UNCgolf
Well-Known Member
Who said anything about being made to choose? I was saying that Diagon Alley is executed to a higher level than Hogsmeade. I WISH Hogsmeade had the money and resources that were had when designing Diagon Alley.
I had hoped that in building additional Wizarding Worlds they would have taken the opportunity to revise the plans to build something fully worthy of the world they are recreating, since money was absolutely an object when they built the first Hogsmeade. Diagon Alley feels like money was no object. Hogwarts deserves a treatment where money is no object - where more of the wondrous experiences of the castle are fleshed out and on offer for guests to explore rather than the single channel through different rooms on the way to the Forbidden Journey load. Of all the locations in the Harry Potter series, Hogwarts is clearly the one with the most potential but in tackling it first they've somewhat backed themselves into a corner.
But alas.
Hogsmeade is disappointing -- I'm really glad I went there first (and still wasn't overly impressed) because Diagon Alley blows it away.
This is something that will never ever happen, but Universal would be better off if they could build a new, bigger Hogsmeade in their new gate and move Forbidden Journey and Hagrid's over there. They could then use that area in IoA for something new. The loss of the Hogwarts Express would hurt (moreso for the stations than the actual train ride), but a better realized Hogsmeade would make up for it.
They should have built a much bigger Hogwarts that you could actually explore, rather than using a couple of locations as the queue for a ride. It's strange that the location which accounts for at least 90% of the HP series is just a facade and ride queue. They could have had a restaurant in the Great Hall, just as one example. That's actually what they should do at the new gate -- just build a huge Hogwarts environment and who cares that it also exists in another park. It would be a gigantic draw that would dwarf anything they will ever get out of Fantastic Beasts.