Harry Potter theme park in Universal Studios Florida

[Guest]

[blackcat20]

fantastic! I cant wait to get there myself...just 5 months to go 

[Kelly]

I've been there!  Twice actually. Once with some friends in March and once with my 12 year old in May.  The first time was a whirlwind of OMG AWESOME, so we didn't really know what to do first and we didn't have any cool tips or tricks to follow.  After going a second time, I have some tips you all can use if you get a chance to visit.

1. Instead of waiting in line for up to an hour to tour the castle and go on the Forbidden Journey ride, do it this way- Take the castle walking tour.  This is the one where you walk through the castle, but don't ride the ride.  Just tell one of the "students" you want to walk through and they'll point you to the right entrance.  It's a better way to see everything because you have a seperate walkway in which you can stand for as long as you like to see the moving portraits, Dumbledore, Harry, etc without an attendent hurrying you along.  After that, go back to the "student" and tell them you want to do the single rider line.  They'll point you up a flight of stairs where you'll be ushered right up to the front of the ride.  The ride sits 4 across, so when they have a party of 3, you get seated right away with that party.  All in all, it took me about 2 minutes to get on the ride, and I rode it 4 times!  You don't get to sit with friends, but who cares?  You won't be able to see them during the ride anyway there are dividers between people and the most you see are your ride mates shoes.

2. There are Hogwarts and Triwizard cup shows every 3o minutes at the stone monolith.  Get there early and have a seat on the outside of the circle.  Both shows are totally worth it.

3. Even if you don't want to ride the Dragon Challenge roller coaster, walk through anyway.  There is SO MUCH to see in there.  Same with the Hippogriff Ride.  If you don't stand in line for that one, you'll miss Hagrids Hut and Buckbeak.  They'll let you pass over at the end if you don't want to ride.

[Kelly]

4. Get in line for Ollivanders right away!  The line gets crazy later on in the afternoon.  Jordan wore her Gryffindor scarf and was picked buy Ollivander to have a wand choose her!  It was awesome.

5. Visit the bathroom even if you don't need to go.  You never know what you might hear.

I think that it!

[Kelly]

http://photo2.walgreens.com/walgreens/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=12646029006/a=31511162_31511162/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=walgreens/

I hope the link works.  I have two of everything because I put borders around the photo's I printed out.  There are a few Jurassic park photos in the mix.  Yes, I know I spelled borders wrong on the album.

[blackcat20]

Thanks for the tips! Ill have to write those down for when I go 

[rns91294]

Wow, Kelly! Thanks SOOOO Much for the tip about the castle ride. Ryan and I want to go with Dane, but were worried about waiting in that line with him. If we do the walk thru tour, we can move at our own pace, which would be better for him. And since we can't ride the ride together since Dane is too young, the single rider thing is PERFECT for us! You rock!

[kbmum]

Thanks, Kelly!  The tips are great.  We're thinking about taking a longer Disney trip next year so we'll have some extra days to do things like Universal and Kennedy Space Center.  It looks like the HP area will have an expansion, supposedly to open in late spring 2012 in what is now the Lost Continent section of the park.

While looking for info, I found a site that said Forbidden Journey alone cost just under $90 million and the whole HP area cost somewhere in the range of $220-$240 million.