Were you at the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

I can’t believe it’s been 10 years!!

My comments won’t help as I wasn’t there, but I remember watching the news footage of the crowds stretching back through CityWalk for HOURS. I don’t think I’ll ever forget those pictures :-)

I WAS able to experience WWOP a month later and it was perfect - that was the only time I was willing to wait in line the better part of an hour for Forbidden Journey - but it was worth it.

I’ll be interested to read any stories from folks who WERE there for the opening.

I was at Epcot the day Wizarding World opened and it was a slow day :D

I did see it during the soft opening period and many times that summer after that. It really was an amazing addition that turned the fortunes of UO around overnight as they went from bleeding money to being slammed every day for years. Harry Potter was a godsend for our local economy because we were still deep in the recession and Disney's focus was much more on DLR at the time with nothing really going at WDW since Everest, without Potter i'm sure it would have taken a lot longer to recover.

The most memorable thing for me was the period before the regular soft openings when they were doing the hotel preview mornings, and a lot of people thought it was going to soft open on those days. The hotel people were streaming out and big crowds would gather at the rope in Lost Content waiting for a possible soft opening while the Universal event staff would just stand there and yell "There will NOT be a soft opening today! Please don't wait here because it will NOT open today!" and big crowds of people just waited there all day anyway (and of course it didn't open haha).

Robert, I don’t suppose as part of it you’ll be dragging up clips of the celebrity apprentice episode where it was featured?

I've got something else in mind, actually.