In the Intensely Competitive Theme Park World of Orlando, Will The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Prove a Game-Changer?

When Universal Studios opened the second of its theme parks in Orlando, Florida, the one called Islands of Adventure, it hoped that by jamming super-scary roller coasters, Jurassic Park, Spiderman, and Dr. Seuss, into one fun park, it would at last pose formidable competition to Walt Disney World a few miles away.

It never really did. Though Islands of Adventure enjoys respectable visitor figures, it has been out-done by the constant expansion of Disney parks in Orlando -- not only within each Disney park but in the addition of such new Disney attractions as Animal Kingdom. By creating weeklong passes that sell at an attractive discount, Disney has been able to give visitors a mighty financial incentive to confine their visits solely to Disney properties. They play a hard game out there in Mouseland.

But late this Spring, conditions may change with the opening of Universal's new The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Benefiting from a super-brand that has an irresistible appeal to multitudes of both young people and adults, Universal has bet tens of millions of dollars on the proposition that people coming to Orlando will have to spend at least one full day with Harry, Ron, Hermione, and the rest.

It's important to point out that The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is not simply a single structure, but an entire, multi-acre area of the magical scenery portrayed in this worldwide best-seller among books and movies (and recently photographed from an Air Florida Helicopter, and spread in revealing pictures onto the web, of buildings and exhibits under construction). From those apparently-unauthorized helicopter photographs, it's probable that visitors will not only see Hogwarts -- the castle-like School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where Harry and his friends learn their craft -- but also the invisible section of London where the wizard population lives (unseen by muggles like us), the train station from which they board an otherwise-invisible rail track to Hogwarts, the village close to Hogwarts where Harry and his friends down tankards of ginger beer, the various classrooms and dorm-like residences, the stadium where wizarding students play Quidditch (on flying broomsticks), and of course the magisterial dining hall where students and faculty gather for meals and grand occasions. I assume you will also be able to visit the much-depicted office of kindly but strong-minded headmaster Dumbledore.

All this is heady stuff. Can you imagine yourself visiting Orlando and NOT paying a visit to Harry and Hogwarts? The prospect of a real dilution in their visitor numbers has proved so troubling to the Disney people that, this week, they scheduled a two-day press conference in Orlando for travel journalists, designed to show off all the stupendous new additions to Disney that will keep visitors confined to those world-famous parks.

That conference was attended by travel writer Jason Cochran, he of the Pauline Frommer Travel Guides (he wrote the Pauline Frommer guides to Orlando and London), who will co-host the Travel Show with me this coming Sunday from noon to 2pm EST. Although he and I haven't yet discussed what he actually learned, we'll be devoting the first ten minutes or so of the program to Jason's report on the Disney counter-offensive. I have read various tweets that Jason has thus far posted to www.twitter.com/bastable (Jason's twitter address), and I gather (but I might be wrong) that he has not been overly impressed by Disney's recent additions  -- or with their plans to withstand the assault from Harry Potter.

In any event, if you have any interest in the world of theme parks (which play such a major role in the world of travel), you'll want to tune in at 12:05pm EST. But in advance of that awesome discussion, I leave you with the following question: Can you imagine going to Orlando and not visiting Harry Potter?