~Long Overdue~ Seven Seas Food Festival

Wow, this blog has been severely neglected. I promise that I haven't been leaving Ted alone in the cupboard; I've actually been taking him out occasionally but I never got around to actually posting the resulting pictures. This last April we went to SeaWorld for my birthday because of their Seven Seas food festival and also because we hadn't been in so long.

I smell fish!

Ted made some flamingo friends as we tracked down where to purchase tickets for the food festival.

A coaster over the water? That'll be a double no.

 First up on the menu was a crab cake from the Caribbean market. It was absolutely stuffed with crab, I didn't think I'd be able to finish it! So Ted jumped in to "help".

As we were wandering around, I got a nice photo of Ted in front of the Sea Lion & Otter Theater.

We tried the shrimp and lobster mac n' cheese from the Florida market, but we were...less than enthused about what we got. It was so bland I could barely taste the cheese, let alone the seafood. So I went back and got some conch fritters, which were amazing!

 

Now this is more like it.

We stopped by the shark encounter, which seemed to be a popular stop on the food trail outlined by the festival. 

 

 The food portions at the festival were huge, so if we wanted any chance at trying some of the other dishes while still being able to walk at the end of the day, we needed a break. 

SHE'S GONNA EAT ME!!1!!1

We hadn't been able to get into the penguin exhibit since they renovated it. For some reason the people wouldn't let us in without riding the new ride, which they told us was a coaster and my mom can't do thrill rides. Thankfully this is not actually the case and we were able to get in this time through the non-riding entrance.

They were not kidding around when they said it was only 32℉ in there. Although after spending all morning in the hot sun, we were happy to take our time going through the exhibit.

How much farther until we reach the desserts?

We were thoroughly stuffed by the time we reached the end of the trail, and we decided to call it a day.

Bonus stuffies!

Twenty Years of Harry

I know I haven't posted in awhile, so I figured what better time to get active again than to celebrate Harry Potter's Birthday? Ted even got in on the action with his house scarf.

I have a lot of Universal photos to upload as well, so that should be up sometime after Metrocon.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Ted woke up to find his own little tree, just for him! And wouldn't ya know, it included some presents too.

Told you Santa was real. 

It was still a bit early, so we had plenty of time to open the presents. Besides the candy in his stocking, Ted got a couple of ornaments to add to the tree!

I'm going to need a bigger tree.

The big box that Ted was using as a bench turned out to be the biggest surprise of all of them, however.

Happy Holidays, Everybody!

Ted's Universal Adventure! continued

After passing through the Lost Continent, we finally made it to Hogsmeade! 

We made it! I can hear the Hogwarts Express from here!

First stop on our list: Honeydukes! We had to cross two islands to get here after all, and we were getting kind of hungry.

It's got Honey in its name-clearly, I was meant to come here.

Forbidden Journey was closed until the 18^th, but since we weren’t there to ride anything, that was fine by me. The crowd in front of the castle was pretty rough, but not nearly as bad as I’ve seen it.

Florida seems to be over run with magic castles. Or is it just Orlando?

There's a lot to see in Hogsmeade, even if you're not a big fan of rides. Diagon Alley is more geared towards shopping, naturally, but the crowd over there was too much for us that day. So Ted did get some nice photo ops around the castle before our train left. 

You can get it both cold and hot? Where do I get in line?

 Of course, what's a visit to Hogwarts without a ride on the Express? We got amazingly lucky in that there was less than a 10 minute wait to get on. 

Now where did I put my ticket...

Until next time!

Ted's Universal Adventure

Since we no longer have annual passes for Disney, it was high time I took Ted to a different theme park. We also wanted a Max plushie to go with our stuffed Grinch, and being a proud Potter-nut, I was due for a fix. So there was really only one place we could go. 

We haven't even reached the park yet? Let me just get some sushi for the road.

There were a couple of ladies who watched Ted having his photo taken here, and I got to tell them a bit about the blog. :)

Our main destination was not the Universal Studios proper, but rather Islands of Adventure. Not only is Seuss Landing located there, but Diagon Alley was sure to be crowded. (So was Hogsmeade, but hey, you can’t visit Harry Potter without stopping by Hogwarts.)

Suess Landing is one of the closest islands to Port of Entry-just turn right at Confisco’s after you pass under the bridge. On the left past the Starbuck’s is Marvel’s Super Hero Island, but I didn’t get a chance to go through there.

With Ted’s help, I was lucky enough to find a stuffed Max in the first shop I looked!

After Suess Landing, we washed up on the Lost Continent.

There was a nice couple out here who was taking a photo of the statue. I was worried that Ted had accidentally photo-bombed them, but they assured me he hadn't. Even if he had, we agreed that he'd be the cutest photo bomber out there.  

There are a lot more photos from when we reached Hogsmeade, so they will have a post all their own. Keep on the lookout for part 2!