IMO this ride needed a drop(or 4).
If there would've been a way to LITERALLY drop us at any point on the ride, people's satisfaction with this ride would be way higher. I can think of 2 to 5 moments where ANY sized drop would've helped. Especially the end, where you're literally falling and you land in a completely different room/space. It needed a drop when we hit the transition to black.
It's one thing to ride a simulator where you're just kinda looking at stuff.
It's another thing to have cool practical effects.
BUT if you're in a box that is eerily reminiscent of Tower of Terror, you can't help but think about Tower of Terror while you're on it. And the thing about thinking about Tower of Terror is... It's a much better ride. Ministry is literally a ride about being on an elevator and it doesn't FEEL anything like an elevator! They MISSED the ELEVATE part. It's honestly pretty funny, in hindsight.
We all know the blame is the ride vehicle, but this ride is missing the ACTUAL THRILL factor that makes the other HP rides tick and it's glaringly obvious after you've rode it. If the vehicle was going to be the downfall, go back to the drawing board and give us something else because this ain't it. There's no reason this couldn't have been Mission Break-Out(with screens/props) had a baby with Tower of Terror(with movement between lifts and shafts) to have us TWIST and TURN and look at different things but ALSO have us RISE and DROP. It only does half of that, and that's the downfall. buh-dum-tiss*
I still liked the ride, but it's easily the weakest of the HP rides. And in a land with only ONE HP ride - that stings.
Yes! Exactly!!
The ride vehicle misses on all counts. Why build an elevator simulator ride that doesn't simulate rising and falling? I don't think that's a wild expectation!
Why doesn't it look anything like the Elevators from the films, or even the ones that the characters in the ride itself are inside of right in front of you! If anything, the elevator scene from the Gringotts preshow is far more accurate to the way the elevators were portrayed in the films.
The setup for the previous Potter attractions was gotten out of the way in the preshows, and / or as an incredibly quick moment at the start of the ride itself like the Hermoine Levitation spell scene, or Harry and Ron on their brooms. It's not 15 seconds after the broom scene that we come face-to-face with a practical life-sized Dragon, that breathes fire in the right seat rider's face!
Meanwhile Ministry's big story moment necessarily has to happen during the events of the ride itself. It'd maybe feel a little silly for Umbridge to have escaped the Trial before you enter the queue, and then after a 3 hour wait, it's only 2 and a half minutes later that she's brought to justice. But that also means that the whole first half of the ride is just an exposition-y preshow scene! Could we not have structured this a little better? That line is long, could none of that been used to get across this exposition instead?
Why is the Fantastic Beasts scene here? Like, actually. Why? Is there a deeper reason outside of it being a leftover from the scrapped Wizarding Paris land? It feels like a random detour in the middle of the ride that has nothing at all to do with Umbridge, the Trials, or the Ministry. And I'm not especially impressed with the Erumpent itself either.
The land's whole thing is the time-turner. They make a big deal of it in the ride, and it's the icon for the Portal. Why is there no attempt to explain how we make it from Wizarding Paris in the 20s-30s, to Wizarding London in 2007? Not even a contrived "Tiana has a salt mine"-style answer? It's so strange to draw attention to the time-travel in literally every other facet of the Land EXCEPT the moment that features the time-travel!
Why is Umbridge having such a hard-time finding a Time-turner in the first place? Apparently, Muggle tourists in Paris have been using them daily since the 20s! Chock it up to the wonders of European public transit, I suppose.
The first Floo effect is great! It does the Diagon facade / Hogwarts Express 9 and 3/4 "passing through a solid wall" effect so you can't see directly where you're walking to from the front. It just looks like a fireplace, especially when the "Floo Powder" fog rises up with good timing!
So
why is the second Floo effect awful? No attempt at the faux-Fireplace wall thing; you can just straight up look out into broad Parisian daylight from inside of the Ministry. The fog effect only happens sporadically when you walk through, and even when it does happen, it's pretty thin and wispy, so most of the time it doesn't even look like a fireplace. It just looks like an open door. It bleeds light into the dim Atrium too. And it's also the
very first thing you see after entering the Ministry Atrium via the first effect! Why is it built this way?
It needs a thrill moment. A small drop, at least. It needed to save the Atrium set for a big wow-moment on the ride itself. It needed an I-Rex-esque chase scene with the Erumpent. It needed a better story that uses the strengths of Umbridge as a villain, and that allows the expostion to be secluded within the queue. It needed to be rethought pretty substantially imo.
Hmm, maybe I do feel rather strongly about this one.
