Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio Tour…aka: the best day ever

Last updated on 20 November 2017

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The Harry Potter Warner Bros Studio Tour is incredible!

Oh my goodness! If you’re a Harry Potter then you can probably guess how excited I was about going to London (kinda…it wasn’t really London) to hang out with Laura, from The Book Habit for two days, and not only have a Harry Potter movie marathon, but go to the Warner Bros Studio Tour: The Making of Harry Potter. And I have to say, dear Harry Potter fans, it was amazing! Seriously, if you’re in the UK, it’s totally worth the trip.

Let’s back track. On Sunday I woke up at stupid o’clock and caught the bus/coach to London, where I met Laura at the station. We then jumped on a train and headed out to her place. It was about 12noon when we arrived, and we decided that we needed to start watching the Harry Potter films as soon as possible. We started then and there with The Philosopher’s Stone, and didn’t stop watching until about 11pm that night, when we were about halfway through The Order of the Phoenix. The next morning, we finished The Order of the Phoenix and started The Half Blood Prince. Then it was time to go to the tour.

Our booked in time was 1pm, and we got there about half and hour earlier. I’ll try not to go into too much detail about what was in there, as I don’t want to spoil your future visit (coz, go on, you know you’ll end up going). But the main gist of it went like this: We were ushered in with our group of about 100 people, to a screening room and they showed a short clip of how the books became the movies. Then we went into a cinema room, with amazing seats, and saw a longer video that was hosted by Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, and Daniel Radcliffe (not them in real life, though, I had to assure my sister), about what it was like on set, and all the people involved in the 10 year production.

From there, we went through the Great Hall Doors into the Great Hall, and because it’s the Christmas season at the moment, everything was sparkling with fairy lights and had a real winter-y feel. The hall was set out like it would be on set, with food on the tables, and Christmas lights, etc. Around the edges were some of the costumes (the real costumes) worn by the actors. That was end of the tour bit, that was hosted by a person with a microphone who talked about the different aspects in the room, and then we were let loose inside the main room where a lot of the sets are. And my goodness, it was awesome!

Skeleton from the Defence Against the Dark Arts room. And signs.

 

From there, we went outside, where Laura and I got some Butterbeer (which I loved!), and saw some of the large outdoor sets. The Knight Bus was there in all it’s purple glory, as was the Riddle Grave, Privet Drive, Hagrid’s motor bike, the Hogwarts bridge and more.

Back inside we went, into the Magical Creatures room, where prosthetics lined the walls, and mandrakes moved in their pots. Kinda creepy, but a whole lot of awesome.

After Magical Creatures came what was possibly my favourite part: Diagon Alley. It was amazing. It was, of course, just like the films, and all the favourite shops were there. Olivanders, Flourish and Blotts, Fred and George Weasley’s shop…seriously, it was awesome.

The next main thing was a huge set of Hogwarts itself (though obviously not to scale…you couldn’t, like, walk through or anything…which makes sense because the inside of Hogwarts is filmed all over the country in various locations). It was so incredibly detailed, and so pretty with all the snow that they had on it. Truly amazing.

And that was pretty much it! Oh, except for the gift shop! I spent too much money, of course, but one must at these sorts of things. I bought a ‘The Making of Harry Potter’ t-shirt, a Ravenclaw scarf (I’m actually a Huffledor-Gryffinpuff, but blue suits me better), a giant mug with the Marauder’s Map on it, a chocolate frog with a real card in it, and some post cards. If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, then you would have seen other pictures too.

It was so super fun, and I highly recommend it. Looking back at the photos, I’ve noticed there were a couple of sets in the main room that we missed. We decided to go one way to avoid the main crowd, but forgot to double back. Ah well. It was still amazing! I feel like, since I’ve done this, I can now happily leave the country.