Potter fans flock to Florida park

Harry Potter fans lined up overnight to walk the cobblestone streets of Universal Orlando's new theme park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, on its opening day.

The Orlando opening on Friday was broadcast live on the Today show, and featured fireworks, drinks of Butterbeer and a chance to shake handsand even go on a ride with British actor Daniel Radcliffe, who played the young wizard in the Harry Potter movies.

Radcliffe was joined by other actors from the films, including Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) and Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley).

"What Universal Orlando has done with Harry Potter is really, really fantastic," Radcliffe said at theopening ceremony. "We're all kind of very grateful that the next part of the Harry Potter legacy has been so well done and so well made."

The eight-hectare Wizarding World, the newest zone in the Universal Orlando's Islands of Adventure, involved more than three years of planning and construction.

The U.S. recession has hammered theme parks across the country, and Universal Orlando has suffered more than most. The New York Times reported that attendance in 2009 dropped 10 per cent from a year earlier.

"NBC Universal, which co-owns Universal Orlando with Blackstone Group, hopes the Wizarding World, built at an estimated cost of $265 million [US], will raise annual attendance by over 10 per cent," the newspaper said.

Admission to Wizarding World is included with Islands of Adventure tickets, which sell online for $79 US and $69 US for children aged three to nine.

The new park-within-a-park brings the Harry Potter books and movies to life with detailed reproductions of the Hogswarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the Hogswarts Express train and the Hogsmeade village, where shops carry hundreds of items of merchandise created especially for the park.

"This attraction was made with obsessives in mind, the kind of people who have more or less memorized [J.K.] Rowling's books, and it shows in all sorts of details," the Montreal Gazette reported.

The park has two roller coasters, Flight of the Hippogriff, and Dragon Challenge.

And the Harry Potter and Forbidden Journey ride uses cutting-edge technology to take visitors on broomstick tours through the Hall of Portraits, Dumbledore's office, the Chamber of Horrors, around the Quidditch Pitch and on a flight away from the evil Dementors.

Earlier in the week, British author J.K. Rowling visited the park and tried out the rides.

Her seven Harry Potter books have sold more than 460 million copies and have been translated into 68 languages.