Soar high through the skies above Hogwarts on a broomstick adventure with Harry, Ron and Hermione...
Soar high through the skies above Hogwarts on a broomstick adventure with Harry, Ron and Hermione...
| Theme Park | Universal Studios Hollywood |
|---|---|
| Park Area | The Wizarding World of Harry Potter |
| Type | Dark Ride |
| Audience | Thrillseekers |
| Opened | 7 April 2016 (Soft opening from 12 February 2016) |
| Manufacturer | Simworx |
| Model | RoboCoaster G2 |
| Duration | 4½ minutes |
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is based inside Hogwarts Castle
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is the hugely impressive dark ride set inside Hogwarts Castle within The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood.
After walking along the queueline which takes visitors around the Hogwarts grounds and through the castle itself, riders find themselves flying their broomsticks into an adventure featuring dragons, Dementor attacks, narrowly missing a lashing from the Whomping Willow, and the thrills and excitement of a Quidditch match.
Recreating the action of a Harry Potter film in a theme park dark ride demands much more than a simple ghost train car trundling along past a set of animatronic scenes. Instead, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey brings together a number of cutting edge ride and entertainment technologies.
These are anchored around a RoboCoaster G2 ride system, which features four-seater benches mounted onto KUKA robotic arms (based on the robotic arms found in the manufacturing industry and automated factories) that run along a track around the show building. RoboCoaster comes from Simworx, the British media-based attraction company headquartered in Dudley.
The ride's storyline is brought to life through a combination of physical sets, animatronics and wrap around projection screens which the RoboCoaster cleverly and seemlessly navigates between. The integration is done so well that it is easy for riders to become so immersed in the experience that the transitions between real and virtual can comfortably go unnoticed.
While the flying adventure is of course the main attraction of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, the ride's queueline is equally as impressive as the ride itself. Universal have gone out of their way to create an immersive walkthrough experience which allows visitors to wander through the hallways and rooms in Hogwarts Castle with scenes including Professor Dumbledore's office, the Griffindor Common Room and the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.
Many cast members from the original Harry Potter film series reprised their roles to record scenes specifically for the ride, which adds much to the realism and allows visitors to be led through the experience alongside familiar characters including Harry, Ron and Hermione, plus Dumbledore, Hagrid and many more.
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is one of the most advanced dark rides in the world, and also one of the best. The meshing of wildly swinging robotic arms, absorbing 4K projections, detailed physical sets and the magical captivating world of Harry Potter makes for an incredibly awe-inspiring experience. All this, together with the wonderfully engrossing queueline, brings the story to life so well that it makes you feel - just for a moment - that maybe the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry could actually be real.
The flying Ford Anglia in the queueline
Hogwarts Castle high above
The giant show building
Entering Hogwarts
