Day Five - Potter!

So, we'd been given a special early-entry pass for the Islands of Adventure, giving us an hour in the park before it opened to the general public.
The parks normally open at around 9 or 10am, but for some reason, opening was at 8am today, so we were up VERY early, to be there by just after 7am!
We had heard that the Harry Potter part of the park (the bit that Charlie was most looking forward to) gets very busy, with massive queues, so we wanted to beat the rush if we could.
It was certainly a good move, because everything was unbelieveably quiet. Charlie grabbed a time to return to Ollivander's wand shop and while we were waiting, we managed to have a couple of rides on the Forbidden Journey ride (one of the best I've ever been on!) and also on the Flight of the Hippogriff rollercoaster, which Rosie was tall enough to ride on too! She loved every minute of it, and was yelling 'Again, again!' before it had even come to a stop.
Our time to go back to Ollivander's arrived, and we, along with about 25 other people, were ushered into a dark little shop, stacked to the ceiling with boxes of wands.
We'd read before that someone would be selected to try out some of the wands and be 'chosen' by the wand that was meant for them.
Well, I'll give you three guesses who was pulled from the crowd!!
Charlie was told to step forward and was given a number of wands to try out - it was so clever, as he waved the various wands, some flowers drooped and died, and a stack of books fell over (obviously not the 'right' wands for him!!)
Finally, in a scene almost identical to the one in the film, with music from the soundtrack playing, Charlie was handed another wand - wind ruffled his hair and lights flashed... his wand had 'found' him!
It was such good fun and he was over the moon to have been the one who was picked. I have a snippet of video of him finding the right wand, which I'll upload separately.
The whole Harry Potter area was brilliantly themed, with Hogsmeade village, the Hogwarts Express and a fantastic Hogwarts Castle, complete with talking portraits!
We had lunch in the Three Broomsticks, and Charlie had great fun spending some of his holiday money in Honeyduke's sweet shop!
Afterwards, we wandered around some of the other sections, including Jurassic Park, where Pete and Charlie got totally soaked on three big water rides.
Then we headed over to the Marvel section, and the kids were able to meet some superheroes!
Yet again, Rosie was totally unconcerned by the slightly scary costumes and wanted to cuddle all of them! (She's hugging Wolverine's thigh in one of the pics!!)
It was another scorcher today, so we headed back to the hotel for some tea.
We're off to Tampa tomorrow to meet Bryan Rothlein and his family, and we are SO looking forward to it.