Archive: Opinions

We must have attended Universal Orlando's Diagon Alley on the slowest of days, the Wednesday after Thankgiving when kids were back in school, and before the school vacation rush.  My wife had read advice that one should go as soon as the park opens and run immediately to the Potter exhibit, not even stopping at Starbuck's, to beat the crowds.  So we did that, but, as it turned out we didn't have to wait in line for anything.  We hit that sweet spot of slow days, which made our visit a lot more enjoyable than it might have been.  Indeed, they had to hustle us into an entryway next to Ollivander's wand-shop. Curious as to what was inside, we allowed ourselves to be swept inside with a small group of park-goers, small enough to, perhaps, be disappointing to the Harry potter character actors, but with at least one child.  They only needed one.

An actor playing Ollivander picked this child to be the one whose wand would choose her, and he went through some scripted shenanigans with a couple of wands that made the wrong kind of magic happen before he picked one that worked wonders.  He handed that wand to the young girl as a door opened into the shop.  He informed the girl and, ostensibly, her parents that they could purchase her wand in the shop.  What parent could say no after a buildup like that?

In the Harry Potter books and movies Diagon Alley is a sort of wizard's shopping mall in Hogsmeade, a town near Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  The Orlando version is the same -- mostly a series of shops.  It really has only one or two rides (there are more in another park if you choose to pay for the multi-park ticket, which gets you a ride between parks on the Hogwarts Express), and not much in the way of actors recreating scenes from the beloved series beyond Ollivander.

For Universal, Diagon Alley is nothing short of a magic money machine.  That wand cost $55.

I did a calculation based on the idea that 2 million visitors purchase interactive wands.  I based this on attendance statistics from articles I could find on the California Universal park that reported attendance of 8.1 million the first year, rising to over 10 million in 2018 (I couldn't find stats for Orlando).  Then I took two million off for people who may not have visited Diagon Alley, and divided the remainder by four on the grounds that a family of four would buy at least one wand.  I came up with a 2018 gross of $110,000,000, and that's just for one park's wand sales (there are several around the world, not to mention an online gift shop).  So it is just a guess, but I suspect it's not far off the mark.

Not bad for something that is essentially a stick in a fancy box.  When we were kids my sister went around selling rocks she had picked up around the neighborhood, door to door.  My mother was mortified and made her go back and return the money.  After visiting the wand shop I'm thinking my sister had the right idea!

And that's just one item.  You can get wands that don't do anything for $49, Hogwarts robes for $125, and even a small box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans™ costs $12. A four pack of chocolate frogs goes for $49.95.  I think we paid $8 for a plastic cup of butter beer (it is non-alcoholic), and actually tasty, but seriously?  It reminded me of the jokes that used to go around that they ought to call Starbucks 'Eight Bucks".

When we visited the Universal Studios Orlando park several years ago, I couldn't help feeling that it was a faint shadow of the Disney parks in terms of attention to detail, finishes, and materials used to create the buildings.  That is not the case at Diagon Alley.  It is a beautifully rendered recreation of the Diagon Alley in the movie, and most of the shops are real.


So what do the interactive wands do? At various spots you look for brass plaques set in the stone alleyway.  Interactive maps come with a map of these spots, along with the proper hand motions and magic words to use that make something magic happen at each spot.  Some of these effects were obviously just projections on screens, but others were more substantial, such as the popular spot where the right wand wave would make a torrent of water fall on unsuspecting wanderers.

If you think I am exaggerating, I can tell you that even on this not very busy day at Diagon Alley many children and adults were wearing wizard school robes, and my one-in-four wand sales was based on observation -- there were a lot of people lining up at those plaques to make their wands work their magic.  My subjective observation was that just about every kid had one.  And it wasn't just kids wearing Harry Potter costumes or waving wands.  A couple in, I guessed, their 60s had lunch at the table next to ours in the Hogwarts Castle Great Hall, all decked out in their Gryffindor robes.

When I taught theater we talked a lot about creating a suspension of disbelief.  This meant that you could convince the audience of anything as long as you created the dramatic rules of a play and then stuck to them.  For example, if you established that a boy could instantly grow a beanstalk using magic beans in one scene, and later in the play, someone grows a beanstalk but forgets the beans... well that breaks the illusion that you need those beans. In the books Harry was not a wealthy boy!  And his wand did actual magic.  $55 bucks for a stick pretty much brought back my disbelief, especially when that poor girl's parents got stuck for the tab.

For the most part it was tastefully presented, but the sheer volume of commercialism sometimes intruded to mar the illusion.  Essentially you pay over $100 for a day in the park so you can go shopping.  I can accept that as part of my suspension of disbelief. However, even if my estimate were twice as much as the actual wand sales total, it wouldn't have hurt to give that girl the wand that, after all, had 'chosen' her.  Giving a few children wands that choose them wouldn't make any discernible dent in park profits, and it would create a good deal of goodwill.  Because anyone who has been a parent knows that being manipulated into making expensive purchases for their children is uncomfortable at best.  

How crass was it was to put this girl's parents in a situation where they couldn't win -- either pony up or be the worst parents in the wizarding world -- when they had already spent hundreds to get their family into the park in the first place?  Watching it happen so artlessly quickly suspended my suspension.

And seriously, Universal, $12 for a little box of jelly beans?  Forget dollars -- jelly beans should be the new currency!

Our hotel got into the spirit of fleecing the tourists, so maybe it's an Orlando thing, not just a park thing.  A very friendly hotel lady tried to talk us into sitting through a 90 minute presentation about Orlando time shares on our one day in Orlando, offering us reduced park ticket prices if we said yes.  The very friendly hotel lady became decidedly chilly toward us when we said no.  That kicked off a seies of unfortunate experiences in that particular hotel, all to do with the hotel wanting more money for things we didn't want.

I admit I am a bit envious that I didn't think of something like this where people would flock to spend ridiculous wads of cash for silly things, or things that disappear -- not like magic, but because lets face it, it won't take long for that chocolate frog four-pack to disappear.  In the world of finance they call that swallowing your losses.


Full disclosure -- it was fun.  It was a lot of fun.  The beautifully rendered set was amazingly detailed, inside and out.  Some of the shops were several stories high with all kinds of magical astrolabes, book shelves, and many wonders to behold.  The mystery begins at the entrance to Diagon Alley, which is not marked or obvious in any way.  You kind of have to know to go in, and when you do the spare London Street is nothing to the wonder of the magical shopping district.

And we were lucky. Because we came on a very slow day there was no wait time for anything.  My wife remarked that if we had had to wait, the Gringotts Wizarding Bank roller coaster ride would not have been worth it because it was a very short ride.  I did enjoy the painted silhouette of a wizard on the entrance to the Men's room (which, after all, is where you go to take a whiz...).

I don't object to the experience per se.  It was way more fun than going to the mall.  It just seems that the premium prices for stuff just because it resembles something we saw in a movie or read in a book were over the top. And when they rubbed it in, it grated.

Nevertheless, we did buy a wand.  As it turns out Ollivander accepts Apple Pay, a technological wonder that makes your money magically disappear.  For me it was fun to get a bunch of pictures of my wife working wand magic, mastering the most difficult hand gestures to make the magic happen (although I contend she is quite magical even without a wand).

After we got home, however, when I tried using it to make the snow disappear from my driveway, our wand was a big disappointment.

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