Universal Studios

If you like getting wet, becoming a minion and flying through Hogwarts, you should definitely check out Universal Studios!

As I wanted to spent as much time as possible in the theme park, I got up pretty early. In the end, it was just past 9:30 AM when I entered the park.

At first I went to the Harry Potter World. Standing in the middle of Hogsmeade and seeing the Hogwarts castle in the distance was just amazing. It all seemed surprisingly real, you could buy wands, uniforms, butter beer, chocolate frogs, Berty Botts every flavor beans and so much more! There was some kind of ride or attraction in the Hogwarts castle, however, after queuing for about 15 minutes, I was told that I couldn’t go into the castle since backpacks were not allowed and my backpack was too big to fit into the free lockers. Since I didn’t want to pay 15 USD for storing my backpack at the entrance of the park, the attraction seemed inaccessible to me. There was a stage in the middle of Hogsmeade and just when I walked past there was an acapella frog choir show. They sang Hogwarts related songs and offered a fun show.

I decided to take the universal studios tour next and after a quite long waiting time, I could see a lot of actual film sets as well as a few short 3D and special effect shows.

Afterwards, I watched a special effects show as well as a show about animal actors. They had different birds, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rats and a pig in the animal show, which was really very fun and entertaining.

My next highlight was the ‘Despicable me’ area, where I could take pictures with the figures of the movie. There was also a really cool 3D simulated rollercoaster show, were you were turned into a minion for a short time. I really loved that!

Waterworld was the name of the next show. It was a really exciting performance where you could get extremely wet if you sat in one of the first few rows (which I did). Before the real performance started (it was a short story in connection with the dystopian movie Waterworld), the actors actually threw buckets of water on the people in the first few rows and even though I put my rain coat on as quickly as possible, I still got pretty wet. But as the weather was nice, this was actually very fun.

Next, I went to watch Shrek 4D, which was a cute short movie.

By now it was already getting late and after buying a ‘despicable me’ bag, I went down to the lower level of the park. Next to a ‘Return of the Mummy’-ride, which I didn’t want to do as it seemed a bit too extreme for me, there were a few lockers that were big enough for my backpack and didn’t cost too much. Thus I quickly put my backpack in there and ran to the Hogwarts ride.

Walking through Hogwarts was really cool, the pictures on the wall actually moved and I could walk into Dumbledore’s office as well as the defense against the dark arts classroom. When I finally arrived at the real ride, I was actually a bit scared since it looked like a real rollercoaster. In the end, it really was a bit more extreme than what I was used to so far: It made me sometimes lay on my back or my front. However, as it wasn’t moving too fast, it was still ok for me. Also, since everything I saw was really amazing - I was flying through Hogwarts, seeing dragons, dementors, a quidditch game and all of the well-known wizards – the scary ride was well worth it.

As soon as I was done, I ran back to retrieve my backpack before I would have had to pay more for a longer storage period.

The last ride I went on was the Transformers ride, which turned out to be a bit more intense than I had expected and it kind of made me feel uncomfortable. But since it wasn’t too long, it was still ok.

I finished my visit by buying a Harry Potter Ravenclaw T-shirt as well as a butter beer. The butter beer tasted kind of weird, it was like coke with cream. But after I got used to the taste, I actually liked it.