First visit to IOA for 5 years and my take on Wizarding World and FJ. Disappointed to be honest. Maybe that’s due to all the amazing things I had read and heard before travelling so my expectations were to high or the fact the films don’t really do it for me either. The whole area seemed really small and shoe horned into the space. The best part for me is entering from The Lost Continent as the theme and detailing is amazing from that view with Hogwarts towering in the back ground over Hogsmead but from then it’s down hill.
Hogwarts Express just magically appears from a hole that leads to Dragon Challenge which doesn’t look good or make sense. Again while nicely themed the whole are is just too small and the forced prospective of Hogwarts just doesn’t work when you get any where close to it.
FJ the ride = Good but no way is it the best the ride in Florida, its not even the best ride in IOA. First off what’s with the queuing system? When we were there 60 min posted wait and 40 mins of that were queuing for lockers that we didn’t need. Why am I in a queue that goes at a snail pace due to where the lockers are located? Bad design!!!! Also every where I read goes on about amazing immersive theme!!! Really? So queuing in the greenhouse for the best part of 30 minuets (waiting for lockers) I am looking at a white show build whilst hearing the sound track for Jurassic Park, hardly setting up the ride experience. Once inside Hogwarts things are much better and this part of the ride is fantastic but now the queue picks up pace so the place where there is incredible detail we miss a lot of it. Again a real shame and bad design.
The ride its self is good but the transition between screens and real life sets are very poor and the floo effect is lame. Also on all my rides the dementor face effect failed as did the whopping willow. There is a lot of stick on this forum about Disney operating signature attractions with effects missing or broken, Uni is also failing to deliver on its most important attraction.
But the biggest thing for me is how Wizarding World as effect the rest of IOA. JP is now dominated by it with a lot of sight lines having Hogwarts or worse a big white box in view. JP used to be my favourite part of IOA as it captured the feel of the film that’s now been destroyed. Lost Continent another beautiful part of the park as also been nearly obliterated by it and again was such a great area and for this we have one new ride which whilst use cutting edge technology is a patchy experience and two rebrands one of which as made a great attraction worse.
I expect to get flamed but these are my genuine thoughts and feel that this land could have been much better pulled off if Uni had the land space to do it fully. Disappointed :down:
Hogsmead is small because Hogsmead is a small village. The size of most things is a JK/WB story thing not a UO thing. This keeps it true to the story.
The lockers as much as people don't like their placement are there for a reason. They needed to be accessible from both the entrance and the exit. They needed to not cause the people exiting to interfere with the people entering (crossing over the path) and they needed to be hidden from view when outside.
I will admit I've never really stood in the garden queue for long periods of time, but I've only ever heard the JP music before there are people in the queue.
Based on the fact that the willow was out of show I'm assuming you rode recently, as this was due to the new profile that was talked about (the willow motions were switched to fit the new profile, issue for the old profile)
The whole JP site line thing has been beaten to death. Regular tourists just plain don't care, and they bring in the bulk of the money. There aren't a stack of negative comments at guest services about it. It's a non issue.
The rebranding of the rides didn't change either ride. Very public issues (that would have happened with or without the rebrand) did.
And just to be clear about the queue, you feel the outside queue is bad design because it's slow, and you feel the inside queue is bad design because it's fast..... You see the issue here, right?
Too bad each bench couldn't just select from 3 profiles (slow and safe, status quo, boneshaker). I bet it would be too much risk that someone went on the wrong profile. And it might make the queue unmanageable. You might put a 3-way selector switch on each chair and use the minimum selection from all 4 chairs for the bench. While these things seem simple to me, I've never had to herd people through at the rate of hundreds per hour.
Maybe the simplest thing would be to schedule specific times for profiles, like last hour before close is boneshaker. Good thing I'm not in charge there, eh?
The simplest thing would be to say this is the ride we are offering, if it's not for you that's a shame.
This isn't the first test of a new profile and it won't be the last. They are trying out a few different things just to see what works and what does not.