Today, I, Robyn Ayers, and my family headed to Orlando for a fun filled week at Universal Studios. We took an early morning flight and arrived in Orlando at around 11:00AM. Once we grabbed our bags we were off to the Hard Rock Hotel at Universal. The ride to the resort was a quick 20 minutes. We are staying club level which is called Rock Royalty here and is located on the 7th floor. Our room is spacious with 2 queen beds and a great water view. One of the benefits of club level is daily breakfast, snacks, heavy hors d’oeuvres and desserts in the evening. During the evening hours they also feature select alcoholic beverages. There are also soft drinks, water and lemonade available all day.

Once we dropped our bags and got our express passes we were off to Universal Studios Florida. A huge perk of staying at a resort on Universal property is the express pass feature. This is a line specifically for guests of the resort hotels and cuts your wait time down dramatically. Most rides offer the express option except for some of the rides in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley.  This was the main attraction for our family as our daughters are huge Harry Potter fans. In July, Universal opened a brand new addition, Diagon Alley, which focuses on the London aspect of the Harry Potter films. I must say the area itself did not disappoint. Universal has done a fantastic in making this area true to the books and movies. It is wonderful and we spent the day wandering around and taking in all of the details. We enjoyed some Butterbeer ice cream, a Harry Potter exclusive, at Florean Fortescue’s Ice-cream Parlour which features both soft serve and hand dipped ice cream. The wait for the new Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringott’s ride was over 75 minutes so we decided to wait until the morning to ride. We headed over to the King Cross Station to ride the new Hogwarts Express which is a magical train ride that transports you over to the Hogsmeade section of Harry Potter which is located in the Islands of Adventure park. Once we arrived in Hogsmeade we headed to Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey which had only a 30 minute wait. This is still one of our favorite rides especially the details in the castle.

We headed back to the room after grabbing some dinner and taking a quick walk through City Walk as it began to rain heavily. The walk to the Hard Rock Hotel is a very quick 5 minutes from the parks which makes it a great choice. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more from Universal Studios! Contact your favorite Dream Agent today day to plan your adventure to Universal Studios!