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The ride breaks (but no one is told)

Though we had initially been hoping to be on the ride by 4:00 PM, by this time the weather was just starting to clear and we were unfortunately still stuck in The Lost Continent. However, by 5:00 PM Hogsmeade was in sight, and by 6:00 PM, we were in the proper queue for Hagrid's Magical Motorbike Adventure, watching other guests zoom past on the tracks and taking in the details. 

However, around 7:00 we stopped, right at the entrance of the interior queue. The rain was starting up again, and we, as well as many  of the other guests around us, assumed that the weather was to blame for the delay. However, an hour later the rain slowed, and the line still had not moved. 

Around 8:30 PM, more than an hour after we had stopped, a Team Member came out and told us that the attraction had gone down for technical difficulties an hour earlier, and with the park scheduled to close very soon, they would be running tests until 8:59 PM, and if the attraction wasn't back on line by then, they would be sending everyone home. 

This was obviously not a very popular thing for guests to hear, especially as we had all been waiting over an hour with no word as to what was going on with the attraction. However, even though the situation was frustrating (and we were all VERY damp and cold from all the rain), we decided to continue to tough it out. 

Entering the interior queue, 12 hours later

Image: Universal

Fortunately, just before 9:00 PM (a whopping 12 HOURS) after we first got in line, we finally entered the interior queue. We were rushed into a pre-show room (we were only able to watch about half of the pre-show), and then quickly shuffled out into a series of long, thin corridors, stuffed to the gills with guests, almost all of whom had been waiting 12 hours or longer. Though this was (of course) our first time in this area, these rooms seemed far too stuffed with people, and one young guest had a severe reaction to the packing in of guests, and had to run out of the room to catch his breath. 

Riding the ride, 14 hours later

Though it was initially supposed to take about an hour from the pre-show room to get to the actual ride, the ride again went down around 10:00 PM, just as we were rounding the 13 hour mark. However, the good news was it didn't take long this time to fix the issue, and we were able to ride the ride just after 11:00 PM, an agonizing 14 hours after we first entered the line. 

Though we thouroughly enjoyed the ride, we have to say that the queue system on day one felt totally mis-managed. Back in 2010 most guests waited "only" 8-10 hours to experience Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, and when Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts opened, the wait time was similar, despite extreme technical issues. 

Though there was nothing that could have been done about the weather, Team Members were not able to tell guests what was going on, which led to a lot of confusion. If the line could have been managed a little better (and potentially cut off a little sooner), there wouldn't have been so many guests waiting 12-14 hours for this attraction. Waiting this long was definitely an endurance test, and though we came home tired and sore, the ride was 100% worth waiting for. But hopefully when the next new attraction opens, things will be managed a little better and we won't have so many guests waiting this insane amount of time to experience one attraction. 

 
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