Upon entry to Universal Studio’s new park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I was impressed. What I had been imagining after 10 years of reading the books and eagerly awaiting the movies, like many of you Harry Potter buffs out there, was right in front of me. The castle of Hogwarts, the snow-capped shops of the wizarding village of Hogsmeade, a few robe-adorned village people scurrying about. However, the butter beer, a frothy drink unique to the Harry Potter franchise, which I bought on first entry into the park, turned out to be the only satisfying part of the day.

After about 15 minutes in the park, it was clear that this was not what I had expected from watching the movies and naively relying on pictures from Google Images. Although the Hogwarts castle was present, it was oddly disproportional to the village, much smaller, and clearly not actually meant for people. Additionally, the tour of the castle, for which we waited close to two hours, was limited, allowing us access only to a stairwell with a couple of moving pictures and a smaller recreation of Dumbledore’s study, with a hologram-like Dumbledore, who after two minutes of speaking about the treasures that lay ahead would twitch and repeat himself. (No treasures lay ahead). We continued on a narrow, dimly lit passage and passed by a few books, school robes and a trunk, and then were promptly directed to the exit in a gift shop.

The village itself did greatly resemble that pictured in the movies, with many shops vending quills and parchment, owls, potions, strange plants and wands. However, most of these shops were closed, with signs like “out hunting nargles,” implying that they were not really shops at all, simply sets. In fact, the only shops that were open were gift shops, where one could buy T-shirts to commemorate the trip, a candy store and a joke store, neither of which sold anything out of the norm for us “muggles,” just jelly beans and whoopee cushions.

In the windows of the owl shop were stuffed owls. The student choir, singing outside of the castle, which claimed in posters to be singing with “toads” like students in the film had, was singing with plastic puppets. The line for the all-too-short roller coaster “Flight of the Hippogriff” was 70 minutes long. And the stupid jelly beans were over $10 dollars.

It was clear to me that my family and I had been cheated, swindled, bootlegged and conned, something that every consumer experiences on a regular basis. From my extremely disappointing experience, I hope that you can either sympathize, or take away a few lessons. Don’t trust one gushing travel blog, don’t do your research on Google Images, plan carefully and listen to your friends who tell you to lower your expectations.