The Experience: Interact with all your favorite Harry Potter characters

The Trick: The screens come alive (not literally)

Image: Universal

While not the most difficult of tricks employed, this experience differentiates the ride. With only a few special effects involving fantastic beasts and a few nefarious creatures, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey would lack soul. The presence of the actors who bring to life characters such as Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, and Rubeus Hagrid (you knew his first name, right?) personalizes the experience for Potter fans. And there would be no point in building the ride if Daniel Radcliffe failed to make an appearance.

In order to tie all the characters together cleverly, the ride tells a story. After using a bit of Floo Powder conveniently provided by Emma Watson, you are whisked away to other parts of Hogwarts Castle. Along the way, Hagrid reveals an empty shackle that was formerly attached to a dragon. You’ll want to steer clear of the fire breather if you want to survive the ride. From there, you experience several perils while receiving aid from Rowling’s beloved creations. The Enchanted Bench and arm place you in the midst of the onscreen cinematics while the Potter actors dispense a few lines of dialogue for each portion of the attraction.

In The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, the vehicles stop in front of individual projection screens. However, there was a danger that taking the same approach would chronically limit the capacity of the Harry Potter ride, and potentially enable riders to catch a glimpse of neighboring benches.

The solution was to abandon the Spider-Man approach, and instead employ multiple parabolic screens. These move along in unison with the robotic arms, so that each group of riders has a screen to themselves (but the ride vehicles never stop moving).

Each projection section of the ride is equipped with a huge turntable, carrying three of the gigantic screens. These are large enough that riders are not be able to see the edges, enabling them to seamlessly fly off into the physical sets at the end of each video section. The ride’s track follows a simple, slow path alongside the screens, but the extreme movements of the robotic arms convince guests that they are swooping through the skies with Harry and his friends.

Adam Howard oversaw the visual effects for the attraction, working with a team from CafeFX, a leading firm that worked on movies such as Iron Man and Shutter Island prior to its closure in 2010. To help with the production of the movie sequences, Howard had a 20-foot hemispherical dome screen – identical to the ones that would be used in the ride itself – shipped out to California.

“We set it up in a local warehouse so that we could test the projections,” he recalls. “This also became our theatre for dailies on the dome sequences.” Those sequences included scenes of flying around Hogwarts Castle and through a Quidditch match, which led to a major challenge: how to render the images with the correct distortion in order to maintain the correct perspective on a curved surface.

Over in the UK at Warner Bros.’ Leavesden Studios, a motion base was set up to film the actual broomstick-based action with the stars of the movies. The leading trio - Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione) - were all filmed on the original sets.

The Experience: The villains attack

The Trick: Old tricks of the trade are reinvented

Image: Universal

Look, you cannot take a Forbidden Journey without some bad stuff happening. During the four-minute ride, you may feel the steam of dragon’s breath, absorb some spider spit from Aragog, or even get your soul swallowed by a Dementor.  It’s the chance you take any time you visit a part of Universal Studios that isn’t Springfield. Head to Moe’s Tavern to order a Duff Beer if you want safety. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is fraught with peril. I mean, that poor kid had like 30 attempts on his life by the time he finished puberty. Hogwarts is a dangerous place.

In order to foster a pervading sense of doom for the rider, Universal employs some old classics that you’ll find on many rides at the Theme Park That Shall Not Be Named a few miles down the road in Orlando. The dragon’s breath and spit are simply water doled out at the appropriate moments when the rider is positioned in these areas of the attraction. 

One of the highlights is when a huge Dementor attempts to suck riders' souls out from inside them. This “Dementor’s Kiss” effect is achieved by snapping a quick photo of the rider and then projecting it onto a fog screen.