Diagon Alley - A Magical Trip Behind the Wall

By: Rebecca JonesCalling all wannabe Hogwarts students! You will not be disappointed by Universal Studios Orlando’s newest addition to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley, and it’s feature ride, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringott’s!As you walk past 12 Grimauld Place and see Kreecher staring out at you from the second story window, past the Knight Bus, where Stan Shunpike is waiting to greet you, and into the Leaky Cauldron, you are stepping into a favorite story come to life. The architecture is lopsided, and the streets are always wet, as if you were really in England. The store signs feature wares such as school robes, parchment, invisible ink, and jinx-off, the staples of any student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Take your time looking through the windows of the shops, and you’ll see self-knitting needles, the latest book from Gilderoy Lockhart, and even runespoor eggs from the apothecary.There are several stores mentioned in the Harry Potter series, and two of the main ones, Ollivander’s wand shop and Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, are here in their fine details. First up, Ollivander’s offers two types of wands for muggles. The first is simply a wand that you can display and pretend with. The second option is the wand that will cast spells throughout both Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade, located in Universal’s Islands of Adventure theme park.My children begged and got the wands to cast spells. Each wand comes in a box, and you can choose a wand designed to look like the ones of various characters from the series. From the heroes, like Hermione Granger, to the villains, like Bellatrix Lestrange, you could choose the wand of just about any character you wanted. Each wand comes with a map of the locations where you could cast spells. There are several throughout the Wizarding World, and they are noted by a golden circle on the ground. Simply follow the directions on the disk, by waving your wand in the direction noted, and you will soon be casting spells to make it rain, make flowers bloom, and make skeletons in the window mimic your actions. It was all great fun, not only to find the circles, but then to cast the spells.Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes was great fun to explore. There was so much to see, from top to bottom. All of your favorites are here – Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, Chocolate Frogs, and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, among many more. After the muted colors of Ollivander’s, the bright orange and purple of this store definitely wakes you up!

The center of the action in Diagon Alley is the fire-breathing dragon above the Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringott’s ride. Every 12 minutes or so, you can hear a faint “warming up” sound, and then he would let loose with a burst of fire, the heat from which could be felt throughout the area. It was a glorious sight to see, and we purposely slowed down when we knew it was coming, just to watch it again and again.

While the Escape from Gringott’s ride is a lot of fun, for me, the best part of the ride was the queue line itself. Universal really outdid themselves with the attention to detail inside Gringott’s Bank. The animatronic goblins are just real enough to be creepy, but not so much you couldn’t spend several minutes staring and marveling at the artistry involved in creating them. Their blank eyes stare through you, as if they are really wondering what your business is at their bank.[gallery columns="2" ids="2736,2733"]If you want to wander over to the dark side of magic for a while, take a trip down Knockturn Alley. T his low-lighted area of Diagon Alley is home to Borgin & Burke’s shop, as well as windows full of singing shrunken heads.

One of the highlights of a visit to Diagon Alley is the chance to taste real-life Butterbeer and Pumpkin Juice. Each of them is available in bottles to take with you, or in glasses from the tap. Butterbeer tasted a lot like butterscotch with a hint of shortbread. I found it to be too sweet for my taste, but my 11-yr-old daughter couldn’t get enough! The Pumpkin Juice was described to me as “pumpkin pie in a bottle,” and truer words were never spoken. It was absolutely delicious, and I regret that I only had one glass while we were there.If you have a chance to visit Universal Studios Orlando, be sure to visit Diagon Alley. But, make sure you have time to explore all the nooks and crannies, to smell the scent of wet pavement, and to hear the bricks scraping against each other as you walk into, and out of, this wondrous world.When you stay at one of Universal’s four onsite hotels, you can enter this area an hour before the park opens, and you definitely want to take advantage of that perk. Once the park opens for the general public, this area quickly becomes crowded and the line time for Escape from Gringott’s almost doubles.To learn more about Universal Studios Orlando, please contact your Wishes Family Travel agent, or Rebecca Jones, at Rebecca@wishesfamilytravel.com.