I was super surprised the other day when I discovered that one of my all-time favorite movies from my childhood was having a special engagement screening at a nearby movie theater. The NeverEnding Story was playing hey final show courtesy of Phantom Events. Naturally I dropped any plans I had for the evening to go ahead and watch the movie. Sorry, I went by myself but when I got to the theater I was definitely not alone as many other fans of the movie were also there to enjoy the big screen.  What I did not expect was that before the movie played, there was a short documentary type pre-show that chronicled the making of the movie and how the author of the book tried to prevent the movie’s release because he did not believe it was in line with his vision. I am glad that the movie was released and I am glad that I had a chance to watch it once again in a movie theater!

This is the day! The day that Lisa finally gets to visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  And Edwin gets to ride rollercoasters!

Hogwarts Castle, daytime

Hogsmeade Village

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey — before you reach the 4D ride, you wind your way through the castle and the details are just incredible

Sorting Hat

Hulk roller coaster — I got to ride it twice!

Suess Landing

Jurassic World

Lisa gets her grub on near Wimpy’s Burgers inside Toon Lagoon

Hogwarts at night

We spent 14 hours at Islands of Adventure.

Longest wait:  75 minutes at Skull Island: Reign of Kong.  This is the park’s newest attraction, just opened this year.  It is a 4D ride.  We waited in the single rider line and it was the slowest line ever!  But at least it was not in the hot sun and the wait is typical for this time of year.

Shortest wait:  0 minutes — at the end of the evening, we rode the white water rafting ride Popeye & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges.  At one point, we stayed on the same raft for three consecutive rides because no other park guests were interested in getting drenching wet at that time in the night.  Yep, we were totally wet, but it was worth it!

Butterbeer:  didn’t have a chance to try it out yet, but we plan to return on Saturday because we have a three-day ticket.

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey:  this ride is amazing, and we rode it twice, but man we were queasy afterwards due to the all the dizzying motion.  Our stomachs needed a few hours to recover before we felt that we could eat again!

Our hotel is a little over an maile from the CityWalk passenger drop off / pick up area, and normally we would just walk that distance, but in the morning we wanted to have a little more time at breakfast so we utilized Lyft to get us to the park.  Later in the evening, being soaked in our wet clothes, we didn’t really feel like making the long walk back to our hotel sloshing around in our shoes.  We utilized some Lyft credits that Lisa had so the total cost came to about one dollar each way.

Daily Expenses Ledger