‘Harry Potter’ Lands In Abu Dhabi Will Make Visitors ‘Part Of The Story’

Theme park visitors will be in the center of the action when Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi’s new ‘Harry Potter’ lands open. (Photo by Murray Close/ Getty Images)

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The three Harry Potter theme park lands coming to Abu Dhabi are set to make visitors “part of the story” in a more immersive way than any of their predecessors according to the boss of the company developing the new attractions.

The new lands are part of a massive expansion of Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi which sets a high bar for Potter to beat as it is already one of the most immersive theme parks in the world. It is thanks to its structure not sorcery.

Warner Bros. World is indoors in order to shield guests from the intense heat in Abu Dhabi which soars past 115 degrees in summer. This also enables the scenery in the park to be more elaborate than if it was outdoors as there is no danger of it getting damaged by wind, overgrown with foliage or faded in the sun.

Warner Bros. World makes the most of this by hiding ride buildings behind internal walls so that they don’t dominate the landscape and shatter the sense of immersion. It doesn’t stop there as the entrances to many of the rides are set into the facades of houses, skyscrapers and caves which are attached to the walls.

It perfectly suits Warner Bros. World’s ethos as, unlike other movie parks, it doesn’t give guests a look behind the scenes of film-making. Instead, it is designed to put them into the worlds where the characters actually live. The Potter lands will be no exception even though they are expected to be the first in the park which are based on live action characters rather than animated ones. There is a lot riding on them.

They will be the first Potter lands in a theme park which carries the brand of the studio that produced all eight movies about the boy wizard. Although there are six existing Potter lands, they are all in Universal parks as Warner handed it the theme park rights in 2007, clearly with an exclusion for the Middle East. It didn’t take long for Universal to work its magic.

When the first of the lands opened at Universal’s Islands of Adventure park in 2010 it broke new ground as the entire area features the same degree of detail that would usually only be found in a ride.

A Whole New World

All but two of the lands are dominated by the soaring spires of Hogwarts Castle. Potter’s alma mater sits on a man-made mountain and at its foot is a full-size recreation of the village of Hogsmeade. Looking like a scene from a Christmas card it features a row of houses which appear to be made of wood and have sharply sloping roofs piled high with snow. Fake smoke billows from the chimneys and the windows are filled with moving models of the bizarre creatures from the films.

Just like in the movies, shops lie behind the façades while the castle contains the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, a high-tech hybrid of a simulator and a roller coaster. Guests sit in seats on what appears to be a wooden bench which, so the story goes, has been enchanted, enabling it to fly alongside Harry on his broomstick. The seats have an over-the-shoulder harness as although the ride doesn’t go upside down, it moves at angles which none of its rivals can copy.

That’s because, ingeniously, the bench is attached to a robot arm which itself is moving on a track down below on the floor. This allows it to stop in front of huge curved projection screens and move in time with the images on them to make it seem like the riders are climbing, swooping and diving with Harry. The land is also home to a one-of-a-kind roller coaster with seats set into motorcycles and sidecars. At one point it races up a vertical stretch of track before dropping down in reverse and at another, it comes to a standstill in the dark on a piece of track which drops straight down on a giant elevator.

Another of the Potter lands features a recreation of the Dickensian Diagon Alley. At the end of the street is the imposing Gringotts bank with its colossal marble columns and gleaming chandeliers hanging down from a domed ceiling. It is actually the queue area for an innovative roller coaster that turns to face towering 3D screens giving riders the impression they are being chased through the vaults of the bank.

The latest Potter attraction is in Orlando’s new Epic Universe theme park and is hidden behind a building in a life-size recreation of a 1920s Parisian street. The ride is supposedly set in a magical elevator but is actually a ride car which rises and falls as it roves around.

Using Every Trick In Their Spell Books

Universal’s designers have used every trick in their spell books to make the rides as immersive as they come. However, riders are still essentially treated as anonymous visitors rather than actual students who are staying at Hogwarts and playing a part in an unfolding story. That’s the kind of thing that may be in store for Abu Dhabi.

Talking on a behind the scenes tour of Warner Bros. World attended by this author last week, Julien Kauffmann, chief executive of the park’s operator Miral Experiences, revealed that the new lands will be “extremely immersive, full storytelling. You’re going to be part of the story, you’re going to be part of the Harry Potter experience.”

Kauffmann is a tremendously talented veteran of the theme park industry who spent 15 years at Disneyland Paris eventually becoming its chief transformation officer, a role he held until 2018. He was at the resort during one of its biggest boom periods, ultimately working alongside its pioneering president Catherine Powell and communications supremo Francois Banon.

Thanks to Kauffmann’s magic touch, the resort was transformed from a financial weakling into Disney’s biggest theme park cash cow outside the United States. So big indeed that Disney took full control of the business in 2017 as my colleague forecast in the Daily Telegraph. He then forecast that Disney would pour $2.5 billion (€2 billion) into the resort which was announced in 2018 just before Kauffmann left for American Express where he became chief executive of global business travel in France and Southern Europe. He left for Miral in 2021 and the following year the Potter expansion was announced.

As this author revealed in March, the expansion will make Warner Bros. World the first theme park in the world to feature recreations of both Hogwarts and Diagon Alley as well as the spooky Forbidden Forest. Subsequent scoops revealed that the enchanted flying Ford Anglia from the movies is expected to feature in its flagship ride and the scenery in the lands has been designed to be interactive. It could all play a part in creating a themed environment, the likes of which have never been seen before.

A Spellbinding Experience

Imagine an area where the boundary between the land and the ride is blurred. The environment responds to what the guests are doing as they arrive as trainee wizards. The queue and pre-show for the rides establish their role in the story and the attractions themselves are events occurring within the universe of the land rather than simply a vehicle for showing scenes from the movies. It doesn’t stop there as you emerge into a gift shop and visit food and beverage (F&B) locations that continue the same narrative. It seems to be far from fantasy.

Kauffmann explains that Miral is spending “a lot of time and resources now elevating our retail experience to make it part of the story. So you can imagine, that’s going to be the case with Harry Potter. Harry Potter will be fully immersive down to every single F&B and retail location. That’s really something we want to push.”

This even extends to the products in the shops which are being created bespoke for the lands. As I revealed, just over a year ago, Miral was looking to hire a retail product and graphic designer whose duties included creating designs for new products which will be sold in the Potter lands. Testimony to this, Kauffmann adds that “we’re building new rides, we’re going to do new F&B, new retail. But again, most of all, we’re going to build a whole new, fully immersive experience that you’ve never seen before.”

In-keeping with the ethos of Warner Bros. World, it is understood that the Abu Dhabi Potter lands will take guests deep inside Hogwarts castle with likely locations including the students’ dorms, the creepy Chamber of Secrets and the moving grand staircase, none of which have ever been showcased in Universal’s lands.

They do however feature in the tours behind the scenes of the Potter movies in London and Tokyo. They were developed by Thinkwell, a division of themed entertainment titan TAIT, which is the creative consultant on the Potter expansion and also worked on Warner Bros. World. All of the props and scenery in the tours are either originals or built from the original blueprints so they give guests the same breathtaking experience that the actors had on the sets. It blurs the boundary between fantasy and reality in dramatic fashion which could be just what Warner Bros. World is looking for.

An indication of the glow it could give comes from Brian Roberts, chief executive of Universal’s owner Comcast, who said in 2020 that during the previous year “in some of our parks Harry Potter drove incremental attendance of about two million people.” It’s music to the ears of Abu Dhabi’s government which invests in its theme parks in order to attract tourists and generate a new source of revenue. This diversifies its economy away from fossil fuels which built its fortune but are beginning to run out.

Theme parks have the capacity to welcome millions of people and act as beacons to attract them from afar which explains why they are the crown jewel of Abu Dhabi’s diversification strategy.

It aims to attract 39.3 million visitors and create 178,000 jobs by the end of 2030 and Potter could be crucial to hitting those targets. As I revealed in Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper, the lands are due to open in 2029 which is just enough time for it to cast its spell.

Additional research by Chris Sylt