harry potter

This Is Halloween, The Finale

We made it to the end!  Well, maybe.  I can’t know for sure if you’re going to read the whole post but I’ll give you the benefit of doubt.  If you read till the end, there will be prizes and confetti and strippers.  Okay, that’s a lie.  I’m sorry.

Welcome to the last installment of This is Halloween.  This series has covered each year we have spent Halloween Week in Orlando.  Here’s the recap of 2013.  This was the 4th year we went to Universal and Disney World for all the Halloween festivities.

The following video of Halloween Horror Nights 2013 only covers the scare zones, not the houses.  And of course, I don’t expect you to watch a 10 minute video but you can fast forward through it to get a good feel of the theme for 2013.  If you’re a Walking Dead fan, you’ll love it.  2013 scare zones were all Walking Dead, all the time.  I don’t watch the show but I did recognize most of the iconic backdrops.

I did not go through any houses that year, something I really regret now.  At the time, though, I felt like shit.  I would find out the next day at the emergency clinic that I had bronchitis.  Not fun.

If I had it to do over again, I would go through two houses that year – American Werewolf In London and Cabin In The Woods.

I remember as a teenager thinking that American Werewolf was the best horror movie of all time and the special effects for 1981 were mind blowing.  Cabin In The Woods is my favorite modern horror movie.  One of my favorite movies of all time from any genre is Army of Darkness.  AoD bridged the distance between horror and comedy in a way I had never seen before.  Cabin wasn’t that campy but it had just enough humor to make you almost forget it was a pretty gnarly horror movie and in that way, it reminded me a lot of AoD.

There aren’t a lot of pictures from that night, as E and Landon split off to do the houses.  Gracie and I did our best to hide from the zombies on the streets and were mostly successful.  I mainly spent my time feeling up Lard Lad while Gracie took pictures.  That’s the kind of Mom I am.

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For Mickey’s Not So Haunted Halloween Party, we decided to tackle all new Harry Potter characters, except for Harry Potter, of course.  Landon was The Chosen One himself, Gracie made an awesome Luna Lovegood and could even talk exactly like her, E was Mad-Eye Moody, and I was Bellatrix Lestrange.  Again, not many pictures were taken because I had bronchitis and the antibiotics hadn’t kicked in yet.  It was still a great night.  E was the most popular character this time around and was stopped a few times by people asking to get a  picture with him.

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Did I mention I had bronchitis?  Because I did.  I’m a trooper like that.

Thank you for sharing these memories with me!  I will upload a picture of us in costume sometime in the late afternoon/early evening hours right here on the blog on October 30th so check back often that day.  Get your finger limbered up for the refresh button.  If you want to save your finger from refresh button fatigue, follow me and you’ll get an email message every time I post a blog.  Or, if you prefer, I can post my blog link to your Facebook wall every hour on the hour.  Your choice.  Personally, I’d just hit the damn little blue “Follow” button somewhere on this page and be done with it.

We’ve had a few snags this week in the costume prep department but I think it will still all come together in spectacular fashion.  Have a great weekend, y’all, and Happy Halloween Week!  Be safe out there.

This Is Halloween, Part Two

Welcome back to my series covering my family’s annual Halloween trip to Orlando.  We are covering the second year we went, which was 2011.  Go back to Part 1 if you don’t love me and aren’t refreshing your web browser every 15 minutes, hoping I’ve posted something new.  Go on.  Look at Part 1.  I’ll wait.

First, a little housekeeping.  I’m a sucky blogger and forgot to include footage from the very first Halloween Horror Nights (HHN) we attended, which happened to be the 20th Anniversary.  Universal welcomed back HHN icons from the previous 19 years and it was amazing.  I think this sums up the event pretty well.

I should also note that Gracie was 10 years old when we attended our first HHN.  We truly didn’t know what we were getting into but she survived the first one and there was no turning back after that.  We tried to avoid the most populated Scare Actor areas.  She mostly hated the chainsaws and still hates the sound of them today.   The chainsaws are music to my ears and let me know that I’m at HHN.

Moving on, here’s a peek at our second HHN in 2011.  Check out the cool projections about the 4:30 mark.  It looked like the buildings were crumbling.  Gracie and I really enjoyed watching this as we were hiding from the Scare Actors.

I don’t do haunted houses and did not go through any at our first HHN but then Universal announced that 2011 would offer a house based on Edgar Allan Poe’s works.  I could not resist.  I’m a huge Edgar Allan Poe fan and had to see it, debilitating fear be damned.  I paid Landon $5 to go in with me and I hid behind him, my fingers through his belt loops and screamed like a little girl.  But I loved every minute of it.  I wish we could have just stopped and taken in the beautiful house scenery because it was like walking into Poe’s works.  It was amazing.

Here are some pictures from our second HHN, 2011.

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2011’s costumes for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party (MNSSHP) were all about the kids.  Okay, and a bit about us.  Both of them love Harry Potter because E and I read the books long before our kids could read.  We could not wait to introduce them to the HP series via book or movies as soon as we possibly could.  They loved it, and still do, as much as we do.

This is the first year E had to shave his beard off because Snape the character dictated it.  Just a tip, if you want full grown ladies to yell “Snape” at you all night long and ask if they can get a picture with you, go as Snape for Halloween in Orlando.  All we heard the entire night was “Snape!”  It was awesome.  Check out the last photo below where you can see the shadows on the sidewalk.  Perfect Snape silhouette.  I normally don’t kiss and tell but I totally made out with Snape on the Haunted Mansion ride.  Don’t tell Professor Lupin.

Landon was Harry Potter himself, Gracie was Hermione and I was Tonks.

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I’m going to try to finish this series within the next week because 2014 Halloween preparations here are stepping up and my time is increasingly valuable.  We leave for Orlando in two weeks! Two weeks, that’s crazy!  I am taking pictures of the process and can’t wait to post those pictures after the big reveal of this year’s costumes on October 30th.  It is going to be crazy epic.  I did a full dress rehearsal with Gracie last night and it turned out so much better than even I expected.  I absolutely cannot wait to unveil these to y’all.

In the meantime, I hope you’re having a great week!  If you’re dressing up for Halloween this year, tell me what you’re going to be in the comments.

WTF Wednesday: Go Home, World Wide Web. You Are Drunk.

I was googling a Harry Potter question for Landon tonight (Why couldn’t Hagrid legally perform magic?) and I got these nuggets.

Start doing breathalizer tests, Google.

Either Google needs to start doing breathalizers or I’m the smartest person alive.

Okay, maybe I don’t know everything.  Who the hell is Hassan and how shitty of a teacher did he have?

Voldemort couldn’t kill Harry because of love, dimwits.

The lush of a pirate drank all the damned rum.  That’s why.  And if it’s not Jack Sparrow playing Naked Uno, who cares?

This is the second time today the subject of blindness has come up in a blog post of mine.  Mr. Magoo is pissed but luckily he’ll never find me.

Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive?  Let that sink in, y’all.

I sincerely wish, from the depth of my being, that Helen Keller was still alive and could drive like a motherfucker to the house of every single dumbass who asked this question so she could beat them to death with her blind stick.

I have too much rage right now to answer the bike question but I do wonder what the hell all these people did with their kickstands.

Two posts in one day.  I’m beat.  Goodnight, y’all.

Blogger’s note:  I realize most of the questions on the Google list are actually jokes.  Please don’t email me or I will drive like a motherfucker to your house and beat you to death with the kickstand I took off my bike.