Universal Studios

The next day, we went to Universal Studios. I was excited to compare the Hogwarts of LA to the Hogwarts of Florida. Right after we got through the gates, we headed straight for the Harry Potter themed areas. They have Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley where you can see all the wand, spell and trick shops, but something really cool was that if you purchased a special type of wand, you could walk around the cobblestone streets and if you performed a certain spell in front of the store windows, they would react to your "spell". Some windows had papers fly around, some made the items in the windows move, smoke shot from under a locked wooden door and one even set off a blast of flame from the chimney of the building! It was so fun for Trace and even for us to watch.
So many things were so authentic to the movies it was amazing! The Gringotts Bank was amazing and pretty similar to the one in Florida. The interesting thing to me was that this Universal had a train engine, but that's it. The one in Florida you can actually ride the train from one part of the Harry Potter land to the other. The engine was cool and you could get a picture with the conductor, but no rides available.

Hagrid's House

Our favorite roller coaster!

We took the "Universal Studios Tour" which is not as in-depth as the one we took at Warner Brothers, it's more like a lengthy ride on a trolley-type golf cart through some old sets used on old movies and TV shows. They showed up a real airplane they brought in for a crash in a movie, the house used in "Psyco" and the man-made lake with a green screen behind it used in the movie "Life of Pi". Of course, we also saw the obligatory shark jump up to scare you like in the movie "Jaws". Since Trace has never seen Jaws, he wasn't too freaked out. The funny part I thought was when the tour guide asked; "Anyone know what kind of shark that was?", expecting the answer to be "Great White", my son didn't hesitate to answer the guide with; "Plastic". Haha!

We checked out the promotion for the new Grinch cartoon movie coming out and saw the Simpson's themed snack shack. Then, we saw a couple shows about special effects, during one of which they actually set someone on fire! Then, we went back to hang out in the Harry Potter area and saw Hogwarts at night, checked out the sweet shop with the ridiculously large lollipops and ended the evening at the Bubba Gump Shrimp theme restaurant. As we were leaving from dinner, they had some of those fountains that shoot out water on the plaza in rhythms and patters and some older teenagers were running through the sprinklers trying to avoid getting sprayed on. Trace asked if he could and Kevin said an immediate "no" and then I pointed out that we were on vacation and if he gets wet, he'll dry. Kevin acquiesced and Trace ran through the plaza several times escaping the sprays of water. It got to the point that he was so good at it, spectators started cheering every time he made it without getting soaked. Then.....he got a little over confident and mis-timed a run and wham! He got nailed by a large spray. We all laughed and headed to the hotel to get him dried off and changed. Such a fun day!