My wife is a huge HP fan and she had been planning on going to this park for over a year. Some how, I was able to talk her into waiting a week instead of going on opening day and I was also able to convince her to go on a weekday instead of the weekend. I think that this made a enormous difference in our enjoyment of the park. We went on Friday, June 25th and arrived within the first hour of the park opening. We had picked our tickets up the night before after eating dinner at the Latin Quarter in CityWalk. Picking up the tickets early saved us some time and we were able to enter the park without waiting in any line on Friday morning. We started to walk directly to the HP section of the park and were forced to turn around by the park staff. They said the line to HP was in the other direction even though the park map showed that we were headed the right way. We turned around without arguing and followed the mass of people heading to Hogwarts. Along the way, we were misguided several times by park staff toward "the line for Harry Potter" which weaved us in and out of some walkways and paths around different attractions for about 5 minutes only to dump us out into the main walkway only 30 feet from where we had entered and there still was no organized line. Now, I don't mind waiting in line especially for something like a Harry Potter theme park but this was right about the time my BS flag went up and I called shenanigans on the whole fake line. I took out my park map and we walked toward the Harry Potter side of the park on our own, ignoring the park staff when they tried to re-direct us in another direction. We were exiting the Toon Lagoon and walking toward Jurassic Park when we found the end of the largest line I have ever seen. I consulted the map and decided this line was way too long to wait in. I attempted to ask one of the park staff how long the wait is and they explained that it would be at least two or three hours. At this point, it was almost 11:00 so we decided to follow the line to see how long it really was... and it was huge. We followed it all the way to the harry potter entrance and I was able to get close enough to take some pictures. We spoke to a girl with a clipboard and asked about wait times. She said that it will take several hours if we wait in the line and that at 3pm, they will stop making people wait and open the gates of the Harry Potter section to everyone. I stepped away to take some more pictures while my wife continued to talk to the girl with the clipboard. I'm not sure what my wife said, but a few minutes later, we were entering the magical world of Harry Potter. We went directly to the Forbidden Journey (the inside of Hogwarts was amazing) and waited another 45 minutes to ride. After the F.J., we went to Three Broomsticks and had a Butter Beer. We spent a few more minutes walking around the village and then went to enjoy the rest of the park. After lunch, some rides and a show, we decided to go back to the HP side of the park and were able to enter without waiting in line. We enjoyed some pumpkin juice while checking out the shops and some of the smaller attractions we missed the first time and then we called it a day. Overall, I was pleased with the experience but I would advise against going on a weekend and if possible, wait until summer is over, it will be cooler and there will be much smaller crowds. Oh, and have a Butter Beer.... they are delicious.
