Alright, here I will give you my Harry Potter trip report. I was wearing a white and orange Clemson shirt if anyone remembers seeing me. I arrived at the park a bit after 9am expecting to just be waiting with the other Potter watch folks in hopes of an opening. On my way through Suess I saw families with butterbeer and WWoHP bags leaving. They probably thought I was a creeper because of how much I stared at them. On approaching the gates my hopes and feelings soared because I saw people being let in! I sort of half "joined" a family to walk through the polo gaurd groups, but I realized quickly that was unneccessary when one of the people said, "we have a special suprise for you today." I almost died...
but instead I hustled straight for the Forbidden Journey. Walking through that line took longer than actually waiting in the later part. I am happy to say that waiting in line didn't actually feel like waiting in line and I didn't even have time for my mind to wander because there was so much to take in. I loaded on the ride with no problem, and after the extremely long loading station, off we went! I won't spoil anything here, but I will say a few general things. The transitions from projection to live scene were spot on! Most of the time, the last thing you saw in the projection was then part of the transition scene made as a real life set. Something I really enjoyed was how the scenes had length and continuity to them. You didn't just spend time at one set to tell that part of the ride. For example, Thing X would be menacing above you, move, Thing X does another action closer, move, different part of set but where is Thing X?, move, HOLY CRAP THERE"S THING X!!!! move onto next part of story. Like many have said before, you are EXTREMELY close to the sets and plot points which really draws you in and involves you in the tale.
That's not to say this crowning achievement is not without its set of problems. The seat back storage really got annoying as it dug into my spine thus ruining a perfectly napable chair. Make no mistake, this ride is scary as all get out, but some of the scarier scenes were lacking the requisite lighting to make them even visible. (I'm withholding judgement on that until opening day, there's time to add show lighting) I also can see where they possibly cut corners on a few animatronics which is something that almost no one would notice. My last gripe is that I occasionally wondered how we got from point A to B? At one point I thought we might have crashed through the ground? Dunno. Let me be perfectly clear about this though, these minor problems could not prevent me from walking away with a smile on my face each of the two times I rode FJ. Is it groundbreaking, heck yes! Is it my favorite ride of all time, probably heck yes! I want to see how my feelings hold up after multiple ride throughs, but as of now I have never felt so good coming off a new attraction.
Now the less interesting stuff. Flight of the Hippogriff was very fun even though Buckbeak was a tad stiff, huge improvement. Dragon Challenge was a literal walk on. By this point in the day people weren't being allowed to enter so the crowds were steadily dwindling. The line was very cool except for the whole blank stretch between the candle room and choose thy dragon. The TMs at this ride and all the rides really helped sell the story with the comments they were making to everyone (welcome champions, your classroom is this way, enjoy the match) so you got some of the story from them if you missed it in the queue. Alas, the goblet was not working for me.
Hogsmeade was where I got to spend the least amount of my time. I had both signature drinks (butterbeer and pumkinjuice) and they were quite good with butterbeer being my favorite. I can see how pumkinjuice would easily make you sick if you drink too much. Myrtle heckled me, but Universal installed these new style dryers that you lift your hands through to pull off water which are very loud and did a perfect job of making Myrtle's comments unintelligible. Good move guys. The windows moved and were very entertaining, my favorite being the eyeball gumball dispenser. One interesting thing I caught was that the magic neep is actually food storage like Teebin said. Around noon when all the rides were shut down and shopping was still being allowed I caught the last sparse show at the rock with the beatboxing kids, the TMs were packing up and I happened to see inside the neep where there were some refridgerators.
That's the extent of my trip today, I was there a long time and didn't even realize how long I had spent and still hadn't seen everything on a calm day. If you have any questions, please let me know! I hope you enjoyed my report!