A Magical First Day at LeakyCon 2014!

Well hello everybody! Sorry that it's been a really long time since my last post. It has certainly been a whirlwind for the past month. At the beginning of the month I went to LeakyCon in Orlando (more on that later), then I spent a week in Boston with the family, and finally I moved to Washington, D.C. to start college!

Link to Photo

First, however, we will be discussing the amazing-ness that was LeakyCon. It was five days of pure nerdy greatness. I met new friends and hung out with old ones, I had the chance to meet some of my favorite YouTubers and fangirled with 5,000 fellow geeks.

Day one was check-in day and Open at the Close. On July 12th at 1:00 pm, I was lucky enough to get one of the 1,500 tickets to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter until 2:00 am. After waiting in line for four hours and eating a Nutelle crêpe, I boarded the bus and headed to the WWoHP for my adventure!

My friends and I decided to rush through the park to Diagon Alley to ride Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.

You can see Gringotts in the way back

It was breathtaking to walk into a world that I had read about and seen in movies. The attention to detail was astounding and there was music playing . . . It was honestly one of the best days of my life.

Link to Photo

Link to Photo

The four of us waited in line for about five hours before finally going on the ride. The outside portion of the ride was boring, but the lobby was amazing. There were goblins moving and acknowledging people in the line and Griphook was at the back of the lobby talking with guests as they moved on by.

The ride itself was definitely worth the wait, even though there were some audio problems during one of the scenes. But it was okay because I told one of the employees and she put us back on the ride! So even though we waited for five hours, we got to go on the ride TWICE!

Link to Photo

Next on the list was taking the Hogwarts Express from London to Hogsmeade. The inside of Kings Cross was really cool and had the advertisement from Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince that Dumbledore and Harry look at in the beginning of the film. My friends and I kind of freaked out when we turned the corner and saw this!

Before getting into the room with the Hogwarts Express, you have to run through the wall like Harry and his friends do in books. And Universal has come up with a way to do it that is amazing!

Being in one of the carriages looking out of the "window" at the passing landscape and watching Harry, Ron and Hermione (which totally was not Emma Watson) in the hallway was one of the most surreal moments of my life. This video is POV video of the ride going both directions.

At this point in the night, it was too dark for me to take any good photos outside. But over the next few hours we rode Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (the Hogwarts ride) twice, ate our free dinner (included with our ticket), went shopping for HP merchandise and sang Happy Birthday to JK Rowling and Harry Potter at midnight on July 31st. We also met Joanna Sotomura from Emma Approved and Mary Kate Wiles from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Here are the rest of the photos that I took that night and early morning. 

This is a very dark photo of the Knockturn Alley sign.

Now this is what its supposed to look like. Link to Photo.

Open at the Close ended at 2:00 am, when we herded back onto the buses with our aching feet and heavy shopping bags. Due to some unforeseen difficulties (the bus did not drop me off near parking) I ended not getting back to out hotel in Disney until 3:10 am.

The next day at LeakyCon was pretty busy with a lot of meet ups and wandering around the Marketplace, but you will hear about that in the near future.

Again sorry about the long hiatus between blog posts, hopefully I will be able to write about the next two days of LeakyCon this weekend. But I hope that you enjoyed!

Love,
Kara