that. It really would not have been worth it for us as the rides my kids could ride all had 20 minute or less wait times anyway. If you were only going to be there for one day and wanted to cram as many rides as possible into the day then I could see where it might be worth it.
- We ate lunch at Fire Eaters Grill (hot dogs and chicken tenders)…the food was mediocre at best. I wish we had eaten at a sit down restaurant (like the Three Broomsticks) instead.