{"id":19203,"date":"2014-07-16T08:57:06","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T00:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=19203"},"modified":"2014-07-15T18:59:20","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T10:59:20","slug":"for-second-day-visitors-wait-5-hours-for-harry-potter-ride-at-universal-studios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/07\/16\/for-second-day-visitors-wait-5-hours-for-harry-potter-ride-at-universal-studios\/","title":{"rendered":"For second day, visitors wait 5 hours for Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hogwarts<\/a>
Hogwarts Castle in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, an island of Island’s Of Adventure in the Universal Orlando Resort.
Photo by Carlos Cruz \/ Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

ORLANDO, Fla.\u2014You might need a magic wand to get on the new Harry Potter ride at Universal Orlando Resort.<\/p>\n

For a second day in a row, visitors waited up to five hours to get on the ride, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts, located in the new Diagon Alley section of Universal Studios. A day earlier, on the first day Diagon Alley was open to the public, visitors waited for as long as seven hours.<\/p>\n

A sign at the entrance to the 3-D ride at midday Wednesday said the wait would be 300 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not going to wait,\u201d said Eric Poudrier after snapping a photo of the wait time. He was visiting with his girlfriend and 2-year-old daughter from Montreal.<\/p>\n

Tammy Clark and her 11-year-old son, Ethan, also decided to skip the ride after seeing the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a five-hour wait,\u201d said Clark, of Bridgeport, W.Va. \u201cYou won\u2019t be able to see anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juan Sigler, his wife Susy and their two children, Samantha and Steven, arrived at the park after 7 a.m., got in line and didn\u2019t exit the ride until well after noon. But they said it was worth a five-hour wait since they felt immersed in Harry Potter\u2019s world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has great special effects and you see the central characters,\u201d said Susy Sigler, of Pembroke Pines, Fla.<\/p>\n

The ride is the centerpiece of the new Harry Potter section. It combines a roller coaster ride with 3-D projections featuring characters from the Harry Potter books and movies. The rest of Diagon Alley consists of seven detail-heavy shops selling merchandise such as wizard robes and interactive wands that allow visitors to perform wizard tricks throughout the section.<\/p>\n

Honeymooners David and Jennifer O\u2019Neill spent their second day in Diagon Alley but skipped the ride since Jennifer isn\u2019t a fan of roller coasters. Dressed in wizard robes, they wandered through the shops of Diagon Alley purchasing wizard wands and other merchandise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fantastic! It\u2019s like being in Diagon Alley,\u201d said Jennifer O\u2019Neill, of Dallas. \u201cWe walked in and it was so surreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Universal spokesman Tom Schroder said the park doesn\u2019t disclose attendance figures but \u201cwe are very pleased with the results we\u2019re seeing.\u201d Park workers were trying to accommodate the crowds by giving visitors a ticket with a time to return if they found the wait too long on a first attempt, he said.<\/p>\n

Not everyone was thrilled with the long wait to get on Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.<\/p>\n

Jason and Kristi Phillips of Baton Rouge, La. waited with their twin 9-year-old sons, Jacob and Jordan, for four and a half hours. When asked if the wait was worth it, all four said in unison: \u201cNo!\u201d<\/p>\n

They had to board the ride three different times Wednesday morning since it stopped twice mid-trip because of technical glitches.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing is worth a four and a half hour wait,\u201d Kristi Phillips said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla.\u2014You might need a magic wand to get on the new Harry Potter ride at Universal Orlando Resort. For …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":19204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-travel","mauthors-mike-schneider","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}