Entertainment
Attempts To Ruin A Harry Potter Attraction Have Failed, So Far
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published
Stanley Park in Canada’s Vancouver is one of the latest sites of Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience, a light show that brings the Wizarding World to life on park walks. The attraction has visited 10 cities worldwide and added four more in 2025, including Vancouver, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Shenzhen, China. The show invites fans to walk around marked paths and interact with stations that put the magic into their own hands, recreating parts of the story.
The event brings a lot to the parks that it has visited. In addition to the interactive light show, there are shops with themed food, drink, and souvenirs for all ages. Participants are invited to cast spells, interact with fantastic beasts, and immerse themselves in a recreation of the woods outside Hogwarts.
The Activist Fight To Defeat Wizards
Activists tried to protest and cancel the event. They succeeded in getting the city’s officials to apologize in tears for holding it.
JK Rowling’s views about women’s spaces anger transgender lobbyists, who regularly try to interfere with Harry Potter launches, such as a boycott of Hogwarts Legacy when it was released in 2023. The Vancouver event saw the same kind of pushback, even though A Forbidden Forest Experience opened in three other cities without incident or complaint.
Vancouver, BC has been the site of some of the most contentious transgender activist clashes, such as the nailing of a rat to the door of a rape crisis center that wouldn’t accept trans women or the repeated harassment of business owners by activist Jonathon Yaniv (aka “Jessica Simpson”). The city council, in the process of disavowing JK Rowling, voted to keep the event for only one season,
However, as is common with the Harry Potter franchise, the event not only went on as planned but thrived. This year’s events outshone other years for ticket sales, and Vancouver’s sell-out opening weekend played a huge part in that. It seems that locals are going to enjoy it while they are allowed, no matter what they think of JK Rowling.
