I've been trying my best to torture Yelper Eric S by streeeetching out my reviews of Universal's Islands of Adventure, leisurely tapping out observations and opinions of everything in this park that I rode/experienced that I can find a listing for, saving my general overview of the park itself til the end. Hogsmeade Village, it seems, is the end of the line. We didn't take the train across to the other park, and the other Harry Potter land. Good thing for Eric S or it would be another 2 months of reviews.
I'm not a Harry Potter person, though I did watch all 8 movies on a two week long weed bender in preparation for drawing a show flyer for some friends who put together a Harry Potter homage/parody variety show. I liked the movies - the Prisoner of Azkaban was my favorite - but I didn't get super into it. Didn't hit me in the sweet spot when I was young and susceptible. Still, Hogsmeade village is pretty dope. Just seeing the looks of wonder on the faces of all the Potterites with their robes and magic wands - which I found out later actually do stuff in that village - was kind of a vicarious thrill.
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is an incredible ride and that castle is beautiful. The longest we waited for anything at IOA but well worth it. The locker situation is a bummer, I ranted about it in my review for that ride, wondering why the lockers couldn't have been across the midway from the ride or something.
Well, I watched this YouTube video about how Harry Potter ended up at Universal and come to find out the answer to that probably has something to do with JK Rowling herself. You see, after Disney sh*t the bed in their attempts to lure JK Rowling, time and time again underestimating and lowballing her, Universal put on a charm offensive. Apparently, she was blown away by their vision - I only saw the IOA side but they went all out. She also thought everything was all wrong, and it took many, many hours getting what you see here to looking as close to her vision as possible. So no lockers visible on the streets of Hogsmeade. (That room is still way to small and hard to get in and out of though! Uggghhh!!) And she made them scale down the shops and the midways, which aren't SUPPOSED to be midways at all but streets and lanes. I was like "Wow! They WERE really narrow in a lot of places! " Hogsmeade was easily the most crowded area of IOA; I'm sure I'd get claustrophobia if I went on a weekend. But part of that was the park planners weren't free to think in terms of crowd control and creature comfort like in the other, more elbow room-friendly "Islands". Some nerdy trivia for you there. Sacrifices were made for the completeness of the illusion! read more