Florida last day

On our last day in Florida we headed to Legoland.  It's a very cool place that deserves either 2 short days or at least one longer day, but during the Spring they close by 6pm, so we missed a few things.  The only thing we HAD to be sure to do was have the kiddos drive little Lego-cars, so we did that first thing!  

  

 

 

 Parker and Mimi signed up for programing classes, that was an unexpected, awesome thing.

  They also spent almost an hour building and racing Lego cars. 

There are tons of these amazing dioramas of cities or Star Wars scenes, we could have spent a long time looking at them, but we only had like 20 minutes! 

 Who has 2 thumbs and is ready for this vacation to be over?  This guy...

LegoLand is where the Cypress Gardens used to be.  You could spend hours wondering through here!  It was breathtaking! 

In the morning we got up, packed the car and drove the 15 hours home.  Then I realized I forgot my wallet at the condo and we had to drive back!  Fortunately we are only 20 minutes away when I realized that...

If you are curious here is my biggest tips for going to Orlando:
-Go on low crowd days, there are whole websites dedicated to crowd calendars
-Most parks have apps that tell you wait times for rides, very useful!
-We did all the normal rides then set aside one day just for the wet rides
-Arrive 30 minutes before the parks open, for sure
-Some like staying on property, but we were told about an inexpensive condo just 1 mile from the parks.  It was so nice to save the $$ so we could spend it other places. 

Florida: Days Two and Three...

Two more days at Universal Studios (they have a deal -- buy 2 days and get the 3rd free!)  Again we headed straight for the Harry Potter stuff. 

  Hamming it up on Hagrid's Motorcycle

 Playing with a bunch of stuff that we weren't going to buy. 

 

 Here's where you meet Anna (blog nickname).  She's basically one of the nicest people in the world.  Plus she gets summers off and we had room for a 6th so we invited her along on our trip to Florida. She was awesome to have around, and I think she had fun too :)

At the Leaky Cauldron in the London part of Harry Potter world.  Yummy English food and Butterbeer.  (it comes frozen, cold or hot, I was not prepared for those choices!)

 So two people on our trip had nosebleeds...

 Photo-bomb! 

  I've always been fascinated by the E.T. ride, who else remembers the commercials from back in the day?  Well I finally rode it!  Twice!  We even got to ride the bike that holds E.T. both times--how much do you envy me?

 Suddenly Yoda loves Woody woodpecker! 

 We rode this like 8 times....

 Yoda is also into cars lately!  He likes to figure out cars by their symbols since he can't totally read yet.  He was so excited to see these old Chevy's (this one is from the American Graffiti movie)

 Storm clouds rolling in...we stayed through the rain all the way to closing! 

 Day Three, this day we wore our bathing suits! 

 He ran up to him and gave him a hug! 

 Pretend you're mad like Yoda. 

Pretend you're not mad, Yoda isn't pulling it off.  

 Crossing Delancey...Get your hands off her! 

 Running after the Knight bus

 holding together the leaky cauldron.

 Platform 9 and three quarters

video
Here's where you walk through the wall of the station and disappear. That's me yelling "go!" at the end because the people behind us were getting a little antsy...

 Sometime during day 2 we caved and bought the crazy wands that you wave at windows in Harry Potter world and make stuff happen.  It's fun, but also kind of hard to get the hand motion just right. 

 Mimi LOVES Nancy comics, so we were happy to eat at the comic cafe

Still HOT!

 Parker wanted a coin minted just for him for his souvenir.  They made it a fun experience.

 Playing in Jurassic World

  Scanning for fossils. 

After water rides and LOTS OF RAIN, we got some goodies in Dr. Suess land and called it day.

More to come....