11th Birthday Hogwarts Trip

[knhawkins]

Hi everyone! My son is turning 11 this year and we're taking him to Hogwarts after he gets his acceptance letter in October. My question concerns the best way to navigate the parks, especially with the shortened hours.

As a Harry Potter purist, I'd want him to go to Diagon Alley then take train to Hogwarts...but is this the best way to go?

My concern with that plan is we can only do Hogwarts Express once a day--so how would we easily get back to Universal from IOA? Would it even be worth it?

We could do Hogsmead first then take train over--but that just seems...backwards to me?

We have early park entrance and will be in both parks for 2 whole days. Did anyone else do anything similar? I just want to make this as magical as I can for my son! Thanks for any insights/advice!

 

[Love Tink]

Hi everyone! My son is turning 11 this year and we're taking him to Hogwarts after he gets his acceptance letter in October. My question concerns the best way to navigate the parks, especially with the shortened hours.

As a Harry Potter purist, I'd want him to go to Diagon Alley then take train to Hogwarts...but is this the best way to go?

Yes, in my opinion, this is the best way to go. The London/Diagon Alley section is newer and thus more busy. You will want to go there first and enjoy it before it gets too crowded. The Hogsmeade area still gets somewhat crowded, but not as much as the new area.

My concern with that plan is we can only do Hogwarts Express once a day--so how would we easily get back to Universal from IOA? Would it even be worth it?

Why can you only ride it once a day? We rode it several times each day when we were there.

If you only want to ride it once a day for some reason, you can also walk from park to park. The entrances are only a few minutes' walk from each other. We changed parks both ways - out front if we were closer to the front of the park, using the train if we were closer to the back.

In our experience, the train was not crowded early in the day at all. It did get slightly more crowded in the late afternoon and evening.

We have early park entrance and will be in both parks for 2 whole days. Did anyone else do anything similar? I just want to make this as magical as I can for my son! Thanks for any insights/advice!

We were there for three days and we did two early entry days at US and one at IoA. The IoA (Hogsmeade) day was really fun because it was really empty - very few people around. The US days were more crowded, but still nice because we got on Gringotts without a wait, walked into Ollivanders, my son could use his interactive wand without a crowd, the stores were empty, etc.

 

[bumbershoot]

What a fun idea.

I'm still sort of hoping it's all real and my dude WILL actually get some sort of letter. Not that I love the idea of boarding school, but *magical* boarding school? I'm cool with that. (of course, there's the issue that he's not from England, so he wouldn't be going to Hogwarts, but some odd American magical school LOL)

 

[Dee2013]

EE is not at both parks. They did this for crowd control in the summer. It may change again, or switch which park has EE. Right now it's Diagon Ally.

 

[RMulieri]

EE is not at both parks. They did this for crowd control in the summer. It may change again, or switch which park has EE. Right now it's Diagon Ally.

This is correct. Only the studios and Diagon alley are open for early entry now( they also have Despicable me open for early entry).They may go back to both parks during peak times ( Christmas/summer) but that is not official).
I agree, doing Diagon alley first is probably the way to go and you can ride the HE as much as you want.The one ride rule was put in place if they needed it for peak times, but thus far , the express has not generated the HUGE waits they thought they would have.So that rule has not been enforced

 

[knhawkins]

Thanks for clearing up my misunderstanding on the HE--all the websites and guides I could get my hands on said once a day--and could find nothing that said otherwise, so that's a relief! All right! I think I've got it all in hand now...YAY! Definitely think we'll do Gringotts, Ollivanders, then the HE before going to Hogsmead. Oh, and by the way, do you guys know if you can get away with putting your wand in your shirt/pocket on the rides or will they still make you get lockers? Thanks!

You guys are the best!

 

[RMulieri]

Thanks for clearing up my misunderstanding on the HE--all the websites and guides I could get my hands on said once a day--and could find nothing that said otherwise, so that's a relief! All right! I think I've got it all in hand now...YAY! Definitely think we'll do Gringotts, Ollivanders, then the HE before going to Hogsmead. Oh, and by the way, do you guys know if you can get away with putting your wand in your shirt/pocket on the rides or will they still make you get lockers? Thanks!

You guys are the best!

Nothing can be carried on gringotts or Forbidden journey,You need to use the ride lockers