McBrides Enroll at Hogwarts!

   Elisa has been sorted into Ravenclaw, since she's such a smarty-pants, and Kevin into Gryffindor, on account of his bravery. What does all this mean? It means we're HUGE geeks.

  In Orlando over holiday break, we got up super early (45 degrees outside, it was still dark out) two mornings in a row and set out for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Islands of Adventure park. The park opened an hour early to us since we here Universal Hotel guests. Having read the Harry Potter series start to finish - twice - and owning all feature films on blue ray, we were SO excited to visit the new area of the park - a snow covered village of Hogsmeade with a very grand Hogwarts castle looming overhead. We RAN - despite the protests of park workers - through the park until we reached the steam of the Hogwarts Express and entered Hogsmeade - okay, I actually teared up a little. It was SO magical...

We queued up in the Herbology Green house for the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey Ride (a line whose wait time was 120 minutes after 8am) - a 25 min. line for us...

We promptly sorted Madeleine into Hufflepuff and Riley into Slytherin

Breakfast at the Three Broomsticks - Pancakes, Bacon, Black Pudding...
+ they had these really sweet projections, way up high in the staircases, of owls arriving with letters...
+ on our way out, we overheard that they were now only seating muggles with reservations... We made it just in time!

the Butter Beer keg cart - oh man. Butter Beer is so good: cream-soda-y with a butterscotch-mallow foam on top.
(I think we should try to look up a recipe online) + Pumpkin Juice = delicious.
The witch serving foamy beverages said that they sell $16k in Butter Beer/day! Whoa!

Here I am in Hogsmeade sporting my Ravenclaw house scarf + my sweet screen printed Deathly Hallows Tote Bag (courtesy of Sarah O'Malia) - I caught some peeps eyeballing my bag. Sorry. Not for sale at the park.

From Hogsmeade we went on to Jurassic Park and Toon Lagoon, but def spent most of our time on Marvel Comic Island. Riley bought at least 20 t-shirts...

We took this picture of the Cat in the Hat's Hat for Brooke: 

but Riley wanted to get in on it too...

We had a great adventure and a ton of fun!

p.s.  21.1 Gigawatts!!!

Birthday in Orlando!

  On Kevin's B-day (12/27) we flew off to bright, sunny Orlando along with Kevin's Mom, Deb, and Kevin's younger brother and sister, Riley & Madeleine. Orlando however, was neither bright nor sunny - but that's okay. We bundled up for our early morning adventures to Universal Islands of Adventure and Universal Studios parks.
  We stayed at Loews Portofino Bay Hotel - one of the three Universal hotels - a fun Italian themed hotel with a large center piazza complete with vespas and fine Italian cuisine.

First things first: Us gals headed to the spa for relaxing massages and the guys set off for Universal Studios to get started on rides
We had birthday dinner at Bice - oh man! It was SOoooooooo good. Lamb osso bucco with risotto for Kevin, and filled torteloni for me.

It was great staying so close to the parks - hop on the water taxi, catch a pedicab, or walk along perfectly manicured landscaped paths.

  Once there, we found out that the week in between Christmas and New Year's is the busiest of the year - whoops! - so the parks were hopping. Luckily, since we were staying on site, our hotel room keys allowed us access to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter portion of the Islands of Adventure park an hour before the park opens + unlimited Express Passes - that allow us to skip to the front of most ride lines. Given the popularity of the parks since Harry Potter opened last year, I would NOT recommend going to the Universal Parks withOUT staying on site. Had we not stayed on site, we wouldn't have even made it into the Harry Potter area of the park (the space was over capacity by 8:30 am - a half hour after the park opened to the general public - and was blocked off to park guests...) + we would have been in super long lines for EVERYTHING all day.

Photos of our park adventures to come!