This past weekend I got a chance to visit Universal Studios Hollywood for the first time in about two years. My primary reason for wanting to go was to take in the brand new West Coaster version of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which opened this past Spring, although I also got to enjoy a few other aspects of Universal Studios that were new since my last visit.
A few notes before I dive into my thoughts on Wizarding World: First, I haven’t been to the Orlando version, although one the people I was with had been to it about five years ago (prior to the expansion). So, I can’t really compare the two, but will touch on his thoughts. Second, I’m not a huge Harry Potter fan. Like, I’ve read some of the books and seen all the movies, but I freely admit that a lot of the references in the Wizarding World are things that went over my head. The experience for huge fans of the books (like the friends I was with) would probably be different, so consider this a “review for outsiders”.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
The first thing I should mention when discussing the Wizarding World, and I’ll mention this again a few times, if you’re planning a trip you should ABSOLUTELY, 100%, take advantage of the early access to the area that comes with buying your tickets online, especially if you’re there on a weekend like we were. Universal allows people who buy from their website to get into the Wizarding World one hour before opening. Even if you don’t take the full hour, getting there just a little bit before the park opens will help you get through everything with a lot less waiting and enjoy the streets of Hogsmeade before it becomes completely packed.
Hogsmeade
In our case we arrived at the park at about 7:30 in the morning (opening time was 8AM) and made our way towards the Wizarding World. It’s pretty easy to spot, as Hogwarts is visible from most of the upper lot. The gate to land sends guests past the engine of the Hogwarts Express. complete with friendly conductor welcoming visitors. Guests then enter into the village of Hogsmeade filled with businesses recognizable from the stories. There are eight different souvenir shops in total, each with elaborately designed store fronts filled with magical items and animatronics.
The entrance to Hogsmeade and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
The Hogwarts Express and its conductor greeting guests.
In addition, there are multiple other store front facades that you can’t actually enter, like the musical instrument store and the parchment shop, but these also present elaborate moving window displays. Several of the storefronts include displays that guests who buy wands can trigger into motion, and later in the day Wizarding World staff stood beside many of them teaching visitors the correct wand motions.
Honeydukes was one of the largest stores in Hogsmeade (and surprisingly full in the morning for a place that mostly sells candy).
The design of Hogsmeade itself is incredibly well done, both in terms of how real the buildings look and also how well it immerses visitors. As you can see in the photo below, the streets of the village are designed such that you cannot see beyond the edge of the Wizarding World. Additionally, the perspective of the buildings makes them feel like they’re more tightly packed, despite the wide paths designed to accomodate lots of guests, and makes it feel like the made street stretches longer than it actually does.
The main drag of Hogsmeade. The design makes the buildings feel tightly packed and that Wizarding World is completely separate from the rest of the park.
There is essentially only one main street in area with only one other small parallel path, but it still feels like you’re in an actual town and like there are tons of stores to look at (which there are). Little details, like owls roosting in the rafters by the owl post, add to the feeling that you’re in a real place. It only really starts to lose the immersion as it gets more packed with tourists later in the day and views of the detailed buildings and costumed staff are blocked by crowds of tourists. That is actually one of the main reasons I strongly recommend arriving for the early admission!
Owls roosting. The spots of bird poop on the wooden rafters and on the ground are a nice touch.
Later in the day the crowd gets to the point of filling the paths. This breaks the immersion somewhat (and makes it harder to take pictures).
As guests head towards the back of Hogsmeade the buildings die away, the area opens up into the space for the main attractions of the West Coast Wizarding World.
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey in 3D
The signature attraction of the park is the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, a robo coaster/dark ride housed inside Hogwarts. Which of course means that the queue goes through the castle, possibly the best part of the ride for intense Harry Potter fans.
Early morning Hogwarts, home to the Forbidden Journey.
Pinhole LEDs light up the name of the ride on the Hogwarts entry gate.
Luckily, early in the morning prior to the park general opening, the wait was only about 20 minutes so our group rode together (and were actually able to ride it twice back to back). As guests make their way through the castle the rooms and paths are filled with small artifacts from the movie, some of which even I understood. I should say that my friends, who asi mentioned are huge Potter fans, absolutely loved seeing all the details, and even I appreciated all of it (maybe not as much I enjoy Indiana Jones or Tower of Terror, but still).
Even I recognized the mirror, although I had no idea what it was called…
I loved the talking paintings that exist all throughout the queue.
The talking sorting hat. I think it gave us safety instructions.
My main complaint with the queue artifacts is most of them are so dark that it’s hard to see any details. It’s very possible this is intentional, to hide artifacts that might not be fully detailed, but it would have been nice to be able to look more closely at the objects. I also couldn’t really hear much of what the various talking paintings and characters were saying to me, so I didn’t really have any idea what the plot of the ride was. I think Harry and co. were trying to enchant our bench to let us escape the castle and watch quidditch, but I’m not sure why we were there riding on a bench in the first place.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione setting up the events of the ride…which I didn’t really follow.
As for the ride itself, it is a detailed mix live animatronics and 3D visuals on wrap around screens presented along with motion of the robo coaster. You a bit about how it works from our Coaster101 post on RoboCoasters, but essentially the vehicle follows tracks while the bench is rotated and flipped on the end of a giant robotic arm. The motion is smooth and unexpected, without be jarring or nauseating and it fits in really well with the visuals. The animatronics are incredible, with some being actually frightening (yes, even for this fully grown adult) and imposing. There are some 4D effects that integrate well with the ride, and I think the 3D goggles added for the Hollywood version of Forbidden Journey likely help darken and shade some of the animatronics to make them look more realistic.
My one issue with the ride is that the 3D movies don’t look great. Compared to the incredibly well done animatronics, the video sections feel kind of out of place. The 3D is also pretty fuzzy, lacking the clarity I expect from state of the art 3D projections. The issue is most noticeable in the scenes with Harry and Ron and the very opening sequence. It’s not as bad when the scenes are darker and don’t feature people (who look out of place). I wonder if part of the issue is that the video is the same as the one used in Orlando with 3D post-processing. That could create a less than perfect 3D.
I should add, despite rumors during technical rehearsals of the 3D causing nausea, I had no issues with it making me feel dizzy or queasy. Either it was overblown, or Universal fixed the issue.
Although I had a minor gripe with the 3D, it isn’t hard to ignore the fuzziness during those segments, and when the ride transitions to the animatornics it has some of the best dark ride sequences I’ve ever seen. My friend said that as far as he can remember the ride is identical to the Orlando version except for the 3D, but since it had been several years he had a hard time comparing. I’d be curious to hear from anyone who has ridden both recently whether they think the 3D adds to the ride or not.
Imposing Hogwarts in front of the sunrise.
Flight of the Hippogriff and Olivanders
The other main ride of Wizarding World West is the Flight of the Hippogriff family coaster. It’s Universal Studios Hollywood’s first outdoor coaster, and definitely a family coaster. The ride uses some neat design elements and isn’t bad, but for a one minute long ride I don’t think it would be worth a wait any longer than the 30 minutes we waited unless you had some small kids with you that REALLY wanted to ride it. It’s unfortunate that for most of the day the wait was over an hour.
The other attraction that requires waiting in line is in Olivanders wand shop. The show is a small interactive experience where a guest is chosen by a wand. It uses some fun small special effects and a good live performance. The line for it was roughly in the 45-60 minute range, which also seems maybe not worth the wait, but if you’re a huge Harry Potter fan I can see the appeal, and the presentation was well done. Afterwards visitors are dumped into the enormous wand shop to buy their own wands, including a lot from Wizards that I didn’t recognize (but my friends did). I was told by my buddy that the collection seemed a lot bigger than he remembered in Orlando five years ago.
The Wizarding World Live Shows
Two live shows occur throughout the day. Annoyingly the show times aren’t actually posted anywhere obvious and aren’t on the park map or show schedule. However, you can find them on the Universal Studios Wait Time website (which is super useful).
The Frog Choir show is an good a capella performance, and the singing frogs are pretty cute. There was some sort of subplot going on during the show, as the performer in the Slytherin costume was getting annoyed about something, that was never really explained, but maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention. Or maybe it’s explained during the later shows?
The Tri Wizard spirit rally involves dance performances from students of the two other wizard schools in the books (which I of course didn’t remember). My friends were pretty excited to see them, and the martial arts-ish performance from the Durmstrang students was pretty awesome.
Durmstrang and Beauxbaton performers at the Tri Wizard spirit rally.
Both performances are on the same stage, across from the entrance to the Forbidden Journey, and neither seemed to get so crowded you couldn’t see the action. The only downside was that on a hot day there isn’t really any shade in the plaza where you watch them, so it can be a little toasty. If you can’t find the performance times online the staff around the area should be able to help.
Butterbeer and Regular Beer!
The other big highlight of the Wizarding World is the food and drink of Hogsmeade, primarily butterbeer. Multiple butterbeer carts are located on the main drag, and as the day went on they both got longer and longer lines. The lines moved pretty quickly, and you can also get butter beer inside the Three Broomsticks and the Hogs Head Pub. The butterbeer itself was tastier than I expected. Topped with whipped cream, it has a nice butterscotchy flavor without being overpoweringly sweet. I was pretty impressed. If the lines at the carts seem really long, I’d duck into the Hogs Head for your butterbeer fix, it seemed to usually have a smaller crowd.
One of several crowded butterbeer carts.
One of the biggest lines we saw was to eat at the Three Broomsticks. In the morning it was pretty empty, while they serve breakfast until 10:30 before switching to lunch. After the switch to lunch and throughout the day though, the line snaked across the front of the building. The food looked pretty good, and was all full meals, but when the staff told us the wait would be an hour, we decided to go eat in Springfield instead.
We did return later to enjoy some of the actual beers made especially for the park. I had the the Hogs Head Ale, a Scottish style red ale. It had a good scotch ale flavor and was a generous pour (not excessively expensive either), definitely one of the best beers I’ve had in a theme park. Plus since I had my souvenir butterbeer mug, I could drink out of the stein. We also tried the pumpkin fizz from Hog’s Head, which had a great spiced flavor, reminiscent of the cinnamon and nutmeg of a pumpkin pie and a nice twist on the more common pumpkin juice available from the carts.
Hog’s Head ale in a butterbeer mug.
As the day moved along, the lines for the Harry Potter got longer and longer, with Forbidden Journey hitting as high as a 180 minute wait at one point, with Hippogriff and Olivanders over an hour. Having luckily ridden Forbidden Journey twice in the morning, we decided to spend most of our time in the rest of the park, except to return to watch the Tri Wizard rally.
Overall I was really impressed, depsite not being a Harry Potter fanatic. The detail in the buildings was impressive, and the design to make Hogsmeade feel bigger and hide the rest of the park was really impressive. Forbidden Journey wasn’t perfect, but a lot of it was really impressive. I wish the area had more attractions, but it’s certainly possible we’ll see more added in the future. Again, if you are planning a trip to Universal Hollywood, absolutely make sure to order your tickets online and take advantage of the early entry. It’ll make riding everything in park much easier, and make the Wizarding World much more pleasant.
Let us know if you agree with our thoughts on the Hollywood version of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and if you’ve been to both (or the Japanese version), let us know how they compare. Also, check us out on Facebook where I’ll add a few pictures from the rest of my day at Universal Studios. You should also make sure to follow us on Twitter for live updates from all our park visits. Finally if you want to discuss any of your favorite parks with fellow readers, join our readers group on Facebook!
Recent Discussion