So I'll be out in California this month and was thinking about visiting Southern Carlifornia (formerly Orange Empire) museum and was a bit surprised to find this on their website -

"The Museum will be closed to the General Public July 21-September 28 for the Harry Potter™: A Hogwarts Express Adventure – valid tickets required for entry to Museum Grounds. No exhibits are open during this time"

Closing the entire museum for 2 months of Harry Potter events seems like an interesting choice... especially since they are a non-profit.

"Closing the entire museum for 2 months of Harry Potter events seems like an interesting choice... especially since they are a non-profit."

Time for a refresher.

There is no such thing as a "non-profit" in the sense that one might think it means (mostly because TAX EXEMPT organizations foster the idea because of, and to appeal to widespread public ignorance regarding profitability) indifferent to the bottom line. I assure you any enterprise that doesn't run with attention to profitability is a bankruptcy in training.

The phrase is a misnomer of the language "not for individual profit", which simply means there are no individual stockholders and the enterprise is to obtain most of its revenues from a stated purpose, typically for railroad museums that falls under the heading "charitable" and "educational". This is supposed to be a "public purpose".

Now what I would wonder is if they've considered that hosting a fantasy cosplay/conventions is arguably not part of their exempt purpose, no matter how one might creatively interpret the stated purpose. It's not how revenues are used, but how they are generated that determines if they are within the scope of an exempt purpose.


They may decided it's promising enough that its worth it to be subject to Unrelated Business Income Tax. There is a pitfall here, that too much UBIT (and the IRS hasn't really defined that, it's a case by case thing) might imperil the tax exempt status.

There is an "out" that's routinely exploited in Pennsylvania when fire companies run chicken barbeques-serving food is clearly outside their 501(c)(3) if they are so organized-(some fire companies are 501(c)(4)"social welfare" organizations) in that substantially all their labor is volunteer. That prevents a fire company from setting up an tax-advantaged competitor to commercial eateries.

Even if all the tax compliance issues are worked out; shutting down your museum for an extended period during what I presume would be summer busy season risks "mission drift", IMNHO.

They might know what they are doing. HP is incredibly popular with younger people. I play trivia at a bowling alley bar every week and this past week they had a HP themed evening. I went because the couple I play with are younger and have read some of the books and seen some of the movies. We usually do well with general knowledge trivia, win some, come in second some. The place was packed, lots of tweens and teens, younger adults and parents. We got our clocks cleaned, three teams had perfect scores. The only question I knew the answer to was the platform that Hogwart's Express leaves from. This is the new Thomas the Tank Engine craze.

A new Harry Potter series inspiring a new generation of fans starts running on HBO in December. I expect this event was produced in cooperation with Rail Events, the same people behind the licensed Polar Express experience that various tourist railroads host. Depending on the venue, they might very well be essentially locked down except to event ticket holders. So hold onto your wands, if the railroad near you hosts Polar Express, it may likely be taken over by Harry Potter from time to time too.

I hate having to be a killjoy. A paywalled July 29, 2026 article in the Los Angeles Times:
Link to the full article:
SoCal’s new Harry Potter train ride attracts fans, concerns local LGBTQ+ rights activists

It's been my experience, after living literally a lifetime in news media, that the large "mainstream legacy" news media (such as the L.A. Times, which lost $50 million in 2024 and is on track to continue such losses in the future), will routinely ignore stories like a crowd-producing event at a major museum, but fall over themselves to give a platform to a very small number of "activists" calling for boycotts of such events/venues for whatever reason. Many of these boycott movements have instead had the opposite effect as "buycotts" counter the opposition (most famous example: Ever seen a Chik-Fil-A without long lines?)

I will submit, as evidence, that Brother Woodring's allegation that there's a "Harry Potter revival" with younger people about is the first I'm hearing of this, whereas the same "legacy media" spent over a decade hyping the original HP mania........

And I will observe that if I had plotted to travel to California from afar and had built the Southern California Railway Museum into my itinerary, only to find the place "taken over" for a major event that locked me out and basically did away with the museum's "mission" for such a spell (two freakin' months!!!) with no way to accommodate at least SOME sightseeing on my part, I'd be a most irate visitor.

I wonder if they're being criticized on every post on their social media accounts by disgruntled would-be visitors who will return to post about it daily (because they lack lives).......
EDIT/UPDATE: Not yet.......

There are a couple museums in the southern USA where summer heat makes the summer months the SLOW months. Indeed, the Arizona Railway Museum in Chandler closes entirely for the summer because of extreme heat (predicted highs today 114 degrees F).

Another example is the Sugar Express in Florida that runs from Fall to Spring.

Honestly, it should be something that's a bit more common for these organizations in locations with unforgiving heat.

If railroads only operated when temperatures were ideal, there wouldn't be many operating days on the calendar. But of course that has nothing to do with this situation as they are still operating, just themed trains vs. regular museum operations. Plus just down the road a bit you've got Disneyland and Knott's running steam all day everyday and the crew seems to survive just fine.

I would think that the underlying problem would be patrons not wanting to come out and ride the train. A regular crew knows how to prepare for it, riders for the train that aren't seasoned from constantly working in those type of weather conditions can be a bigger factor.

This is it. In spades.

You got air conditioning in those passenger cars or trolleys?

In portions of the country, hiking trails will be closed at 9 or 10 AM. If you want to hike to the top of that mountain, start before sunrise and get back before lunch.

Road crews shift to night shifts. Some factories/workplaces shift from 8 to 5 shifts to 6 to 3 shifts, or even earlier.

I once did a pub crawl in central Phoenix, riding from light rail stop to light rail stop and walking the 2-3 blocks to the pubs on foot--in late July, 110 degrees. I was more comfortable in that heat than the 95-degree Baltimore I had just left two days earlier. But the sidewalks were as deserted as Christmas morning, and when some pub patrons saw that I had walked in and out, I got some strange looks......