I’ve done the studio tour in 2020, so before this new section opened - and I’ve not been to USO yet, so take my comments in that lens.
It’s a good day out, but no, it’s not a theme park experience. You have a lot of film props, including the Hogwarts scale model they use for all the fly overs, walk through of the forbidden forest and a cafe with Butter beer. If you are in London, it’s a nice side trip, but I wouldn’t do a vacation focussed on it.
I did it in 2017 and we spent about 5 hours there. You basically look at props, there are photo ops and they sell butterbeer - it’s fab but not much like the theme parks except it does have a Diagon Alley.
When I worked at Warner Bros. MovieWorld in AU we had the first Harry Potter attraction anywhere. It was very similar to the one in the UK. It was called, “The Harry Potter Movie Magic Experience”. A wizard, like myself, would take you on a tour of places like the Weasley’s home, Knockturn / Diagon Alley and various shops like Olivander’s. We had live owls and trainers from the AU zoo. You’d go into the Forbidden Forrest and see Aragog. There’s a lot more. It was about a 10 - 12 minute tour of props & sets with us performing. It was pretty neat. However, I wouldn’t have planned a day around it.
I have not been but we looked at it. I will do it next time we go when my kids are older. One thing worth noting is that it books weeks or months in advance. I can’t tell you the dozens of Facebook posts I have seen about complaints that it was sold out for someone’s trip. Are you going across the pond soon??
