Cocoa Beach, Florida

We decided to get another beach day in after wearing ourselves out at Universal Studios.  We decided on Cocoa Beach since it was on the east coast, so Atlantic water and it was a tourist spot.  J found some seafood restaurants that he wanted to try that sounded like they were plucked straight out of New England.  It takes about 80 mins to get to Cocoa Beach from where we are staying and by the time we got out there we decided to have lunch.  Our first stop was The Cape Codder.  They had lobster rolls and steamers on the menu, that made the men in the family very happy.  We decided to order steamers for the table.  I have never liked these but I gave them another try.  Nothing has changed, I still don't like them.

Soleil however, LOVED them!!  Mads, Campbell and I tried one each, Finn didn't even want to try them LOL.  So Owen, J and Soleil ate them and they all seemed very happy to do so.

The steamers were the appetizer, for lunch Campbell ordered his first ever lobster roll.  He really enjoyed it.  It looked delicous.

O ordered clam strips

Mads ordered a clam strip roll

I ordered scallops, broiled but I forgot to take a picture.  Finn ordered a hot dog and Soleil shared with the rest of us since she filled up on steamers anyway :)  Lunch was really good and I would recommend this restaurant to any seafood lover visiting cocoa beach.

Next we headed to the beach.  The atmosphere was different here, the beach was crowded and the water choppy but the kids all really enjoyed it.  Owen was having fun trying to catch some waves.  It was a good time for all.

When we were done at the beach we decided to try the second seafood restaurant that J had found. I bought a lobster dinner to share with Campbell and we have discovered that he LOVES lobster and would have finished off a whole dinner on his own!



Rainy weather

Rainy weather had us stuck indoors for several days.  The vacation home is a bit boring but luckily J was able to get work done during those days.  On a day that had sun with just a threat of afternoon rain we decided to go out and explore a little bit.  While we were out we saw maybe 5000 mini golf places, we decided to join in on the native's and visitors seemingly favourite past time and play a round.  It ended up being quite fun and we bought a future visit at a discount which we are yet to use so we have a rainy-ish day back up should we be stuck at home. 

Soleil took it seriously for a little while :)

and she actually enjoyed it

Then she realised it was much easier if you just put the ball in the hole with your hand

Yep, that was much easier ;)

Some of us took it more seriously

The intensity!

Some of us used our golf clubs as guns

Some were blackmailed into having a photo taken ;)

and uh, some of us have anger management issues!! ;)

We had fun playing mini golf, we were all starving when we were done so we headed to a fancy schmancy McDonalds!  Oxymoron you say?  Tut tut, don't judge, it was fabulous dahling!

We fit in a visit to Universal Studios the next day, but I only took one photo :/ 

I'm not sure how that happened, it was a bit of a rainy day so I didn't feel like getting the camera out of the backpack much.  We did a lot of things at the park this day, including MIB which Finn really loved, The Simpsons, E.T., Disaster, Revenge of the Mummy (family favourite), Shrek 4D and Twister.  We spent the morning at Islands of Adventure and then ventured over to Universal Studios for lunch, we bought the food package on this day and struggled to find time to get our money's worth ;)  We stayed until close though and had a really fun day, despite the rain.

The next day we finally got around to trying all of our Harry Potter Honeyduke's haul.  My favourite's were the exploding bon bons (I can't wait to go back to HPW and buy more) and the lemon drops.  The chocolate frog was cool because it looked authentic and also came with a wizard card.  The kids seemed to enjoy the every flavour beans I didn't take my chances on those.

Campbell put on his new Hufflepuff robe to try his candy, keeping it authentic people!!

What a great time we are having!!!

First visit to the beach

The day after our first visit to Universal Orlando, we decided to take a trip to the beach.  We went to Naples Beach which was over two hours away, but Naples also has the closest Trader Joe's to where we are staying and we needed some groceries :)  The kids had a really good time but the future visit's to the beach don't need to be such a drive thankfully, it was a bit far to travel for just a few hours.

Islands of Adventure and Harry Potter World

June 4th was our first day at Universal Studios, we decided to spend the day at Islands of Adventure because that is where Harry Potter World is located.  As soon as we parked, walked through downtown Universal and entered the park we headed straight for Harry Potter World (with everyone else it seems!).  I can't quite explain how fun it was to see the Hogsmeade sign approaching.  We all became really excited though, regardless of the crazy amounts of people. 



We wandered through first and came across the Dragon Challenge, the wait was 10 mins so we decided to go ahead.  On the walk up to the ride there were some photo ops.



 Universal has a wonderful child swap policy in place for kids that are too small to ride.  One parent waits with the too small child/ren while the other parent rides with all the kids who are big enough, then when the first parent is done, all the kids get to ride with the second parent right away.  You usually get to wait in air conditioning too, which is a bonus in the Florida heat.  Jeremy waited with Campbell, Soleil and Finn first while the two older kids and I rode and then he went on with them.  Here is C waiting in the child swap room.

We also went on the The flight of the Hippogriff and then wandered about for a little before stopping for an early lunch (to beat the crowds) at The Three Broomsticks.

Here we had our first try of butterbeer and pumpkin juice and ordered a 'Great Feast Platter' for the table, which consisted of ribs, chicken, veggies (including corn on the cob) and a salad.

I would recommend eating here to anyone visiting Harry Potter World, the food was good and the atmosphere was really fun.  Buy the souvenir Harry Potter butterbeer cups, they are refillable with soda in both parks and are a fun keepsake.

After finishing lunch we headed to HoneyDukes and Zonko's, purchased a few things including lemon drops, exploding bon bons and a chocolate frog.

After our shopping we headed over to Ollivander's for an experience where the wand picks a wizard.  The wait was about 45 minutes but all of the kids wanted to do this.  We were ushered into a room with Ollivander and floor to ceiling wands.  He introduced himself and then pointed to Campbell and asked him his name, then proceeded to ask Campbell to come up to his desk to figure out which wand was right for him.  This was my favourite experience of the whole trip to Harry Potter World.  He gave him some wands that weren't right for him, which caused some weird results when he cast spells with them but when he finally game him the wand that was right for him the sound effects let us know :)  Here is Campbell with the wand that selected him, we ended up purchasing this wand for him while the other kids chose wands of Harry Potter wizards.  Mads chose Voldemort's wand, Owen chose Neville Longbottom's and Finn chose Harry Potter's.

We enjoyed the butterbeer so much we decided to go and get some more and purchase some of the souvenir cups for the kids. 





Since we hadn't done much with Soleil and the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride had a ridiculously long wait we decided to head to Seuss Landing, for everything Dr Seuss and some rides that Soleil and Finn would enjoy.

After Seuss Landing we headed to the other side of the park for some rollercoaster fun on The Hulk!  Fabulous roller coaster, intense and I could only go on once because it made me a bit dizzy, I am getting too old for some of these rides :/ Our busy day wore Soleil out and she crashed on her big sister while we waited in line for Spiderman.  Which by the way was one of our favourite rides at Universal, it's very cool!





Toward the end of the day we headed back to Harry Potter to ride the only ride we missed, the line was really short thankfully.  I really enjoyed walking through the castle to get to the ride more than the ride itself, there was so much to look at including Dumbledore's office, it was amazing.

The park was getting ready to close so we started to head back to the entrance.  The Hogwart's Express had no lines of people waiting to take pictures so we took advantage of this opportunity and snapped one of the kids.

Islands of Adventure was a really fun park to visit, we had two more days at the Universal Parks to use so we made sure to visit Harry Potter World on both of those days and we are looking forward to visiting again.