My Official Review of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Welcome to my official review of the new Harry Potter area of the Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando in Florida. To review this, I'll split it into separate categories and talk about it.

Be warned... I will be spoiling everything I can. Haha.

The Layout

There are two entrances to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I suggest going the longer way through the Jurassic Park side. Either way, you need to wait in line. Yes... you read correctly. There is a line to get into the Harry Potter area. And it's a pretty long wait. Since the Jurassic Park way is a less direct way of getting to Harry Potter, it's a shorter wait AND you enter the area right next to the signature attraction, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. So once you get out of the line INTO the land, you can just swerve directly into the line for that ride.

The other entrance allows you to walk through Hogsmeade before going up to the castle.

The two three roller coasters are off to the side and Hagrid's Hut is someone near them. We never saw it. We didn't even know it was there. I found that dumb. That area needed it's own map. We just heard people talking about it, but didn't have time to go visit. Apparently, there's an animatronic Buckbeak back there that is badass! But... I wouldn't know.

The Castle

Looks incredible. It's definitely a smaller scale, but it still looks pretty good. They make it seem like the castle is higher up to make it look like it could potentially be huge.

Close up to the castle, the walls of the towers look fake so I was a little disappointed with that.

Inside the castle is pretty awesome. A lot of iconic statues, rooms, and... people are in there. You see the entrance to Dumbledore's Office, the One-Eyed Witch statue, the Mirror of Erised, the Pensieve, the Grand Staircase, the Green Houses, the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Dumbledore's Office, and the portrait of the Fat Lady. While the line weaves through Dumbledore's office and the Defense Against the Dark Arts you see Dumbledore and the trio explaining what you need to do on this 'Journey.'

If you didn't already know... the main attraction, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, is housed inside the castle. The picture on the right is one of the biggest disappointments of the castle. You can see a HUGE white building to the side behind the castle. Yes, this building houses the actual ride, but you'd think they'd do a way better job of hiding it. Many of the rides in the Magic Kingdom (The Haunted Mansion, it's a small world, and Pirates of the Caribbean for example) are housed in large buildings behind what you think is the building that is the ride. But Disney hides that stuff really well! That was a huge disappointment for me.

Hogsmeade

The village around the castle is pretty realistic. There are shops all around... well it seems like there are a ton of shops. In fact, there are only two shops around Hogsmeade. Zonko's Joke Shop and Honeyduke's are combined into one, which, I suppose, makes sense. And the second gift shop is Ollivander's Wand Shop.

Ollivander's Wand Shop is also half an attraction. If you're willing to wait AN HOUR AND A HALF, you can observe a child choosing his wand. It's really nothing special. The kid waves the wands around and little things happen. Once he finally picks the correct one, a light shines above his head. Nothing special.

Be prepared to wait in line for any shops. I'm not kidding. If people were to freely walk in, the stores would be too full. There was even a line for butterbeer and the outdoor wand station. When looking for a wand, I'd suggest the wand station wagon thing that's just outside of the Forbidden Journey. In Ollivander's, the wands are located in a small wall that is right in the middle of a walkway to the other half of the shop. It's in the most inconvenient place. Whoever designed the shop was an idiot.

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey: The Ride

It's not bad. But I should really start with the line and go from there.

The line is long. We went right away in the morning and the wait was 75 minutes. When we went again in the afternoon, it was 60 minutes. We suggest everyone to go in the afternoon like Universal suggests. Everyone goes right away, so naturally it's busy.

So there are two lines to the ride outside the castle. One is for riders without bags and when I say bags I mean bags, cameras, backpacks, fanny-packs, drinks, hats, etc. There is no place to put anything on the ride. If you didn't have to walk through a line for an hour, I'd say put your flip flops in there too because the ride is suspended and you can lose your flip flops. With that said, the second line (and majority of the wait) is for the locker rooms. There is a locker area in the castle were you can lock up your things while you ride. It is free for an hour and a half and your key is your finger. You can your finger to unlock your locker. It's pretty cool, but horrible inconvenient and it smells and it's crowded. So it's like a real locker room. Haha.

If you're a Disney World person and want to know what it's like. Imagine Haunted Mansion, Dinosaur, and Soarin' all mixed into one. I'm saying this now because the Haunted Mansion aspect kicks in with the line.

The boarding process is much like Haunted Mansions. You walk onto a moving platform and board your doom buggy Enchanted Bench. Because of this, the line is pretty continuous and you don't stay in the same spot for more than a couple minutes. This is good and bad. Good because you want to get on the damn ride already. And bad because there's so much to see in the castle that you can't stop long enough to see it all. When you see Dumbledore and Harry, Ron, and Hermione you want to stay and listen to them because they're trying to explain what the Journey is, but the line keeps moving so you can't stop and listen to them.

The ride is pretty fun and pretty scary. You launch up and fly out of the astronomy tower into a circular screen just like Soarin' and fly around with Harry and Ron where you run into the Hungarian Horntail. It chases you into a set area (meaning not the circular screen anymore) so like Dinosaur and you're looking for the dragon. Well guess what! It pops out right in your face like Dinosaur. It's wonderful... not.

You then move into an encounter with the Whomping Willow. Then you ride around the Forbidden Forest and run into Aragog and his family. Guess what! The giant spider also pops out in your face.

Then you move back into the screen where you fly around the Quidditch Pitch during a game. Slytherin vs. Gryfindor naturally. Then, dementors attack and chase you around the pitch. You move off screen and move around a dark area where dementors randomly pop out. They're not that scary... they look very fake and huge, but the initial popping out is what's scary.

You're back in the castle and are moving down the the Chamber of Secrets and dementors are still popping out. There's an area where you KNOW that you're in the Chamber of Secrets and you're expecting the Basalisk, but I'm not positive if it's actually there or not... I closed my eyes. SHUT UP! Haha.

After I felt it was okay to open my eyes, a dementor appears but this one has a camera in it's mouth and what it does is take a picture of your face. Then as you move backwards away from the dementor, you go through a wall of mist or steam where the picture of your face (which is one of terror) is projected onto the mist/steam. It's pretty cool. Then you move back to the screen where Harry casts Expecto Patronum and rids the place of dementors.

Then you fly back to the school as everyone cheers because you save the day and then the ride is over.

O. And FYI. When the dragon appears in your face, a picture is taken. But when you get off the ride, the screens aren't showing your pictures because it's just so busy. So we never saw out pictures.

So the ride is pretty fun, but it can at times be jerky and have you on the back.

The Butterbeer

...is vile. It was very disgusting. Erik claimed in tasted like tapioca. We got the frozen version because we heard it was better. I can see how others may like it, but we just didn't care for it. We threw out 3/4 of our cup of it.

The Rest of Islands of Adventure

I have never been to Universal before. So I just thought I'd say what I thought of it. We only went to the Islands of Adventures because it is so FUCKING expensive to do just one. A one day, one park ticket costs $82 and it's not worth it. What a joke. Disney can probably get away with charging that, but Universal didn't have much to do in my eyes.

We did Harry Potter, then Posiedon's Fury (30 minute wait) which was interesting, then a ride in the Suess area (30 minute wait). Then we went to the Hulk (6o minute wait) and the 3D Spider-Man ride (75 minute wait). The day was pretty much spent waiting in line. We were there from 8am to 5 pm. Add 75 minutes and 60 minutes for Harry Potter's main ride, 75 minutes for Ollivander's and 10 minutes for Butterbeer. That's 415 minutes or 6 hours and 55 minutes waiting in line. We were there for NINE HOURS! 76% of the day in lines. And I didn't even add in the line to get INTO The Wizarding World.

I have to admit that the Hulk was pretty badass. Spider-Man wasn't terrible either. I remember when they were marketing that ride back in like 1999. They over exaggerated it. Although I guess for back then it was pretty cool.

Overall, Harry Potter was pretty cool. I feel it was one of those been-there-done-that things (especially at $82 a ticket). I also feel like Disney could've made it a thousand times better. More interactive and whatnot. I'm not one of those morons that thinks Disney is god and they do everything right always, but in this instance, they may have made it bigger. I mean, Universal took two failing, existing rides and slapped a coat of paint on, changed the name and made them Harry Potter themed. Kind of bogus in my opinion. But then again, Universal only has so much room to work with. But still... it was fun. I'm glad I went and I had a good time! ;)

P.S. - Funny story... After we got out of the Ollivader's attraction we were in front of this family and this little boy wanted a wand the dad was like how about this one and showed his son. The son got really upset and said "No, Dad! The wand chooses me!" This kid no-joke thought that the wand would choose him. It was so funny. What a wake-up call that would be.