All About Louie: Wizarding World of Harry Potter (Universal Studio Osaka Japan)

Day 5: Universal Studio Osaka

And I finally have the time to share these pictures from Universal Studio Osaka! After n’th years right?!

As I have mentioned before, I LOVE HARRY POTTER. I’ve read the books, watched the movies and even read tons of fanfiction while waiting for the movies to come out. I’ve been a fan since I was in High school. Potterhead right? I ship "parings" depending on my mood, mix and match them, etc. During our planning, my travel buddies didn’t want to go to Osaka because they said that we don’t have enough time. We were only supposed to go for a 4-day trip but I insisted that we extend it and go to Universal Studio. They were saying that I’ve been to USS (Singapore) tons of time so what else will I need to see there? I was like, “but there’s Harry Potter World in Osaka”. After successfully convincing them, we decided to extend the trip to 6 days and include Osaka and USJ to our itinerary.

Initial reaction upon reaching USJ? With my eyes looking everywhere, “can we please go to HP World now?!” 😍

Unfortunately, due to the huge number of visitors, USJ had a specific entry policy for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (WWoHP). They will only allow a specific number of people to enter at a time. This would mean that you can’t enter the park anytime you want. The entry interval is every 30 minutes and once they reach the maximum number of people, they will stop distributing the tickets. There is no limit on how long you can stay inside the WWoHP, as long as you enter on your scheduled time. Better come early to have more time inside WWoHP. 😉

We stayed there the longest! We just love this set!

I joined the queue and ordered three (3) Butterbeer for our celebratory toast! Cheers to finally being a part of the Wizarding World! 😆

We went to Madam Malkin’s to buy our school robes. Then to Ollivanders to get our wands. Of Course, we didn’t forget to buy our wizarding snack (chocolate frogs, every flavor bean, and pumpkin juice) from Honeydukes. ^_^

Kidding aside, there are 2 main rides in WWoHP. The Flight of the Hippogriff and the HP Forbidden Journey. The Queue was so long! Minimum waiting time was approximately 120 minutes. That’s 2 hours of waiting! Heck! Since we’re already here, might as well join the queue…

And the waiting begins… I’m so glad that I always bring my Aveen spray with me. It actually helped lessen the heat while we were waiting. Keeps my brother cool and lower his temper as well. 💦

Unfortunately, we had to budget our time hence we agreed to forgo riding the Flight of the Hippogriff. We were very curious about the ride “HP Forbidden Journey” and I say we made the right decision on this one. It was so Worth it! We love it! If it weren’t for the long queue, we would have ridden it again.

After the ride, we were just on time for the exhibition between Durmstrang and Beauxbaton We love their performance! I was fascinated with their acting and I really enjoyed listening to the MC speak in English then translate the lines in Japanese. I was like “OMG! Ang galing ni Ate mag Japanese!”. I’ll share the performance video later in a separate post. 😀

AN: I really commend Universal Studio for having such great performers. I’ve been to two (2) of their theme park and I always enjoy watching their scheduled live performances.

As much as I’d like to stay in WWoHP the whole day, I have to consider my travel companions and agreed to leave to visit the other attractions/rides. Just because my brother is so excited to buy a “minions” popcorn storage. And so, the search for the minion booth happened. It actually took us about an hour before we found it and bro-bear had to join the queue again. 😅

BTW: USJ also have their own version of Character Parade. It is usually at the evening an hour before the theme park close.