Mar 22, 2016 Wizarding World of Harry Potter preview in Hollywood
Although the Wizarding World of Harry Potter doesn’t officially open at Universal Studios Hollywood until April 7, guests can already walk in and check it out. I would up going with my family last week, and it was pretty cool. After you work your way through Hogsmeade and perhaps buy some Harry Potter cosplay gear, the first thing you’ll want to do is get in line for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. That’s a pretty tough-sounding name for a ride based on students ditching a boring lecture and playing some quidditch.
At first I was alarmed that upon entering the castle, guests are immediately steered to a locker room where they are asked to check in their backpacks and bags. How much was that service going to set us back? But the fingerprint-keyed storage turned out to be free for two hours. Pretty cool–and whew!
On a Friday afternoon, it only took us about 25 minutes to weave through the line. It actually seemed faster than that since the queue twists and turns through different chambers and environments including Dumbledore’s study. Much of the information about the ride’s theme is provided through projections and magic portraiture that talks to each other. It’s pretty cool, and there are plenty of objects and details for hardcore Potheads to obsess over.
The ride itself is a lot like the ones in Florida and Japan: Guests follow Harry, Hermione, and Ron from the quidditch pitch to dark depths and soaring heights in a mashup up of projections and moving statues and mannequins. Going from 3D film to figures can be jarring, and everything happens so fast it’s hard to digest anyway. Maybe that’s why the ride already has a reputation for making riders vomit. It isn’t a bad idea to try the butterbeer (tastes kind of like cream soda with a layer of butterscotch syrup on top, and comes as a regular soda or frozen like a Slurpee) after the ride and not before.
And then the ride is over, leaving you in the gift shop to buy Hogwarts gear decorated with the house of your choice. The theme park is going to make a killing off of the $40-47 wands and $100+ robes, not to mention the ties, socks, T-shirts and everything else. In this post-Comic Con world, fandom isn’t just for kids any more, and attractions like this as well as Disney’s upcoming Star Wars Land are manifesting it. The basic Universal Studios T-shirts seem so quaint.
After finishing off Harry Potter Land in less than two hours, I finally got to to visit Springfield. It was a dream to buy a donut from Lard Lad and see Chief Wiggums there, get pictures taken with Marge, Lisa, and Krusty, and then take the Simpsons Ride, which incredibly skewers aspects of all amusement park rides from It’s a Small World and Pirate of the Caribbean to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. D’oh! It did replace a Back to the Future ride, after all.
But perhaps the biggest shocker of the day was the Water World show. My friend who works at the park had told me that it is jaw-dropping incredible–the show that stuntpeople around the world aspire to be a part of–and I went to humor him. But holy crap, it is kind of like a live-action, aquatic version of Mad Max with jet skis, explosions, and people in the crowd getting really, really wet. It makes you wonder what other crappy movies can be made into cool live shows?
Harry Potter Land is going to attract a lot you to Universal Studios this summer and the merch, ride, and butterbeer won’t disappoint. But you’ll probably be done with it in a few hours, so don’t forget Lard Lad or Water World!
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