Rowling’s Error

She did it, she made it great, but it was a mistake and that mistake will limit her later. The pity is that Rowling did well, but her partner failed her.  J.K. Rowling had the theme park world at her feet a decade and she chose Universal Florida to build two sections of their parks using her characters and ideas.

The first time my family walked toward Diagon Alley we were stunned. My adult kids had grown up at Disneyland so they knew good theming when they saw it. Rowling and Universal did not just produce good theming, they produced the most immersive theming I have ever seen.

Let me be blunt: the detailing is better than anything I have seen in any Disney park and I credit Rowling for this miracle. There is nothing else in Universal like the two Potter lands and no place more magical in any theme park anywhere.

The details, from waste receptacles to street signs, are perfect. Walking to get the train is like walking to get the train in London only cleaner and (somehow) more British. The food is British, the labeling pure Rowling (Gilley water!) There is no “Diet Coke” anyplace, while the Butterbeer is as it should be.

Do you have to be a Potter fanatic to enjoy the Park?

You do not, but if you are one of Dumbledore’s Army, then a day at Universal’s Potter areas is living a book. The cast members are terrific. If you approach the parks beginning on the Studio side (have I mentioned Universal forces you to buy two tickets to enter both Potter lands?), you live out Harry’s journey to Hogwarts.  When I looked down the street and saw a dragon belching flames from a bank, I was enthralled. I looked as hard as I could and nothing broke the illusion. I was happy, until I was not.

Rowling did not fail, but Universal failed her. The experience of the Potter sections of the parks are so intense, so good, that the shoddy second rate experience in the rest of Universal is highlighted and sickens as if a man were forced to eat a stale Twinkie for dessert after a gourmet meal.

But one might forgive this failure, hoping that Rowling excellence would spread over the park as the waters cover the sea, but then the flaws in Potter Land start to intrude.

First, the “second visit” aspects of the park fail. This is a pity since the three major rides in the two areas (which we should note require two seperate park tickets) are the best rides of their sort I have ever ridden. The ride in Hogwarts is the best ever made if you like immersive dark rides that make you part of the story. The Gringots ride is almost better, but it is hard to surpass perfect without an increase in technological prowess.

So why wouldn’t I want to go again? The two rides, and the train that links them, are “it.” Imagine a Rowling mall with three bits of first rate entertainment: you come, you ride, you look, you shop, you eat and all that would be left the second time is to rinse and repeat. There are some shows in the area and here again Rowling and the park shine, but not very many shows. If you have a single morning to spend in a theme park and it is the off season, the Potter park is perfection, but having done that you are finished for a decade or so.

Buy your wand and enjoy the magical memories.

The entertainment to shopping ratio is so bad that one begins to feel that one is trapped in a book that demands a purchase per page. The swag is awesome, don’t get me wrong, but how many Hogwarts scarves can a man buy?  

Can Potter World grow? Universal lacks Florida Disney’s property and it feels as locked in as Disneyland without any of the charm of Walt’s first creation. Walt was harmed by Anaheim. Universal has harmed herself by maintaining a theme park ghetto around the Potter parts. Theme park urban renewal would entail bull dozing most of the second rate rides designed by cynics trying to entrap the cool kids of ten years ago. There must be somebody who wants to stay all night in the “downtown” parts of Universal dancing the night away in a strange blend of trashy decadence, over priced and under maintained, but those sad souls are not reading or watching Harry Potter.

J.K Rowling in Universal is like Walt Disney in the hands of a degenerate Roy Disney. Walt Disney, the creative genius, needed Roy Disney, the guy who could make it happen. Roy was no soulless accountant, however. He made Disney World happen when nobody else could have gotten the park built. There is more magic in one corner of Roy’s Magic Kingdom than all the non-Potter parts of Universal combined.

Universal (a group of Roy’s without souls) benefited from Rowling’s brilliance and demands for excellence, but Rowling had only a part of the parks to transform. You could put Michelangelo’s David in my front yard, but without the rest of the city of Florence, both the sculpture and Sugar Land would be cheapened.

We went the next day to the Magic Kingdom, Roy’s park using Walt’s model, and were not overwhelmed, but were satisfied. Rowling got more power from Universal, but at the cost of the total experience.

A lesson lurks here, as they must on this site: the wrong partner, even if he or she gives over total creative control is still the wrong partner. The soul of theme park that needs Potter is the theme park that should not get Potter. Rowling could have made Disney World better, but she made Universal worse by exposing the shoddiness of the rest, showing what was possible, but then leaving us in a neighborhood with mummy rides, corn dogs, and carney rides. Universal without Potter was not “muggle land,” because the rest of the park does not simply lack magic: it lacks soul. Potter, a piece of a park that could not be better, is fastened to an undead tourist trap. Go. See. Don’t go again.