Most theme park fans may be all over Disneyland's new Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, but Universal Orlando Resort isn't just going to let this summer go by without making something new and exciting of its own. Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure is a brand new roller coaster at the theme park which just opened to the public, and if you have ever thought that maybe the Harry Potter franchise isn't as popular as it once was, you forget that, because the attraction currently has a 10-hour wait time.
I'm not joking even a little bit. Open up your app for the Universal Orlando resort and you'll see that the newest ride currently has a wait time of 600 minutes.
Needless to say, that's insane. Certainly, standing in lines is one of the things that happens when you go to theme parks, it can't really be avoided, but a wait this long is just crazy. A ten hour wait would basically eat your entire day at the park, you wouldn't be able to do anything else but ride this one attraction. And while it is the newest thing in the park, is it really worth sacrificing literally everything else?
Universal Orlando has the option for guests to purchase the ability to get in a shorter line, but that option doesn't exist for Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure just yet, which might be part of the reason the standby line is so long.
A couple years ago I looked into wait times at the two North American Disney theme parks. The longest wait time this decade that I could verify was a 319 minute wait for Flight of Passage at the then brand new Pandora - World of Avatar at Disney's Animal Kingdom. That happened the summer the ride opened, so it would have been one of the busiest times the ride ever saw. The fact that Hagrid's new roller coaster is seeing a wait time nearly double that is impressive, and also slightly terrifying.
Of course, it has to be said, the new ride is apparently pretty damn awesome. CinemaBlend's Mick Joest got a chance to ride the new coaster before it opened to the public and he loved the experience.
There's a decent chance that nobody will actually end up waiting 10 hours to ride Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure. Wait times are always estimates, and how does a theme park estimate a 10-hour wait time if it's never had that many people waiting for a ride before? Of course, by that argument, the wait time could actually end up being longer.
If there's a silver lining to the wait time, it might be that anybody who is at Universal Orlando Resort today who is cool with skipping the ride might have a really fun time. Disneyland is currently experiencing surprising short lines in the rest of the park now that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge has opened, so maybe the same thing will be happening at Universal since it seems that literally everybody is in line to ride Hagrid's motorbike.
