Castle on the Rock

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It's a long way from Edinburgh and the Elephant House but looking at this and having seen the view J.K. Rowling would've had over to the Castle as she started off on her Harry Potter books, it's not hard to see where some of the inspiration for Hogwarts came from.

One of the main reasons for heading out to Florida this year was this place; Samantha's a huge Harry Potter fan and she was in hogwart heaven down here at Universal's Islands of Adventure today. I've said it before, but no-one seems able to pull off these over-the-top experiences quite like the Americans and we were all sucked in to the experience and didn't particularly mind queueing the two hours for the Forbidden Journey ride that takes place up there. After that I even got hoodwinked onto one of the bigger coaster's - some twisty-turny-upside-down, dragon-themed, double-coaster affair. I even kept my eyes open for some of it.

The Americans have really taken this to heart it would seem, even queuing for ages to enter the shop selling wands and to send a postcard by owl. Some of them are pretty convinced the wands are real the way they gushed over the whole thing ("Can I use it now?") and spotted more than one adult wandering around wearing their very own wizard's cape (it was 90 degrees plus).

I'm not sure if the crows flying around the towers here have been brought in especially but they certainly add convincingly to the effect that you're not in amongst 10,0000 odd people sweating buckets in t-shirts and shorts.

Needed some Butterbeer after all that (the queues as big for that as some of the rides) and then headed off for some of the other themed areas in the park with my phobia of roller-coasters slowly fading, before finding ourselves somehow back in Harry Potter land.

Fish and chips and more Butterbeer in the Three Broomsticks before dragging Samantha out and off to other sections of the park, and more big coasters in the dark (Proof!).

I'm not sure how they manage it, but even with thousands of people and vehicles all heading out of the parks at the same time, it was such a smooth and uninterrupted exit that I couldn't work out where everyone went. We were out the multi-storey car park and onto the 8 lanes of the I-4 before I'd even realised where we were.

Magic.