Vacation in Orlando: Theme Parks

Visiting theme parks in Orlando is one of the top tourist activities in the US. I didn't get to do it until my 6th year in the US. It was much more fun that I expected even though I was already 24 at that time.

The trip started with me finished my first astronomical conference in a nearby town. In fact, the only reason that I spend 5 days in Orlando is because I was already here for the conference.

The first day is not super exciting as I was waiting for my friend to join from New York City. I simply walked around the hotel and had Popeye for the first time in a place nearby. I also had a chance to plan all of our days in Orlando, which mostly consist of visiting different theme parks each day.

We started our theme park vacation with Aquatica. It was an enormous water park, except it was pretty empty when we were there (probably because it was January 😅). "Ihu’s Breakaway Fall" is one of the most scariest ride I did for the whole trip with four different theme parks. The ride is that the floor will suddenly disappear and you fell immediately down the slide very fast with angle of more than 80 degree. What I realized was that a fun part about visiting a theme park is seeing people walking around the park, but we didn't get to do that at this park. But, it was still a great experience and I really like a water park. At night, we also visit the Disney town near the Disney World. There were so many shops in the town.

Empty water park with an empty ride. It is good that you don't have to wait in line for any rides.

We had to wake up pretty early on the second day as we headed to Walt Disney World: The Magic Kingdom. There are 4 theme parks and 2 water parks in Disney World. We only picked to go to one (the Magic Kingdom) as we want to have more time to visit Universal Studio later. My experience for the Magic Kingdom was pretty similar to my experience with Disneyland in Paris with similar rides and firework shows. It was still fun and I still enjoyed all the rides that I did previously including Space Mountain and Small World.

Walt Disney Castle at night while waiting for the fireworks

The last two days were probably the main focus on this trip with the Universal Studio (both Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure). And the reason for it was a "new" Harry Potter theme park inside these two parks. I was curious for how many attendees increase since they open Harry Potter section of the park. It mush be pretty successful such that they already opened another one in Osaka and one more in LA. Both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade were great in a different way. And the train to transfer between the two was memorable. Apart from Harry Potter theme parks, there were many rides which based on many films and animation, including the Simpsons, Minion, Transformer, Shrek, Spider-man, Jurassic park, and many others. If  you are a big fan of these movies, you will have a great time at Universal.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Universal Studio

It was rather tiring toward the end of the trip as packing 4 different theme parks into 4 consecutive days was not really a great idea. It was a fun and exciting experience, but spacing out a little bit might be a little better. Overall, it was a fun experience even with a 24-year-old boy. I highly recommended any of these parks and you feel like you are kids again (in case you want to be).