After a short drive over to the parks, we arrived at Universal on Saturday around 11 a.m. We shelled out $17 to park and walked a good way to get from the parking garage to the park, but it was sooooo worth it. When you arrive, you have to walk through CityWalk to get to the parks. This is the restaurant and night club area, similar to Downtown Disney. We spotted the place we wanted to eat dinner, The Cowfish Sushi Burger Bar. Fusion sushi and burgers? Oh yeah!
We entered at Islands of Adventure, the Universal park that has Hogsmeade. In the books and movies, this is the wizards' village where students go for some time off on weekends to visit joke shops candy stores and restaurants. It's also near where the train, the Hogwarts Express, drops off students coming from London.
To get there, we went through the back side of the park, through Seuss Landing.
We passed through a few more areas until we rounded a bend and saw this: the entrance to Hogsmeade:
And the village:
And ohmygosh Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:
Yes, I got goosebumps. It's like walking right into the pages of your favorite book. Little thatched cottages everywhere. The Threebroomsticks restaurant ...
and the Hog's Head Pub, complete with a moving and talking boar mounted on the wall behind the bar. Honeydukes Sweetshop with chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans. Dervish and Banges shop of wizarding supplies. The Owl Post and Ollivanders wand shop. Hagrid's house ...
And of course, butter beer, which tastes like shortbread cookies, a mild root beer, and butterscotch.
Magical. Really.
After wandering around in awe for a while, we headed into the castle. There's an attraction inside called The Forbidden Journey. The first part is actually the line itself: a walking tour of Hogwarts. It starts in the dungeon, where you wander through hallways, past the kitchen and the potions classroom. Then you emerge outside in Professor Sprout's garden classroom with hanging plants and mandrakes. Next, you enter the castle corridors, passing huge statues and an awesome stone griffin. Then it gets truly impressive: the hall of paintings that move and speak. Somehow, they've managed to make them truly look like oil paintings instead of video projections. Later on, there are even copies of The Daily Prophet newspaper with moving pictures. Impressive! We passed through Dumbledore's office, reproduced exactly like the movies, right down to the Pensieve, the magical object the headmaster uses to view memories. Dumbledore appears as a startlingly real hologram. How do they do that stuff? Next, we passed through the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, where Harry, Ron, and Hermione materialize on the balcony from beneath the invisibility cloak. Next, we passed the Fat Lady's portrait, guarding the Gryffindor Common Room, and then the animatronic sorting hat:
Then you get to the ride itself: a 3D in-the-dark roller coaster. I think I might have cried just a little here. ;-) It's like being in the story, from flying on a broomstick behind Harry to entering a Quiddich match, past dementors and through the Forbidden Forest, past fire-breathing dragons and web-spitting spiders. We did the whole thing three times. Simply amazing.
Next, we rode the Dragon Challenge, an inverted roller coaster where the cars hang from the track above. It used to be sycronized, with two coasters zooming past each other, but now they go one at a time. Then we did the Flight of the Hippogriff, a smaller roaster coaster. And then we toured Ollivanders Wand Shop, which begins with a 5-minute live show where a wizard chooses someone from the audience to help them find their wand. We had lunch at the Three Broomsticks, and at about $13 a plate, it was really good food: fish and chips for me and a turkey leg for Savannah.
Then we headed for the Hogwarts Express, a train ride with special effects. It transports you to the other park to visit Diagon Alley, but the train is pretty great all by itself. It's an entirely different ride depending on which direction you are going. Headed to Diagon Alley, it's like you're leaving Hogsmeade and heading for London. You're ushered into a cabin that seats about six people. The window on the outside looks like a journey to the city. Hagrid waves goodbye, and Buckbeak flys by. The cabin door on the inside shows moving shadows that look and sound like Harry, Ron and Hermione moving down the corridor.
When you get off, the park has an entirely different feel. You're in London now, in a typical city train station.
But there are references to the story everywhere if you know what you are looking for.
We emerged onto the streets ...
and spotted the triple-decker Knight Bus, complete with Stan the bus driver and a talking shrunken head. (The bus picks up wizards who miss the train and get stranded in the muggle world.)
The street looks like a London street, with a red phone booth, a theater, and a row of townhouses, including 12 Grimmauld Place, the home of Sirius Black, Harry's godfather. See the house elf peeking out the second-floor window? It's animatronic, and I made Savannah pose like this for ages until he appeared. ;-)
The entrance to Diagon Alley is directly across from the bus. Just like in the story, there are no signs indicating that it is there. In the story, it exists right alongside our world and is invisible to those who aren't wizards. And here, you truly could miss it entirely if you weren't looking for it.
Inside, it's a crowded, winding cobblestone street crammed with restaurants, shops, and other sights, just like in the stories. From the Leaky Cauldron and Knockturn Alley to Gringotts Wizarding Bank and The Daily Prophet, it's all here. Although there's really only one ride, Harry Potter fans could spend hours wandering here. And we did.
The streets are packed with people bumping into you and jostling to get into shops, just like in the story. It would annoying if you didn't know it's designed to be like that.
The dragon on top of the bank spews fire every 10 minutes.
The Leaky Cauldron has a great atmosphere.
The newspaper office entrance is just part of the streetscape, not someplace you can actually enter.
Then we got to Gringotts Bank. This is similar to the Hogwarts attraction, where half the fun is standing in line. Ingenious, right? After snaking through lines to get inside the bank, you get to the lush lobby, where animatronic goblins are busy counting their cash. Marble columns, a vaulted ceiling, huge chandeliers. Visitors arrive on the day Harry has come to take the horcrux from the vault of Bellatrix Lastrange. To get to the ride to the vault, we entered a bug elevator that appears to take you deep into the bank. There's a crazy-real hologram of a Gringotts banker talking to Bill Weasley. The we moved on to the actual ride: an indoor 3D roller coaster. The first time we did it, I wasn't blown away. But we did it two more times and requested the front-row seats. Wow! It's a fast, dark, foggy ride through the bank vaults. Amazing!
We wandered through Knockturn Alley, the dark and dodgy area that Hagrid warned Harry to steer clear of, and we visited the wand shop. The. We took the Hogwarts Express back to Hogsmeade, of course passing through Platform 9 3/4.
How they make this happen is beyond me, but it truly looks like you're disappearing right into the wall.
We walked back through CityWalk and used an app to get on the wait list at The Cowfish. We were about 2 minutes away when we got the text message that our table was ready. Perfect timing! Sat on the upstairs balcony and ate the best sushi roll I've ever had. Savannah had a huge burger. Highly recommend this restaurant.
After dinner, we walked back to Diagon Alley to squeeze in two more rides at Gringotts. We were one of the last to leave and got a pretty cool stroll through a nearly empty Diagon Alley. Got back to the car around 10:45 pm and the room by 11:30 pm. So this is what exhausted feels like. What an amazing day!
“But you know, happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
