Planning A Road Trip To See A Wizard

I’m planning a trip for my family to go to Florida once school gets out in May.

We want to go to see all of the Harry Potter sites that Universal Studios in Orlando has to offer.

The kids LOVE the Harry Potter films (yes, we own all of the movies) and three out of four of us in this house have read all seven Harry Potter books.  The youngest in residence just began book one, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, last week.  Our home library also holds the newest book from J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, as well as some extras like Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and The Tales of Beedle the Bard.  We are a bit obsessed.

The Universal theme park in Orlando has replica buildings that, from what I have heard from others that have already been, seem to have jumped right out of the books and into the real world of us muggles.

And if you don’t know what a muggle is, it’s a non-wizard human.  Wizards (male and female) and called…wizards.  It’s all in the book series.

We hope to see a Hippogriff and dragons.  We want to buy wands and butterbeers.  We want to ooh and aah and make glorious fandom fools of ourselves.

So, we are taking the kids to Orlando in our minivan.

Because flying these days costs both of Man-Farmer and I’s arms and legs.

I’m feeling stressed, though.

I’m the vacation planner in our house.

Anytime we have gone to Disney World (twice now) I have done all of the planning and made all of the reservations and I have reserved tables for dinner and I have planned out schedules for which rides we should ride and when to ride them…

exhausting.

But, once we are there we have a great time!

I’m having some issues with planning this trip to Florida.

Problem Numero Uno is this… the dates to go.

We need to go when school gets out as we have Zoe’s dance recital the second weekend in June and I don’t want to go to a Florida theme park during the heat and crowds of summer.

But, snow days.  Snow days at school can extend the school year at the end of May.

They could get out on the 18th of May or they could get out on the 24th of May.  That’s a big difference!

And that leaves us close to traveling during Memorial Day Weekend…are you kidding me?!

I DO NOT want to go to Universal on Memorial Day Weekend…not Saturday, not Sunday, not Monday.

I will go there on Tuesday AFTER Memorial Day.

I’m still looking at hotel prices for different days.  I’m thinking we will end up driving there on Saturday or Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and we will spend a few days after the holiday weekend perusing our way through the world of Harry Potter at a leisurely pace.  I don’t like rushing on vacation.  I like to meander.  So, we have talked as a family and yes, there are other things to see at Universal, but we are going to focus 100% FIRST on the HP stuff.  If we have energy and/or the desire to look at the other areas at the theme park (areas like The Simpsons, Jurassic Park) we will do that.  We are not big superhero people, so that aspect of the park doesn’t interest us.  The World of Harry Potter does interest us.

Since we are driving, we need to get some work done on our minivan.  It’s an older model with LOTS of miles on it.  It has needed a new #2 O2 sensor-I have no idea what that is, but that’s what Man-Farmer told me a while back.

So, on top of finding a hotel and figuring out the dates to stay at a hotel, we need to find a good garage in our town to work on our car and give it a tune-up.

I hand all car issues over to Man-Farmer to deal with.  And he can be car illiterate.  He’s very good at researching subjects and since I’m more car dumb than he is, I put all of my trust in him.

Man-Farmer can get a discounted rate on tickets to Universal through his job.  That is a big help because do you know that tickets for 4 people for two days costs more than $1000?  And we have to get something called Park-To-Park tickets at Universal because that’s the only way that you can ride the Hogwarts Train.  The train that Harry and his classmates took every year to get to school.  And we need to walk through the wall that’s between platforms 9 and 10 at the station…the train to wizard school is located at platform 9 3/4.

Fulfilling your children’s’ dreams isn’t cheap.  Heck, it’s my dream, too.

I have been using google maps to track which route we will drive.  I’m not going to drive straight through in one day.  That’s an almost 16 hour drive and I don’t do that.  We will stop halfway. I’m thinking of Chattanooga or just north of Atlanta.

It’s going to be one hell of a drive because of one thing in particular.

Gigi.

She has trouble driving to our state capital of Springfield.

Which is only 45 minutes from our house.

Two hours to St. Louis gets on her nerves.

And she has already stated that she doesn’t know how she will cope in the car.

Yet, she has loudly declared that she is NOT flying to Florida.  A trip that lead the girls and I into our own version of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles happened the last time we flew to Houston and she ain’t havin’ that again.

With our talks about driving to Florida, she has verbalized issues she may have with needing to pee.

Umm, we will stop.

What if I get bored?

Umm, bring things to do.

What if I get hungry?

Umm, do what you do when we drive 2 hours to St. Louis and bring the entire contents of our pantry.

Another thing that may be a hindrance is this.

My map.

I LOVE a paper map.

I love seeing the entire road spread out in front of me.

I like using my finger to trace my route.

But, this map is what I have been looking at spread open on my kitchen table and it’s more than a decade old.

Am I looking at roads that don’t even exist anymore?

Are there new roads that aren’t on my map and I’ll be heading the wrong way the whole time?

The cover has been torn off and who knows if I’m missing parts of a state.

I think there’s a rip through Vermont.

Good thing I’m heading south instead of north.

There may very well be another NEWER road map of the U.S. in the minivan.

Under the passenger seat.

OR is this that map?!

I guess I should look.

It may be more up to date.

It may get us to Florida, but it won’t get us there quicker.

Sorry, Gigi.