Day 7: USJ - Harry Potter

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a themed area based on the Harry Potter series built at Universal Parks & Resorts’ Universal Studios Japan theme park in Osaka, Japan. Not to be confused with Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter at Leavesden Studios, it is a collaboration of Universal Parks & Resorts and Warner Bros. Entertainment. It opened to the public on July 15, 2014.

It contains the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride and the Flight of the Hippogriff roller coaster that debuted at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort in 2010. The village of Hogsmeade is also recreated. Two features in the Japanese park not found in Orlando are Hogwarts’s Black Lake and live owls.

At 1:30pm we dutifully made our way to the Harry Potter area and they let us in even though we are a bit early. Once inside, I was pretty amazed – they have managed to recreate almost perfectly Hogsmeade village and the Hogwarts school, complete with the Hogswart Express. Wow, it would have been worthwhile to dress up in Hogswart uniform for this (which by the way is available for sale).

We posed for photos in front of the Hogswart Express with the conductor who was very charming. I didn’t think he was so charming afterwards when he decided to take a break after posing with us, to the consternation of the queue waiting patiently behind us.

We wandered up to the school, and it was very impressive just as we remembered it from the movies but not quite to scale. The queue for the ride was 200 minutes but there is a walk inside the school that didn’t have a waiting time. This was more impressive than I thought it would be because they have recreated many of the interiors from various scenes in the films, including the animated portrait gallery, the classroom and others.