Expanding Epic Universe, Part II: An Armchair-Imagineered Build-Out of Universal Orlando’s Cosmic Theme Park

THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER: Place Cachée

Background

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how pivotal the Wizarding World of Harry Potter has been to Universal Parks, and I also don’t think we need to recount all of that here. For the purposes of narrative integrity, though, I should at least reiterate that two “sub-titled” lands have existed under the umbrella:

• HOGSMEADE, a fantastical, snow-topped Scottish village loomed over by Hogwarts Castle, appropriately found at the literary Universal Islands of Adventure (and subsequently cloned to Osaka, Hollywood, and Beijing);
• DIAGON ALLEY, the bustling, London-set streetscape of shops anchored by a dark ride through the wizarding bank Gringotts, fitting perfectly and exclusively into the “urban” Universal Studios Florida

The idea that Universal’s two parks would each contain a “half” of the Wizarding World (such that you needed to visit both in order to get the “full” experience) was – depending on your perspective – either a novel, creative, and clever conceit or an insidious money grab. But the result is the same; suddenly, we ended up with lands with subtitles. (One can imagine, for example, Animal Kingdom’s land being retroactively renamed The World of Avatar: Valley of Mo’ara after California Adventure’s The World of Avatar: Cove of the Ancestors opens… Kinda cool!)

There really wasn’t ever any doubt that a third Universal Orlando park would include a third Wizarding World. But what was at least worth a little online debate was what corner of the series’ world it would bring to life. After all, for all the success of the Harry Potter franchise and all of its inherent theme-park-ability (villages of shops! wands to buy! restaurants to queue for! Butterbeer to drink!), Universal has arguably built itself into a bit of a corner here.

A vast majority of the Harry Potter film series is set in the classrooms, common rooms, and circulation spaces of Hogwarts. When you picture “living” the story of Harry Potter, you might imagine going to Herbology Class or Potions Class; dining in the Great Hall; being sorted; relaxing in your chosen Common Room… It seems obvious that – in the style of the “Hogwarts Legacy” video game, Hogwarts Castle itself could be an entire “Living Land,” plus a hotel, plus a table service restaurant, and then some. Alas…

If Universal Creative knew then what they know now, they probably wouldn’t have relegated the entire school to being the briskly-passed-through queue of the Forbidden Journey ride that opened in 2010, but oh well – here we are. Hogwarts is off the table, incarnate (however incompletely) as a brief walkthrough at Islands of Adventure. Other school-adjacent locales (like the Forbidden Forest and, of course, the village of Hogsmeade) are also checked off via the original Wizarding World land.

Obviously, Diagon Alley and its Gringotts Bank are encountered at key moments in the films, too, and they exist beautifully as the second Wizarding World land in Orlando. Maybe the next closest space would be the London-based Ministry of Magic with its tiled interiors, but rumors long suggested that that would come to Diagon Alley as a sort of ‘Phase II’ expansion. So beyond Hogsmeade and London… what else is there?

Despite the strength and memorability of the Potter world, it’s actually quite insular. Aside from Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Diagon Alley, the surprisingly few other spaces encountered here or there in the films or books (like the Dursley’s home on Privet Drive, or Malfoy Manor, or the village of Godric’s Hollow) all fall short of feeling like essential spaces to visit. Even if they were, they aren’t sufficiently “theme-park-able” – they don’t have places to eat and shop; they don’t have ways to conceal showbuildings; and they aren’t “important” enough to warrant an E-Ticket ride anyway.

Basically, even if the demand for another Wizarding World land existed, did the franchise canon really allow for it? Luckily, coinciding with Epic’s concepting, Rowling was hard at work expanding the canon.

In 2016 – five years after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II officially brought the ten-year, eight-film franchise to its conclusion – a new Wizarding World film hit theaters. The J.K. Rowling-written prequel had actually been announced in 2014, when the series creator was still a widely-beloved, uncontroversial figure we were all rooting for, and when the notion of a Potter spin-off set in the early 20th century sounded kinda fun!

Back then, we knew only that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them would follow a “magizoologist” named Newt Scamander who would eventually write the textbook of the same name that would be on Harry Potter’s required reading list at Hogwarts. But this film – set in the 1920s – would exist far from the Wizarding World we knew. The notion was clever, and maybe suggested that we’d see a dashing, wizarding equivalent of Indiana Jones; a pulp adventure flick following a heroic adventurer uncovering magical beasts and ancient temples. It sounded like a winning formula, and a captivating way to prove that the “Wizarding World” contained many stories – including plenty with zero connection to Harry or Dumbledore or Hogwarts at all!

Suffice it to say that – for reasons we explored in a standalone feature – that wasn’t the case. Instead, Fantastic Beasts was… kind of a dud. With all due respect, the film failed to connect with audiences, create memorable characters or locations, or satisfactorily expand the “Wizarding World”… which is especially unfortunate given that in a fashion only matched by James Cameron’s Avatar, Rowling has decreed in the meantime that the film wouldn’t be just one, but two – no, three – no, five! – entries.

The second film (The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018) and the third (The Secrets of Dumbledore in 2022) slowly revealed the series’ disappointing bend toward a straightforward Potter-prequel, bringing us back (as ever) to Hogwarts and Hogsmeade – just told via a cast of characters and CGI creatures that failed to excite fans. Increasingly weighed down by a lack of momentum, Rowling’s divisive political opinions, and the curious criminality of series star Ezra Miller, films two and three declined even further in critical and commercial success until Warner Bros. quietly decided that the fourth and fifth films would never be made – honestly, kind of a shocking, mid-story end for a sub-franchise of the defining intellectual property of the 21st century so far!

… and surely, troubling news for Universal, who had already quietly settled on its third theme park Wizarding World latching onto the Fantastic Beasts series…

Yes, Epic Universe’s Wizarding World had already been locked in conceptually as the Paris of the 1920s that we saw (or, y’know, didn’t) in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Even if that sounds like it would be kind of compelling on paper, the film itself doesn’t make much of a case for it. In fact, the Paris we see in the movie is like, unrelentingly dreary, dismal, and unappealing (see above).

It’s sort of surprising that the same Stuart Craig who gave Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Diagon Alley such definitive form via the Harry Potter movies would devise such a romance-free interpretation of Paris. The CGI Paris glimpsed in the films is colorless and hazy with few if any defining landmarks.

Technically, the land is meant to specifically embody Paris’ “Place Cachée” (plass ka-SHAY, or “Hidden Place”) – the French equivalent of Diagon Alley, where witches and wizards shop, mingle, and prepare for their school year at France’s Beauxbatons Academy. But even those who saw the second Beasts film are unlikely to recognize any stores or architectural features given that Newt and company don’t actually spend any meaningful time or encounter anything substantial there. It’s never even referred to by name.

There are probably a number of logistical and “studio-political” reasons Universal couldn’t or wouldn’t pivot away from a land set in and styled around the Beasts films even once the series began to offer diminishing returns at the box office. But clearly, they began to strategize how to ensure that their third Wizarding World would be a must-see even if Fantastic Beasts didn’t capture the public consciousness in the way that Harry Potter had.

Initially, the land was rumored to just contain a Beasts-themed ride centered on France’s Ministère des Affaires Magiques. Then, insiders began to suggest that Universal was considering a failsafe – adding a Harry Potter-themed ride set in the British Ministry of Magic that had originally been planned as an expansion of Universal Studios Florida’s Diagon Alley (where the London-based ride would obviously be a better narrative fit). It would’ve been an odd mix, to be sure, with the land featuring two Ministries of Magic… of course, then the Beasts ride disappeared entirely.

The result is that this third Wizarding World is a bit of a narrative mess. The portal from Celestial Garden carries us back to a 1920s Paris that – thankfully – is imbued with much more color, life, and style than the one seen in the movies! Its Beasts connection is obvious given that various Rowling-invented (sometimes unappealing) magical creatures created just for the spin-off franchise can be found in store windows and uncovered via “Second Generation” wand interactives. The character Newt also makes an appearance in the land’s elaborate, E-Ticket-caliber show, LE CIRQUE ARCANUS (that’s “lay SERK AR-kah-new”), which is likewise inspired by a traveling circus seen in The Crimes of Grindelwald.

But the land’s only ride is set 300 miles and nearly a century away. There’s at least a plot device to explain why the land’s London-set E-Ticket is connected to Place Cachée. In the Wizarding World, the “Floo Network” is a loosely-defined system whereby wizards can toss “Floo Powder” into a fireplace to turn its flames green, then walk right into them to be transported to any other Floo-enabled fireplace. Apparently, France takes it a step further with the “Metro Floo,” inspired by Paris’ white-tiled Metro mass transit system stations.

Via the Metro Floo, we’re able to step into a fireplace in France and emerge in the iconic fireplace hall of the British Ministry of Magic That at least excuses the geographic distance. As to how it can be at least several decades later as well (whether you follow the book timeline of the ’90s or the movie timeline of “present day”), the answer is somewhat vague. A Time Turner (a rare, carefully-protected magical device that allows wizards to travel through time) is the land’s “medallion” in the Chronos and above its portal, so that’d presumably be the excuse in the land’s show bible. The truer answer is probably that 99% of guests think nothing of it and require no exposition around it, so who cares?

It doesn’t hurt that the resulting ride – HARRY POTTER AND THE BATTLE AT THE MINISTRY – is not just regarded as Epic Universe’s signature ride, but perhaps the best Universal attraction ever designed; and more to the point, potentially the only ride on Earth whose scale and scope can go toe-to-toe with Disney’s “U-Ticket” – Star War: Rise of the Resistance. Cleverly, Battle at the Ministry actually takes place after the last film, allowing us a glimpse into the Wizarding World after the screen adaptations end. There, we can tie up a loose end by attending the trial (and attempted breakout) of notorious baddie Dolores Umbridge – a villain who tends to garner more white hot hatred than even the series’ “big bad,” Voldemort.

As with Super Nintendo World, we can debate at another time whether Universal would’ve been smarter to stick Battle at the Ministry in Universal Studios Florida (again, where it was reportedly designed to go, and where it would’ve gone very far in bolstering the resort’s most underbuilt park) instead of porting the concept to a third park. But here we are!

The ride deposits guests back in the Ministry atrium where they’re welcome to linger before taking a return Floo to France (and back in time) to reemerge on the streets of Paris. Anyway, the unusual arrangement bestows the land with its equally unusual name: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic. And it’s this multi-era, multi-locale land that becomes ours to play with as part of our Build-Out…! So without further ado, here’s what I came up with.

Build-Out

The first thing we can do, to my thinking, is reframe our fundamental approach to this world to try to lessen the schism between the land and its anchor ride. I actually don’t think this is as much a heavy left as we might think. First, let’s just pull the rug out and call the overall land “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Place Cachée.”

We aren’t going to develop any brand equity around the French version of Diagon Alley if we’re all too anxious to speak its name aloud and pretend that that’s not what the land is. (It also makes as little sense as calling Diagon Alley “The Wizarding World of Harry Potter: Gringotts” or Galaxy’s Edge “Star Wars: Star Destroyer.”)

It’s not like the French is the hurdle here. The land already features Café L’air De La Sirène, Le Goblet Noir, Cosme Acajor Baguettes Magique, Bièraubeurre, and the aforementioned Le Cirque Arcanus – all of which have left well-meaning theme park podcasters pre-excusing their terrible pronunciations for years, to say nothing of Orlando tourists. So I think we should feel comfortable calling the land “Place Cachée,” which actually feels comfortably pronounceable and describes the land better than “Ministry of Magic.”

With it, I’d make a change some of you may find controversial. I say that we officially advance the land’s timeline to the more or less “present day” we’re meant to envision Harry Potter occupying. For one, I think that doing so would effectively require no changes in the land whatsoever aside from, I guess, changing Newt’s role in the show to a great-grandson or a Hogwarts exchange student or something – changes that I suspect approximately zero people would be upset by and would not change the land’s emotional resonance whatsoever.

If the primary reason no one complains about the time gap between the land and ride is that people just don’t pay that close of attention to things, then the second reason must be that unless you’re devoted to Fantastic Beasts lore or read extensively about the land, you’re unlikely to divine that it’s supposed to be the 1920s anyway. Even the would-be giveaways – like the advertisements, or the music, or the circus, or the French flappers, or the art nouveau architecture – is just stuff that we broadly associated with romantic France in general, and even more so when you layer “magic” on top.

Removing the time gap between Place Cachée and the Battle at the Ministry ride immediately offers us two fantastic opportunities for our Build-Out…

First, Place Cachée now changes context from a place we were supposed to have seen on screen in Fantastic Beasts but kinda didn’t notice or connect with into something much more compelling: a place that we haven’t seen at all, but – duh! – has to exist out there…! Place Cachée provokes us into thinking that hey, the Wizarding World is probably a lot bigger than we think or have seen before, and indeed, instead of merely following in the footsteps of the characters we know, in France we are able to (brace yourself) “Live Your Own [Wizarding World] Adventure.”

Yes, in the style of Batuu, Place Cachée gives designers and guests a chance to play in the sandbox of the Wizarding World, imagining what goes on beyond the little microcosm we’ve seen on screen. (That actually fits well with Battle at the Ministry, which again is “post-canon”.) This is not a place where Harry, Ron, and Hermione visited… We get to forge our own path here, and since (unlike Galaxy’s Edge) we have Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, and even the Ministry to return to when we crave familiarity, it’s okay to find ourselves somewhere new.

For example, I really love that after decades of hearing from Ollivander’s that “The wand chooses the Wizard, Mr. Potter,” Place Cachée is bold enough to suggest that what we’ve understood as the “rules” of the Wizarding World aren’t always universal! As we learn from the proprietors of this land’s wand shop – COSME ACAJOR BAGUETTES MAGIQUE – the French aren’t so keen on the limiting notion of a “soulmate” wand that you’re stuck with whether you like it or not, and in fact believe that the wizard ought to have a say in the matter, thank you very much!

As a result, Cosme’s shop is practically an art nouveau wand department store where you needn’t wait around for a wand to choose you at all. Think about what that means philosophically for Potter devotees! It’s genuinely cool, and again offers this really compelling glimpse into what a Wizarding World land that doesn’t owe allegiance to what we’ve seen before or have accepted as universal truth due to our focus on a single region and culture to this point can be like!

Second, by just dropping the pretense that this is a Paris of the 1920s, we’re able to do something that seems so incredibly obvious: to plaster the land with newspapers, French Metro announcements, and “streetmosphere” characters all chattering about the trial of Dolores Umbridge. This is a trial that the entire Wizarding World wants to be there to witness, and provides us with motivation and context to make the Floo journey to London.

This, to me, feels like it unites and even strengthens both the ride and the land to such an extent that the only reason I can imagine it wasn’t done this way is if Warner Bros. & Rowling required that the land represent Fantastic Beasts, full stop. Just as Galaxy’s Edge sees Kylo Ren storming around demanding to know where the Resistance has holed up in a secret base (blending beautifully into the land’s starring ride), Paris should be buzzing with anticipation, and people recommending we take the Metro Floo across the Channel to try to eke out a seat in the courtroom.

So anyway, to my thinking, that gives us an easy enough “solve” to the land’s framing (as an “oopsies, we thought Fantastic Beasts would be a hit”) and the schism between the land and ride (“yeah, this definitely was meant to go to Diagon Alley”).

To that end, we could also change the “quote” above the land’s portal. The current quote – “For in dreams we enter a world that is entirely our own” – is a nice one, but I don’t feel that it really connects to the land. And even though “Mischief managed” or “You’re a wizard, Harry” would fit the tempo of the other lands’ quotes [“Here we go!” “It’s alive! It’s alive!”], I don’t think they represent the land, either. On my shortlist would be three Dumbledore quotes that I think speak to the nature of this now-reframed, choose-your-own-adventure land:

• “It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities”
• “And now, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure”
• “Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

So onto what’s new…

In the real land, upon reaching the center of the land (in front of the Coupe du Quidditch sign), turning left leads to the Battle attraction while turning right essentially leads to a long stretch of doors that don’t open because the buildings on this side of the land are entirely facades. Indeed, the street terminates in a dead-end plaza that feels like it should have something, but doesn’t. The street directly ahead exists solely to serve as an exit corridor for the Cirque theater, and all the space to the right is where the facades to conceal the planned Beasts attraction were built, just not the showbuilding that would’ve been (and probably sooner rather than later, will be) built behind them.

So what we’ll do here is to extend the path “forward” into a new Parisian city park. Luckily, Universal’s jaw-dropping, full-scale build of a Parisian streetscape allows us to conceal the new showbuilding to the east (with a new ride we’ll discuss momentarily) while at the rear of the land, I envisioned a large-scale church taking shape. I chose the Église Sant-Séverin, a “Flamboyant Gothic” Catholic church, which I thought would provide not just fitting cover for the showbuilding behind it, but a satisfying “weenie” to draw people around the Quidditch shop into this deepest point of the land.

In the park-like space here in the church’s shadow are two highly custom flat rides for the land, each keying off of the idea of a traveling fair coming through Wizarding Paris right as we visit. The first is CARROUSEL DE BÊTES. Anyone who’s visited France will tell you that elaborate, ornate carousels can be found around every turn. As a result, I think this two-story carousel of majestic magical creatures would provide not just a really lovely no-height-requirement ride for the land, but one authentically existing in this hidden street of the magical underbelly of France.

Second is FÊTE DU VELO. In researching for this land, I really fell in love with an authentic antique French amusement ride called a “Velocipede” in which riders would sit atop stylized bicycles and pedal, actually powering the rotating carousel together. These Velocipedes are absolutely lovely to look at, and very much fit the bill of a magical, antique carnival setup in Paris’ Diagon Alley.

But to differentiate it from the carousel next door and modernize the concept, I instead arranged it as a “whip” ride, with guests peddling along straightaways and then whipping through a tight turn at either end of the track. Realistically, our Fête du Velo wouldn’t be human powered (at least, not entirely), but it would create a really memorable, one-of-a-kind, unique family ride that can make narrative sense in this Wizarding World where such flat rides are often far out of bounds.

Of course, the city park that these rides appear set up in would also provide a lovely space for guests to relax beneath shaded trees, sit along a central fountain of spitting magical creatures, and enjoy snacks from a circus cart set up in the lawn. And it would also provide exciting, kinetic views (concealed from the main footprint of the land so as not to break any immersion) of a new, second main attraction.

After all, to the right of the land’s center point is that little dead-end plaza with four trees centered on a small fountain. According to filed permits, it’s here that guests would initially have found the aforementioned “French Ministry” ride (which makes sense – the little plaza in the dead end mimics the secret entrance to the French Ministry as seen in Fantastic Beasts.) We can reactivate this space by finally building a second large showbuilding on this end of the land. In my build-out, I have it contain a new family dark ride / coaster.

To my thinking, guests here would get to step into the French Ministry (which, again, was kinda sorta seen in one of the Beasts films, but at this point we can essentially approach as a “Live Your Own Adventure” expansion of the world since no one but Rowling would seriously hold us to standard here.

Luckily, the bit of the French Ministry’s headquarters we see is beautiful – an enchanted, art nouveau glass dome embedded with magical creature constellations. The sort of verdigris and astrology of it all echoes Celestial Garden in a really nice way. I just think it’s a good fit for this park in general, and more to the point that even those who’ve never seen the Fantastic Beasts films (which, let’s face it, would be a majority of visitors to the park) would appreciate this space and “get it.”

Now listen, I actually tend to think that one of the (quite a few) things that Fantastic Beasts got “wrong” was that we sort of left the tried-and-true creatures of timeless fable behind. The Potter books include literary classics like dragons, unicorns, giant spiders, centaurs, the griffin-like Hippogriff, trolls, et al., then Rowling decided that for Fantastic Beasts, she needed to invent these increasingly artificial, super-saturated, iridescent, nonsensical CGI creatures from scratch, and it feels like a totally different bestiary in a weird, disconnected way.

But I do like the Occamy – a sort of serpentine, beaked, winged dragon whose “magic feature” is that it can grow to fill whatever space it’s placed in. It feels sufficiently adjacent to the creatures we know through the Potter films while also being exceptional and identifiable. (It also makes for a great “walk-around” character puppet, above.

So even if our Place Cachée isn’t explicitly themed to the Fantastic Beasts films, those creatures are prevalent throughout the land and foundational to the design of the French Ministry, so I think we can lean into them here for a new attraction called FLIGHT OF THE OCCAMY. I envisioned using Mack Rides (who manufactured, for example, the Constellation Carousel, Stardust Racers, and Fyre Drill) and their impressive “Inverted Powered Coaster.” As its name implies, this ride system places guests in trains suspended beneath a powered track. The four-across trains can rotate during the ride to face show scenes during dark ride sections, and can accelerate for powered coaster sections, too.

Universal actually has used this ride system at Universal Studios Beijing, where it’s a mostly-outdoor “sight-seeing” aerial trip across Jurassic World – an idea I incorporated into my Build-Out of Islands of Adventure, too. But closer to what we’d be aiming for here is that ride system’s use in a family-scaled dark ride / coaster at Europa Park or at Dubai’s Motiongate where (believe it or not) it’s used in a How To Train Your Dragon ride.

Though obviously the execution of either is well short of what we’d expect from Epic Universe, both give you a sense of how this ride system can merge storytelling and family-sized thrills. I included a segment in mine where riders appear to follow the Occamy’s path through a shattered stained glass window of the church we discussed earlier, slaloming over the city park below before diving back into the Ministry for a finale encounter with a gigantic, Kong-sized Animatronic of the magical roosting dragon.

The result is that our Built-Out Place Cachée embraces the land’s French setting not as an embarrassed obligation to a flopped spin-off, but as a place to live our Wizarding World adventure; where, sure, we can retreat to the familiar via Battle at the Ministry, but where we can discover new food, new shops, and new adventures in a mostly-unexplored part of this universe. We end up with not just that cutting edge dark ride, but a family dark ride / coaster and two unique and artistic flat rides. I like it!