Tom Felton: Hagrid’s Motorbike Adventure Mystery Creature “Strangest I’ve Ever Seen”
The excitement surrounding the impending opening of the new Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure ride at Universal Orlando Resort continues to build, and Tom Felton continues to be among the giddiest of us all.
MuggleNet was in attendance earlier this month when Felton joined Universal Orlando Resort public relations and creative directors in revealing tantalizing new details about the attraction. In an accompanying video featuring Felton and Harry Potter art director Alan Gilmore, Gilmore also teased that riders’ trip through the Forbidden Forest would include an encounter with a beast not seen in films.
Felton sat down Friday for a chat with SyFy Wire, during which he said he’s seen the creature – and was left reeling.
It’s a sight. It’s a hell of a thing. I can’t reveal any more than that, but I will say it’s definitely something to look forward to. It’s bizarre. It’s the strangest creature I’ve ever seen in the world, ever, so yes, there’s going to be no shortage of people going ‘wow’ to that.
It’s no secret Felton is a big fan of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando, and he told SyFy there’s a good reason for that. While the movie sets were impressive, the theme park gives visitors the feeling they’ve truly stepped inside the wizarding world.
A lot of the team that did the films actually helped with the ride, Stuart Craig and Alan Gilmore and his team. The sets were actually nowhere near as immersive as the actual world. Every nook and cranny, there isn’t an inch of that world that isn’t completely part of the wizarding world. You definitely feel like it’s an immersive experience. I get the little tingles. I still get them when they play the theme tune. I get little tingles down the spine. It’s great. It’s very, for lack of a better word, magical.
Felton also spoke about his first memory of arriving on set for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and his favorite scene to film. The actor said he’s impressed with how strong interest in the movies remains to this day.
It’s pretty exciting, I won’t lie. I did think that at the end of Deathly Hallows that, slowly but surely, the Harry Potter flame would slowly die down, but it’s doing quite the opposite. The fire is burning strong. There’s more content now than ever, and now this new ride down at Universal gives fans more and more to love. It’s weird because a lot of fans that come up to me now and say how much of an impact it was on their childhood, they weren’t even born when we made the first film. So it’s very quickly realizing that it’s going down from generation to generation, so it was pretty awesome to be part of something like that.
You can watch Felton’s full interview with SyFy Wire below. Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure is scheduled to open to the public June 13.
