Harry Potter Day at Disneyland Was a Blast!

Sunday was a seriously awesome day at the unofficial official Harry Potter Day at Disneyland!

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This was the third time that I have done this, viagra 100mg because even though I’m a ginormous Harry Potter fan, I was unaware of this day existing until a few years ago. And my first year, I thought it was just a cool dress-up day. Last year, I finally discovered that its an awesome game!

See, here’s the thing about this day: all these Harry Potter fans dress up and descend upon the park, and they can participate in an epic scavenger hunt. There’s always a mystery afoot in the park, and its up to you to discover who is responsible for whatever is going on. It changes every year.

You create a team, of various Harry Potter friends and register your team under a name. Any name works. Last year I was with the Order of Awesome. This year I was with Team Hermione.

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The teams are divided into four houses. Now they aren’t the normal houses that we are accustomed. The brains and creators behind this awesome day created their own school, called Yesnid’s (which is Disney backwards), and they created their four houses: Dashwood, Willowdell, Rickett and Grizcom. Your team is sorted into a house, and the houses battle it out in an epic scavenger hunt.

Several people cosplay as various Harry Potter characters and wander the park. When you find them, you’ll be asked TWO trivia questions. The semi-hard question is to earn a clue that will help you in the quest to solve the mystery. The harder question is to earn a coin.

The clues lead to the solving of the mystery. The house that collectively and correctly identifies the culprit wins the House Cup for the year. Then there is a team for each house that wins the prefect award for accumulating the most coins!

Confusing? It shouldn’t be! Its seriously a ton of fun. You spend the entire day, running around, and trying to find these Harry Potter characters, and its a ton of fun. I’m still sore as heck from it but its a lot of fun. You have to find all the characters in order to get all the clues and the coins. There’s also Snatchers, or Truancy officers, that run around and if they catch you, they can take points away from you.

SO I had an amazing time. I had a fairly good size team, and due to life and responsibilities, my team shrunk to me and my friends, Ana and Lori.

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But you know what? We had an amazing time. We raced around the park, finding all the characters and answering 21 out of the 24 trivia questions right. We were three grown women, running through Disneyland when we spotted the truancy officers. Its a ton of fun.

I’m not going to lie either, I love doing it and showing that my Harry Potter trivia knowledge is pretty awesome. I’m pretty good at that trivia. If you ever have a Harry Potter trivia night or something, let me know. I SO have your back on that!

My team and I had an amazing time, and at the end of the night, we all gathered near Its a Small World, and they announced who committed the crime (It was Seamus Finnegan who was masquerading as Viktor Krum using Polyjuice Potion!), and they announced the house that won the House Cup for 2013. Rickett didn’t win, but that’s okay.

BUT! They always pick a team that wins for each house, by getting the most coins, and my team, Team Hermione, won! They announced us and all three of were like, “Wait, what?” None of us had expected to win AT all. We were pretty excited, and got our certificates and even took a picture with Hermione (and that sneaky Umbridge) to celebrate!

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I had an amazing time like always. I’m sore all over and my voice was pretty much gone by the end of the night and I’m pretty sure that I twisted my foot fairly badly because that was two days ago and it still hurts so badly. But a super fun time.

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If you live in the Southern California area, or will be in the area next year in November, you should DEFINITELY join in. Keep up with event by following their official Facebook page, and hopefully I’ll see you all next year!

Happy Harry Potter!

Meet Author Frank Beddor and Discuss His Book, The Looking Glass Wars!

Hello all!

I’ve a VERY exciting event to share with those of you who may be in the Los Angeles/Southern California area.

As some of you may know, more about I am part of the 21+ Harry Potter group, abortion the Los Angeles Dumbledore’s Army. I’ve been a member for nearly two years now and I absolutely love it. Amongst our many events like bowling nights, roller skating nights, Wizard Chef events, Harry Potter Mystery Nights, and so much more, we have a monthly book club, where we take turns choosing a book and reading it, of course, and discussing it.

For the month of September, we have chosen the book, The Looking Glass Wars, the first of a trilogy by Frank Beddor, a YA reimagining of the well known classic tale, Alice in Wonderland.

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Here is the official synopsis taken from GoodReads:

When Alyss Heart, heir to the Wonderland throne, must flee through the Pool of Tears to escape the murderous aunt Redd, she finds herself lost and alone in Victorian London. Befriended by an aspiring author named Lewis Carrol, Alyss tells the violent, heartbreaking story of her young life. Alyss trusts this author to tell the truth so that someone, somewhere will find her and bring her home. But he gets the story all wrong. He even spells her name incorrectly!
Fortunately, Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan knows all too well the awful truth of Alyss’ story and he is searching every corner of our world to find the lost princess and return her to Wonderland so she may eventually battle Redd for her rightful place as the Queen of Hearts.
The Looking Glass Wars unabashedly challenges our Wonderland assumptions surrounding mad tea parties, grinning Cheshire cats, and a curious little blond girl to reveal an epic battle in the endless war for Imagination.

This book is absolutely wonderful, and I sped through the sequel as well. I haven’t managed to grab hold of the third and final book yet, but maybe I will be able to soon!

Now, on September 22nd, the LADA will be meeting for Book Club and we are extending our invite to you as well! This is open to anyone who has read, or will read, this book by that date and would like to come and hang out in a cool bookstore and discuss this book.

Even better, the author himself, Frank Beddor, will be in attendance that evening to discuss his book with the book club!

Which is SO insanely cool, I can barely handle it. I am SO glad I will be able to make this particular book club event!

So I am hoping that my Los Angeles followers can hopefully make it to this event! This is a super cool thing to happen. I always have such a blast going to book club, and discussing the books, but to have the author in attendance as well is just…its so AWESOME.

So now I bet you’re all wriggling in excitement, and want the details now, right?

Well here they are:

What:

Book Club Discussion on The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, with special guest appearance by Frank himself

Where: 

Alias Books
1650 Sawtelle Blvd
Los Angeles, CA

When: 

September 22nd, at 4 pm

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I hope to see you all there, and it would be wonderful (if you are 21 and over, of course), if you all popped by the official Los Angeles Dumbledore’s Army page and joined up! We are the second largest Harry Potter fan group in the world, and we have such a blast together. We were also featured on CBS as one of the top Book Clubs in Los Angeles, which you can check out here!

Next month, in October, we will be meeting for lunch and discussing The House of Hades, which I know a lot of you are big fans of Rick Riordan so definitely check out group!

If you have ANY questions at all, feel free to leave comments below, contact me through email or through Twitter, or through Facebook, and I’ll be happy to answer them!

Happy Reading everyone and I hope to see you there!