Saturday - St. Augustine Harry Potter Festival

 

We headed to the Harry Potter St. Augustine Festival which is actually a sub-event to the Romanza Festival. Advertisements stated:

Are you a Hufflepuff, a Ravenclaw, a Slytherin or Gryffindor? Let the Sorting Hat tell you!

Check out the shops on Diagon Alley, sample butter beer and try out your wand technique!

PERCY WEASLEY is coming all the way from London CHRIS RANKIN, who played Percy Weasley in all the HARRY POTTER films will be signing Autographs and pictures!

Here's some photos of our day - they are backwards in time. First two photos are our snack at A1A Alehouse after the HP festival, Ford ordered a shrimp Po-boy sandwich, AA a Caesar salad and I ate their red beans and rice. All good! AA ordered a root beer and it was horrible! Just look at the face on the bottle and that's how we reacted. It was way too SWEET, plus many odd flavors. Not good!

We found out that A1Astopped making it's own beer. The owner is opening a separate stand-alone brewery somewhere else in St. Aug.

The actual HP festival was not very good. There was no instructions about which line to get into at the gate, which was for prepaid/ticketed people and those needing to buy tickets. HUGE lines, I think the staff was overwhelmed with the response. Once inside, it was disappointing as the train ride was miniature, a kiddie ride that you had to pay extra for. The lines for the butter beer, to meet "Percy", the sorting hat and the train ride were all over an hour long. Daughter Leaa said they waited 1.5 hours just for the sorting hat, she sent us this photo of Dylan!!

The other event was the quidditch match. It was pretty good, interesting, players holding a broom stick between their legs! Wish they used a real broom for the visual effect. Other than that, there were a few vendors selling food and trinkets. Leaa said the overall experience was not what was hoped for. The organizers need to improve their plan if they do this again next year. Even if it is better, I am sure half the people who went this year, will like us, say never again!

Percey Weasley - we did not wait in line to meet him, probably took two hours, as every person shook his hand, posed for photos, chatted before moving on. Very slow. You could stand near the tent and see him clearly.

Quidditch match - the players did pretty good. We never could figure out where the snitch was......

The train!!! We thought maybe they would have one of the trains that drag tourists around St. Augustine, never thought they would pass this off as the Hogwart train!!

We did not meet up with Leaa as we arrived at noon and she was later due to Dylan's soccer match. Good try St. Augustine Romanza Festival, better luck next year!!