We thought rope drop was an hour earlier than it actually was so we were waiting in line for park opening with time to spare. Decked out in homemade Mario and Luigi hats thanks to the amazing Auntie Tanya, we used our hour long head start before general admission to ride through a green plumbing pipe into Super Mario World. It was like being sucked into the video game that I spent hours playing as a child.
We started our visit on Donkey Kong Island, in another favourite video game. This mine kart coaster came complete with broken rail tracks, bananas, and a whole bunch of nostalgia. The whole ride was bananas in the absolute best way. It was an amazing start to the day.
Our ride on Yoshi’s Island gave us a slow turn around the world to get a bird’s eye view of the decor, especially Princess Peach’s castle. We saw so many familiar characters including the spiny cactus, the bomb and the dropping jagged square. We also saw lots of baby yoshis.
Last we experienced the Mario Kart ride inside Bowser’s Castle. This ride had a crazy amount going on including steering, aiming, shooting, 3D, and more. It was overwhelming and a bit nuts. Not our favourite.
It took an hour to complete this world, including punching heaps of question boxes, and we headed out as soon as the streams of general admission folks began to flock in.
Our next world to experience was How to Train your Dragon. The set for this would was equally insane and looked exactly like the Island of Berk. Here we rode flying dragons, did a fun and super smooth roller coaster ride, and shot water cannons off Viking ships getting very wet.
Later in the afternoon we attended the theatre show here. It was awesome to see Toothless the dragon fly directly over the audience.
Next we had the joy of experiencing the part of the Harry Potter world set in Paris. We started with an elegant lunch at Cafe Sirene where we had delightful meals such as, beef bourguignon. The boys tried pumpkin juice for the first time and loved it. I don’t blame them - it is delicious, like liquid pumpkin pie.
After peering in all the shop windows, we attended the Arcanus circus show. It was fabulous. Newt Scamander and his collection of magical creatures stole the show.
We then travelled by floo to the Ministry of Magic. Our tour there was unparalleled. It was the best ride in the Harry Pitter universe and perhaps the whole park. The atmosphere and attention to detail throughout the attraction was awesome. The ride itself felt like a next generation attraction combining CGI with robots in a way that you could hardly tell which were which. We left the experience in complete awe.
Our final experiences in the park were first, the werewolf coaster that was like a spinning top that moved along the coaster track. Second, the Star Dust Racer coaster - this was the biggest extreme thrill ride and the boys were totally sold. They liked this coaster best of all the day’s rides. Third, the Constellation Carousel which did a great job as a modern carousel. And finally, the Frankenstein Haunted House. This ride was pretty fast and scary but all the kids did it and thought it was great.
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| Look at Grandma Cora’s expression. This was a huge coaster! |
Most of the day ran like clockwork, though the park seemed to experience some hiccups throughout the day. From stuck Yoshi train cars to a long breakdown for Frankenstein, we had to go with the flow and adjust a few times. We even navigated the torrential rain that hit at 2 pm. We were the winners of the pivot today.
We topped off a wonderful day with fancy ice cream and a shuttle ride back to the Portofino Hotel to pick up our trailer. We then drove an hour to Cocoa Beach in anticipation of our day at Kennedy Space Centre tomorrow.
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