If you’re one of two billion and one people who are waiting for an owl to fly in with their Hogwarts letter, this is definitely a location for you.
Moreover if you’re one of the muggles who haven’t watched or read any part of the Harry Potter series, you should probably read and watch it right now.
If you happen to stop at Universal Studios Orlando, put on your house robes and grab your interactive wands and get ready to travel through the Wizarding world of Harry Potter. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter lives in two different Universal Orlando theme parks. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Hogsmeade is part of Islands of Adventure while The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Diagon Alley can be found at Universal Studios. To access both theme parks, you’ll have to buy a park-to-park ticket to ride the Hogwarts Express attraction between the two land.
You may start off with a ride on Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure roller coaster
You can go to Diagon Alley where you can watch a show like tales of beetle the bard depending on when you get there. You can maybe get an ice cream at Florean Fortescue’s Ice-Cream Parlour, or a Butterbeer at The Fountain of Fair Fortune or The Hopping Pot. Visit Ollivanders, where although you may not get to be selected by a wand, you can get in line to see the show that depicts how a wand chooses its owner. You might just get chosen for the show. If not, you can choose to buy a wand if you didn’t order one in advance. You can even buy an interactive wand that allows you cast spells(easy, medium, hard) wherever medallions are set into the pavement in both Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley. These are the spots where you can cast spells and make magic with your wand. A map of all spots to cast spells is included with your wand purchase.
You may also get on Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts ride complete with a fire breathing Ukranian Ironbelly dragon on its roof. Lucky for you, you don’t have the entire bank of Gringott on your heels.
There’s also a lot to look at while in line for this ride since you’ll go through the Gringotts bank lobby and see a multitude of goblins at work. The four chandeliers that hang inside the bank’s lobby are made up of 62,000 individual crystals.
There is also the Gringotts Money Exchange. This isn’t just any bank. Sure, there is a human clerk assisting with money exchanges here, but there is also an interactive Gringotts goblin behind a teller’s desk.
Don’t miss a visit to Knockturn Alley. The enclosed space is dark and cool and there are five spots where you can use your interactive wand to cast spells. Go to Borgin and Burke where it’s oozing plenty of dark magic.
If you bought a park-to-park ticket, you can go to platform 9 3/4 which has a cool mirror trick which makes it seem like you’re going through a brick wall to grab a train to go off to, drumroll please, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Which is an whole theme park of its own.
Any true fan deserves to go on this pilgrimage at least once in their life. Even if it’s when they are ninety with their grandchildren. It’s a magical adventure that can only come close to the adventure we have in our heads every time we open an Harry Potter book.
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