Last weekend was Universal Orlando's "Celebration of Harry Potter", and I have pictures.
GLORIOUS PICTURES.
Universal may not do a huge amount for this event, but there's no extra fee for admission, and it's worth the trip just for the guest costumes. The guests wear and do some amaaaazing stuff, and I will forever love Uni for allowing us adults to dress up. We can only hope it never becomes so much of a security issue that they ban costumes like Disney did. Fingers crossed!
With all the costumes around, HPC feels like a mini-convention in a theme park, and needless to say, the people-watching is fantastic.
It was also nice and chilly (yay 65 degrees!), so no one was sweating through their robes.
As for the park-added elements, you get two expo buildings, a Sorting Hat "experience", and the main stage at the front of the park hosts some presentations and cast Q&As. I promise all of these sound more impressive than they actually are.
The Sorting Hat Experience: they hold a hat over your head, the speaker plays a pre-recorded voice announcing your house. (If you're wearing any merch or express a preference for a House, that's the one you'll get.)
This year the expos were a bit lacking, so many folks were irked after waiting upwards of 3 hours in line just for a photo op (albeit a very cool one,) a tiny handful of costumes/props, and a gift shop.
The main expo building. The yellow building-within-a-building there is the line for the "studio tour" photo op, which averaged 1-2 hours. (After waiting an hour or more to get into this building.)
The only film items on display here were these costumes from Fantastic Beasts:
Let's not talk about how spotlights in a dark room make everything impossible to photograph. Bleh.
Mina Lima's booth was awesome as always:
They're the company responsible for all the posters, packaging, books, and graphic art in all the films:
They had some new Fantastic Beasts prints and postcards out, which are gorgeous:
