In the theme park section of my mind the ranking goes 1) Disney and 2) nothing, no one else is doing theme parks. (Is that because Knott’s is the only non-Disney park I’ve visited? Unclear.) So when Jeff suggested Universal, I was thinking, “Well, they have Voodoo Doughnut, so that might be worth a trip.” It didn’t occur to me that they’d offer anything comparable to Disneyland.
But then I started looking in to it. Universal Orlando is two theme parks, Island’s of Adventure and Universal Studios. Both have Harry Potter-themed sections (Hogwarts and Hogsmeade at Islands of Adventure, and Diagon Alley at Universal Studios). And from the videos I watched, they looked LEGIT. Plus they have Hogwarts Express to take you between parks.
So we went to Universal! We started at Islands of Adventure since there’s a bakery with a vegan elderberry croissant that’s supposed to be delicious. (Spoiler alert: we never found the bakery. I’m pretty sure we walked right by it when we were still in that post-admission haze.) At first it felt like California Adventure-meets-Adventureland, sort of on par with Disney.
But there were some places so over-the-top that I couldn’t come up with a Disney equivalent. Seuss Landing is full of eye-popping colors and shapes (and it wasn’t a tiny area).
The Jurassic Park section has a water ride, and there’s a post-ride dryer!
First ride! Skull Island. You take a bus through a few expedition-camp adventures that culminate in an epic (both sides) fight between Kong and some dinosaurs (with Kong climbing over your bus in the process).
Hogsmeade! How cool is this!?
Hogsmeade has a vegan shepherd’s pasty pie from a street cart called The Magic Neep.
It’s meatless beef crumbles and vegetable stew baked into a buttery pie crust. It was so good I got another one!
First Harry Potter rides! Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (at Hogwarts) is a broom-flying chase, and it was probably my favorite ride. You’re in a seat similar to Soarin’ where your feet swing free, but on a track so that you move and tilt as you go through the ride. Then there’s Flight of the Hippogriff which seems like a Big Thunder Mountain-level roller coaster. After you get on the ride you bow to Buckbeak and then you’re off!
The most roller coaster-y Harry Potter ride is Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure. You get to ride in either the sidecar or on the motorcycle, and you get up to 50 mph. There’s a delightful stall and drop backwards (to mimic the Weasley’s flying Ford Anglia stalling and falling out of the sky) as well and a stunner of a drop through a Devil’s Snare plant. (Not a drop like you go up a hill and down the other side, but like you’re sitting on a flat plane and the track gives way beneath you.)
Hogsmeade also has a Hogwarts Express stop that takes you to King Cross Station in London (London being a section at Universal Studios park). It’s an awesome way to get between parks and a ride by itself. The train interior is exactly like the movies with an aisle on one side and private glassed-in compartments on the other. Once you’re in your compartment with the doors closed, both the train window and the compartment doors are screens where you get to see Harry Potter stuff happening. When you get into the London City limits you can see the Knight Bus zipping through the streets in the background.

Overall, Islands of Adventure was an awesome introduction to Universal. It felt like getting to visit something as awesome as Disneyland for the first time. I saw so much stuff I’d never seen before, and each ride was completely new. We did it the old-fashioned way by waiting in all the lines (since it’s not a exaggeration to say that getting their version of fast pass will double the price of your ticket), so we really only did the Wizarding World section. And there’s seven other sections!
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