Day after GO seems smoother. I saw rope lines to cordon off the Harry Potter line with the rest of the crowd and more TMs patrolling the line.
Also the line is much shorter. At 12:30, the line ended at Toon Lagoon and a TM was quoting 1 1/2 to 2 hour wait to get into the land. She had a bullhorn directing people to the end of the line which was marked with a portable sign that moved with the line.
Glad to hear this. GO day was insanity, with a general lack of direction, and even some MISdirection from TMs. We were there before opening and gave up altogether at about midday.
IMHO IOA and US an learn a lot from Disney with crowd control and telling people what is going on. I walked all the way up to where LC starts after Seuss Landing and was promptly stopped by a rope and a small army of employess and security guards.(Didnt know about the line at that point)Apparently, the line started at the end of the lake as you come under the tunnel, and continued the long way around the lake.And it wasnt moving as far as I could tell.There was no signs, warnings, cast members or even a bird saying come here.
Yeah, we had a similar experience. We tried to go on Friday (last day we were in Orlando)...there before opening, but didn't get into IOA itself until almost 10:30. While coming in from the parking garage, security guys prevented anyone from going the short (left) way from CityWalk to the IOA gates and instead directed us all the way around by the Universal globe and Hard Rock. Then apparently they later decided to fill in that shorter way over the bridge with latecomers, and alternated letting groups of people in from our line and from there. That annoyed me, but whatever.
Then we got inside and found NO direction about where to go for HP...started following the permanent signs that pointed where to go for what islands and near Spiderman, we noticed that we were passing a large group of people. Figured they were probably in line for something HP related, and asked them...they said they were in line just to get to the island, and that it was an 8-hour wait. There were no ropes, no tape, no signs to indicate what this line was, just a mass of people.
So we try to go to what seems to be the end of this line, and just after joining we see our first TM of the day besides the guy at the turnstile...he says "this line has been closed; you have to go to Seuss Island". We ask what he means by "closed", and he just repeats that we're supposed to go to Seuss Island if we want to see Harry Potter.
So, ok, we head that direction and encounter another group of people who look like they're standing in a line to nowhere...no TM in sight...people in the line say they're waiting for Harry Potter and have been told NINE hours.
All right...we try to settle in and wait. There are no TMs directing this line, and I see quite a few people try to sidle up and cut in toward the front of the line every time we move forward. After about a hour waiting here, someone up ahead in the line passes out from the heat, which was the 3rd such occurrence of the day (had happened to someone further away from us once while waiting near Hard Rock to get in, and once again at the turnstiles). I'm starting to get worried at this point...it's the end of a long vacation week for us, and I don't think we can physically take nine more hours of baking in direct sunlight to see two hours of HP, considering the park hours were posted as 9am-10pm.
Then our line starts to move forward...a lot...so we move with it...and then it disperses into non-existence. Uh...what??? We try to ask the same TM near Spiderman what just happened, and he has no idea...just directs us back to the same place. We say we just came from there, where we'd waited probably 90 minutes, and then the line moved forward, then disappeared altogether. He has no answer.
We're pretty much fed up at this point and decided just to walk as close to the Hogsmeade area as we can to at least see the castle from afar. We're stopped in Jurassic Park by a line of security people SCREAMING that no one can go past this point. We try to tell them what happened to us, and all they will say is that we can't go any further, that our issues aren't a security problem, they have to hold this line. We try to ask where the security people were or even TMs, for the further-back sections of the line, because there were no signs, no ropes, nothing, and people were cutting left and right. All they could say was that we had to go back.
So...we gave up, and got in line at Guest Services for a refund. There were quite a lot of people who'd been in that Seuss Landing disappearing line who were there as well. We waited two hours there, during which time a customer service/managerial-looking guy came out and said they were prepared to offer either a refund or a "non-expiring" 1-day/2-park pass to those of us who'd been misdirected. When further pressed by someone who said they wouldn't be back in Florida for a few years, he said the pass would expire at the end of this December but that "it would still be honored". We decided just to get a refund. Well, thankfully we remembered this man's name, because once we got inside, the Guest Services TM said "we're not doing any refunds". It was only when we said that Rich had been outside offering the choice of a pass or a refund that we actually got our money back (after she went in the back to check).
One guy in our Guest Services line actually told the Universal rep, "I understand this was a lot of people, but Disney manages capacity crowds every July 4th and Christmas...just hire them to do your big opening days from now on and you can avoid these problems." I was like
I felt bad for her, she didn't do anything. OH and those lockers are idiotic. They tell you to pay 3 bucks so you can get into your locker...yet....your money is INSIDE of the locker? Um...How in the heck does this make any logical sense?! 
