June 18

Mark your calendars, Harry Potter fans. It looks like that's the official opening date for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

I assume by now everyone has read the tantalizing details Universal released in their press packet today. I have full coverage of it coming in Monday's News From Around the World.

In my opinion, it's kind of a catch-22 for Universal. The stuff they have planned seems pretty amazing so, on one hand, they've pretty much got a guaranteed ****+ and incredibly popular attraction in their pocket. They're going to draw in huge crowds for at least the next two years. The problem is going to be, first if they can actually convince those people to come back for another vacation, which is going to be an issue because even though Harry Potter land might equal or, to some people, surpass Disney, basically everything else they have comes up short. And you could argue that the even bigger problem is that they've built an entire park around a movie and book franchise that, while incredibly popular right now, is over with. There's no room to expand because all the books are finished. And even if they remain popular for years to come, where do you go with the land? Nowhere. Once the big fans of today visit it, which pretty much all of them will in the next five years, there's no reason for them to want to come back because there's nowhere else to go with the land.

For now though, Universal has the biggest draw in Orlando and will remain this way for the next three or four years until the new Fantasyland opens.


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