REVIEW – Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry at Universal Epic Universe
Battle at the Ministry isn't just a ride — it's a full attraction experience, and a major part of that experience is the queue itself. This queue might be the most incredible, breathtaking, massive, beautifully detailed, and longest queue ever created for any ride.
Battle at the Ministry isn't just a ride — it's a full attraction experience, and a major part of that experience is the queue itself. This queue might be the most incredible, breathtaking, massive, beautifully detailed, and longest queue ever created for any ride.
As you step into the entrance of the attraction, you leave behind 1920s Paris and board the Metrofloo. The initial setting is beautifully detailed, capturing the look and feel of a Parisian Metro station. With a little magic, a team member guides you through one of the many Floos — and in an instant, you're not just transported to London, but also sent through time to the 1990s, after the events of Deathly Hallows. Emerging from the Floo, you find yourself standing in the enormous, awe-inspiring atrium of the Ministry of Magic.
The only comparison I can make to the reveal when you step out of the Floo Network is the moment you exit the Resistance transport in Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and find yourself inside the Star Destroyer hangar — but imagine it on an even larger scale. Walking out of the Floo for the first time was one of the most jaw-dropping experiences I've ever had in a theme park. Pictures and videos simply can't capture the true scale and detail of the Ministry of Magic. As you walk toward the massive fountain, you'll spot the giant floating screen, setting the stage for the trial of Dolores Umbridge. Surrounding you are countless office windows, many alive with movement and activity. It's a truly magical moment — and it's only the beginning of what might be one of the largest and most immersive queues ever built for an attraction.
As you whine your way through different areas and offices and back hallways at the Ministry of Magic, the level of detail is still astounding, even as you move through smaller spaces, including a room that has the living portraits of all the former ministers of magic and they're all talking to each other And what I've heard is almost an hour long loop that was created of story. You eventually make your way to Dolores Umbridge's office, where you find an elf, Higgledy, the house elf who formerly served Umbridge. Higgledy is, of course, an animatronic, and she's explaining what's going on all the while all kinds of different magical effects are going on around you as you're in her office. She explains to you that Dolores Umbridge is on trial today. And you'll be boarding an elevator to attend the trial. After you exit your office, you head straight to the loading area. There is no pre-show, which makes sense because the queue and everything going on in it is pretty much the preshow for the attraction.
Your ride vehicle or lift is really unlike anything I've ever experienced before. It's almost like a combination of the Spider-Man ride vehicle and the Tower of Terror ride vehicle. Once you get on the ride vehicle, you buckle your seatbelt, the team member checks you, and then you're on your way.
This ride features the best use of screens I've ever experienced on any attraction. The screens are easily among the highest resolution I've ever seen, with an incredible level of detail, and the CGI is easily the best and most realistic I have ever seen in a ride. But it's not just a screen-based ride — it's an impressive blend of screens, physical sets, animatronics, and moving set pieces, unlike anything I've ever encountered and on a truly breathtaking scale. Some of the sets are massive, and the animatronics are some of the most lifelike I've ever seen. Honestly, if someone had told me there were live actors on the ride, I might have believed them for a moment — that's how fluid and realistic the movements are. We often talk about attractions making you feel like you've stepped into a movie; this one pulls it off better than anything I've experienced. It's a true cinematic journey from start to finish.
As incredible as it is, no attraction is perfect. There are a few moments where some animatronics dip slightly into the uncanny valley, creating a brief sense of unease. However, for the vast majority of the experience, from the very start to the final moments, you are completely immersed in the story in a way that few, if any, other attractions have ever achieved.
After the ride ends, you exit through the atrium, giving you one last chance to take in its awe-inspiring beauty. I think this was a brilliant design choice — instead of immediately funneling you into a gift shop, you're brought back into one of the most stunning parts of the queue, allowing the experience to end on a truly memorable note.
Harry Potter and the Battle of the Ministry is truly one of the most incredible attractions I've ever experienced — a major leap forward in the evolution of dark rides at theme parks worldwide. Between this and Monsters Unchained, Universal's Epic Universe is home to two of the best attractions on the planet. Both rides represent a true technological breakthrough, setting a new standard for what theme park experiences can be. Battle of the Ministry is an absolute must-do every time you visit Epic Universe. As someone who has loved theme parks since childhood, studied the art of attraction design, and now has the privilege of covering them professionally, I can honestly say I can't wait to ride this again and again. It may sound cheesy, but it's genuinely a magical experience.
Make sure you're following ThrillGeek across all of our social media channels for the latest updates from Universal Epic Universe
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Work Begins On Sunday Silence Mural In Downtown Paris
Work Begins On Sunday Silence Mural In Downtown Paris originally appeared on Paulick Report. A new mural celebrating Thoroughbred champion Sunday Silence will soon adorn downtown Paris, Ky., joining the town's growing collection of large-scale public equine art. The mural is a project of the Legends of Bourbon County non-profit organization, in conjunction with Stone Farm, which raised and campaigned the 1989 Horse of the artwork will depict Sunday Silence's iconic victory in the 1989 Kentucky Derby. It is being painted on the side of Hotel Thoroughbred, a new boutique hotel on Main Street that opens in Spring artist Jaime Corum, known for her lifelike equine portraits, will create the mural. Corum has already contributed to the block's artistic landscape with large murals of fellow racing legends Curlin and Secretariat. 'When we were approached about having Sunday Silence celebrated and memorialized in this way, we were extremely honored,' said Staci Hancock of Stone Farm. 'The mural has really captured the horse's essence, and it will pay tribute to him and Thoroughbred racing for generations to come.'Work on the mural, which depicts Sunday Silence racing past the famed Twin Spires of Churchill Downs, began on Aug. 18.'We're excited to add Sunday Silence to the growing collection of equine art in downtown Paris,' said Chris Poynter, developer of Hotel Thoroughbred. 'This mural will not only honor a legendary horse but also celebrate Bourbon County's deep connection to the history of horse racing.' The finished piece will be dedicated on Sunday, Oct. 12, during the Legends of Bourbon County year's festival, presented in partnership with Stone Farm, celebrates the legacy of the legendary Sunday Silence while showcasing Bourbon County's thriving Thoroughbred industry and its vital connection to for the Fall Meet Event at Stone Farm on Saturday, Oct. 11, are on sale of the Sunday Silence mural include Shadai Farm in Hokkaido, Japan, Keeneland, Stone Farm, and Hotel Thoroughbred. This story was originally reported by Paulick Report on Aug 19, 2025, where it first appeared.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
'Alien: Earth' Episode 3 Is Creepy, Brainy, and Painfully Existential
I remember first watching British actor Babou Ceesay in the overlooked martial arts series Into the Badlands. I was struck by his power. And I don't mean the power of his fists, but his icy glares and spoken words that have the cadence of a just-awoken subterranean monster. When you can simply stand just over someone's personal space and make them squirm, that's power. That's all to say: It's been thrilling to watch Cessay at work in Alien: Earth. In a show overrun with creatures that drool and bleed acid, Ceesay's predatory cyborg Morrow might just be the biggest threat yet. "Metamorphosis," the third episode of Alien: Earth on FX and Hulu, finally lets its characters step out of that crashed ship and actually begin all the other story threads beyond Wendy (Sydney Chandler), Hermit (Alex Lawther), and Samuel Blenkin's Boy Kavalier. There's a lot going on here: the seeds of insurrection and sabotage, split loyalties amongst the Lost Boys, and even allusions to grooming. Ridley Scott's original Alien in 1979 was simple enough; it's a sci-fi horror thriller that asked, What if the darkness actually had a scary monster in it? Decades later, Alien: Earth complicates matters with transhumanist dread and intrigue. But it still has the good mind to let the monsters run amok. Here's everything that went down in episode 3 of Alien: Earth. Sibling Survival Imagine being Hermit for a second. You spend years thinking your little sister is dead, only for her to turn up alive (!!!) in the body of a synthetic adult (???), and then she's trapped behind a steel door with the most hideous and vicious thing you've ever seen in your life (?!?!?). It would be a stressful day, to say the absolute least. The episode starts with most of the Lost Boys, under the watchful eye of Kirsh (Timothy Olyphant), gathering the data on the ship's cargo of alien species. Nibs (Lily Newmark) has just survived a close encounter, and she is clearly changed by the ordeal. Thanks to her synthetic body, she might have survived—in this universe, aliens thrive on organic material—but with an organic mind, she's not walking away unscathed. Something has changed inside Nibs, even if her artificial body is unharmed. "Why couldn't we keep our names?" Nibs asks aloud to Curly (Erana James), who stands within earshot and later demonstrates her utter devotion to Boy Kavalier. While Curly is on the side of Prodigy, Nibs is eager to question everything about herself and the other Lost Boys—and she's clearly not happy about the answers. Take note of her eyerolls and annoyed stares. When mutiny strikes on the ship, I've got gold on Nibs holding the flintlock. And Nibs wouldn't be the only one. The loyal Kirsh suffers yet another indignity by Boy Kavalier, who embarrasses him for letting his "favorite," Wendy, venture on her own for her brother. "I thought you were supposed to be better than a man. But all I'm hearing are excuses," a most cavalier Boy Kavalier says. Kirsh might be programmed to do everything Kavalier says, but even he can take so much until he breaks. That brings us to our main protagonists, occupying the most action-heavy plot of the episode. Their fight against a loose Xenomorph gives an otherwise story-dense hour some excitement in the early going. Wendy and Hermit are practically lambs to the slaughter, as if their environment—a butcher's locker with raw meat on hooks—wasn't on the nose already. Eventually, things come down to a 1v1 between Wendy and the Xenomorph. If Kavalier sent his Lost Boys for a stress test, boy does he get one, as Wendy, impossibly, barely survives the violence. The alien is dead, but Wendy is messed up enough to essentially go offline, with that familiar "white blood" (which is actually circulatory fluid found in all synthetics, and is as synonymous to this franchise as eggs and dark corridors) spilling from her head wounds. The stress of the last few minutes leads Hermit to yak up his lunch and pass out, leaving both siblings on the floor with a Xenomorph carcass. Man, machine, and alien, splattered everywhere. This conveniently leaves our heroes out of commission for the rest of the episode, until the very end, when Prodigy's experimentation on the retrieved species reveals an inexplicable psychic connection to Wendy. What actually happened inside that garage? "When is a Machine Not a Machine?" I'm not declaring Babou Ceesay an Emmy contender—not yet anyway. But you can't tell me his Morrow isn't an effective antagonist. The way he "plugs into" the ship's computer and makes a bunch of goofy lights blinking on a tube look so menacing, it's a testament to Cessay's skill that he can turn a dumb prop into a weapon. The lone survivor of the Maginot, it turns out, has orders directly from a real flesh and blood Yutani, played by Sandra Yi Sencindiver. She is the CEO of Weyland-Yutani, who inherited her post from her grandmother, and with whom Morrow originally arranged business. That Morrow relishes scaring the piss out of two children in adult-sized artificial trench coats is a treat. While still in the ship, Slightly (Adarsh Gourav) and Smee (Jonathan Ajayi), who the most like kids of the ensemble, wind up cornered by Morrow. Sensing there's more than meets the eye with them, Morrow slips a dissolvable piece of himself onto Slightly's neck before getting scared off by Kirsh. Later, back to the island, Morrow "calls" Slightly from such a seedy, grimy BDSM club that I almost can't believe I'm watching this show on a Disney streaming service. Morrow doesn't get much out of Slightly, who is obviously bothered by this whole thing. Instead, it's part courtesy call, part warning; Morrow reveals he's literally inside Slightly's head, and will whip him into revealing Prodigy secrets for Weyland-Yutani. Once again, Alien: Earth lacks subtlety as the moans and cracks of leather whips surrounding Morrow illustrate a subtext of control and dominance—which is all the more messed up when you remember that Slightly is no older than twelve. In the Race "Metamorphosis" is by no means a difficult episode to understand or describe, but it is kind of all over the place with regards to all the table-setting it's doing for the rest of the season. But perhaps we can wrap up in a single word: Loyalties. For Curly, her loyalty is to Prodigy and Boy Kavalier. Thankful she gets to "live forever" no matter what humanity she's actually lost, Curly now appears to want to pay it back with undying devotion. (To an extent. She won't tell Kavalier her own plans to rule the world, for example, because he'll "steal them." Kavalier admits: "True.") Eager to unseat Wendy as Kavalier's favorite of the Lost Boys, Curly has already taken it upon herself to be the most refined and sophisticated of the bunch. (She knows French now!) This also places her at odds with Wendy, who isn't loyal to anyone or anything except whatever keeps her close to her brother. On the other side, there's everyone else. I mentioned Kirsh and Nibs, who are feeling the cracks of their invincible shells. I've also pointed out Slightly, who might turn against Prodigy albeit against his own will. But there's also Prodigy scientists (and married couple) Dame (Essie Davis) and Arthur Sylvia (David Rysdahl), who fear Kavalier is taking them off-track from their hybrid project in favor of the new discovery of species. Between wrangling the Lost Boys back to health (after jeopardizing them all) and having to accommodate alien creatures that no one on Earth knows the full biology of, the Sylvias might soon play a bigger role than their supporting parts imply. The Alien movies have long shown that people can and will fall apart when death comes knocking at their door. There are monsters and there are monstrosities. Alien: Earth is slowly but surely weaving a story where it's never easy to tell them apart. You Might Also Like Kid Cudi Is All Right 16 Best Shoe Organizers For Storing and Displaying Your Kicks Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Daniel Dae Kim Talks How ‘Butterfly' Fulfilled His Dream Of Shooting In South Korea
Starring in Lost for six years and Hawaii Five-O for ten years — and armed with a host of other enviable credits — Daniel Dae Kim counts recent series Butterfly as one of his most personal projects yet. Besides playing the role of U.S. intelligence operative David Jung in the series, Kim also serves as Butterfly's executive producer through his production company 3AD, which developed the show under a deal with Amazon MGM Studios. More from Deadline 'Harry Potter' TV Series Due To Hit HBO In 2027: Everything We Know About The Cast, Who's Creating It, What J.K. Rowling Says & More China's COL Group Unveils Micro-drama Distribution Hub Amid Short Format Boom Philippines' TBA Studios Unveils 'Quezon' Trailer Starring Jericho Rosales & Iain Glen Since its premiere on August 13, the series has shot up the streamer's top 10 series list, reaching the second spot today. Multi-hyphenate Kim on acting and producing Juggling both exec producing and acting, Kim is also in the middle of shooting a season of Avatar: The Last Airbender in Vancouver. Kim's 3AD production company also recently produced the ABC television series The Good Doctor, adapted from the 2013 South Korean series of the same name. 'If we're lucky enough, we'll be greenlit for a season two of Butterfly and we'll be prepping that,' Kim tells Deadline. 'I look forward to it, but my company has multiple projects in active development right now, so we're plugging away.' Butterfly follows former intelligence operative David Jung, who is hiding in South Korea. He has his life blown to pieces when the consequences of an impossible decision from his past come back to haunt him, and he finds himself hunted by Rebecca, a young assassin — and Caddis, the sinister spy organization she works for. Kim said that he heard about Butterfly for the first time during a meeting with the head of comics publisher Boom! Studios. 'He talked about some of his titles, and Butterfly was the one that I was interested in. It was a great father-daughter story,' says Kim. 'But in the original comic book, they're played by characters who are white, and it takes place in the U.S. and Europe. I asked whether or not they would mind changing the characters to Asian-American and set it in Korea. Shooting something in Korea has always been a goal of mine, and they were open to the idea.' Filming in South Korea Kim feels a deep connection with Korea through his family's heritage — and the affinity has been reciprocated. Just over a year ago, Kim was named an honorary citizen of Seoul, receiving the title from Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon and the Seoul Film Commission. Butterfly's shoot took place over seven months, starting in winter and wrapping in summer. Kim says he has a 'working knowledge of Korean' and took great care to spend an extended period in Korea, hire a large local crew and present Korean culture in meticulous detail — from the food, to the country's different accents. 'The cuisine is different regionally, and the people are different. It's a little bit like Italy, that there are different dialects and accents, depending on where you go in the country,' says Kim. 'Korea is a character in our show. 'We shot in over 20 cities all throughout South Korea, and I loved showcasing the mountainside, countryside as well as the skyscrapers of Seoul. I love that we got to shoot in Busan too, which is where I was born,' adds Kim. Besides shooting in Busan, Kim also picks out Andong, far south-east of Seoul, as another of his favorite shooting locations. 'I really liked shooting in Andong, which was in the first episode where you see SUVs crossing a small river. That was literally how we had to get to our location,' says Kim. 'The scenery was so beautiful, the mountainside that goes into the river, and we had this wonderful fog that rolled in, in the middle of the night, which created this eerie atmosphere for all the night shots. I remember commenting at the time that a lot of studios would pay a lot of money to get this effect, and we just had it. 'Our crew traveled with us and I loved that, because we had the same crew no matter where we went in South Korea. I liked that continuity,' adds Kim. 'Food is such a big part of Korean culture, and I wanted to showcase the food as part of the culture,' says Kim. Referring to a scene in the first episode where Jung is making a hotteok (Korean pancake), Kim says that his character cooks food 'as an expression of love. 'Growing up and being an immigrant family from Korea, the words 'I love you' weren't very often said, but the way my parents showed their love is by asking if I had eaten or preparing a meal as soon as they got home. That love language is something we wanted to put into the show,' adds Kim. On working with Park Hae-soo and co-star Reina Hardesty The first episode of Butterfly also stars Park Hae-soo (Squid Game, Prison Playbook). 'He's an incredible presence and such a fine actor,' says Kim, about collaborating with Park. 'I felt that the scene between the two of us was one of my favorite in the whole series. I have a lot of respect for him as an artist and as a person, and I consider us lucky to have been able to work with him.' On working with co-star Reina Hardesty (The Flash), Kim says: 'She came in very prepared and it was easy to build a rapport with her. We had a few meals, went over scripts together, and we were able to talk about our relationship in the series. The work that is done off-stage is just as important as what happens on camera.' While Kim has worked with some of the most established names in Hollywood and abroad, when asked about other filmmakers or actors he would love the opportunity to work with in the near future, Kim picks out Christopher Nolan and Destin Daniel Cretton as among his dream collaborators stateside, as well as Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook in Korea. Expressing Korean-American identity Reflecting on some of the themes in Butterfly, Kim says that the series is ultimately about identity and family. 'We wanted to make sure we expressed the nuances of what it is like to be Korean-American versus Korean, versus white American,' says Kim. 'It was a very intentional choice on our part to mix the two languages [English and Korean], because that's what Korean Americans do when they speak Korean to each other. 'That's what I speak to my parents, and you'll see in later episodes that one of the characters will criticize David's level of Korean, and that was also an intentional choice, because very often, there's the assumption that because you live in America and you're of Korean descent, you speak perfect Korean. The Korean we speak as as Korean-Americans is different. It's accented. It's not perfect, and I wanted to shine a light on the fact that the language is different depending on your experience of the country.' On making a stop in Korea to celebrate Butterfly's premiere, Kim said: 'It was important to us to have a Korea premiere, because we wanted to show our respect for the country, the people, the crew and the actors who worked so hard to bring our show to life. I consider this show to be equally Korean and American.' Best of Deadline 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Everything We Know About 'The Boys' Prequel Series 'Vought Rising' So Far
