Diagon Alley

I couldn't decide between this shot and one of the Hogwarts Express that travels from Diagon Alley to Hogsmeade so I let David decide. I'll Flickr the train one.

This new Harry Potter part of the park opened last week; Hogsmeade and Hogwarts are already in the other park (Islands of Adventure) , but it seems it was having an effect on attendance at the main park so they ditched the Jaws and Amity Island area and built Diagon Alley instead, fronted by a London Street. A train accessed through a very good reproduction of Kings Cross connects the two (I was doubting my sanity when we were in the queue for the train and they were making announcements about the East Coast mainline, and also when we were posing for photos outside Kings Cross). It's all incredibly well done, even down to the fact you actually do disappear into the platform - no idea how - and on the train you see the English countryside flying past you, Harry and co walk up the corridor outside your compartment and there even Dementors on the loose.

People seem to be mad enough to buy HP capes at $300 and walk around wearing them in the 90 degree heat. We just succumbed to a wand that actually does make magic happen. We are mug punters.

The new Gringotts ride, which you can see at the end, had a three hour wait when John and David got there at 7.15am. One of the staff told me it was up to 9 hours last weekend. All this means the rest of the park is relatively quiet and so we have been on the simply brilliant Simpsons ride numerous times and hung out in Springfield a lot.

Just sitting out a thunderstorm at the hotel, and recharging our batteries for another 3 days or so of this.

Breakfast - I think I may be getting rickets so I had a banana.