Today was one of the best days I have had here in London. You probably already know why. Emma, Aylea, and I went on the Harry Potter studio tour. If you're a HP fan it was definitely worth the money; if you're not a fan, then I wouldn't pay it because it was expensive. I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking because there was just sooooooo many cool things to see.
We left the house at 7 A.M. to get to the coach station to depart for The Warner Brothers Studio, which is actually an hour outside of London in a place called Leavesden. The tour took us about 3 hours. It is housed in two stage studios, conveniently called J and K. You start by watching a small video and then continue through the front doors into the Great Hall. From there are the smaller sets such as the Gryffindor common room, the potions classroom, Dumbledore and Umbridge's offices, the Weasley's kitchen, and some other random ones. In Dumbledore's office we met a very nice employee named George who looked about 20 and offered to tell us about the room. We hadn't seen him do this for anyone else so we're guessing he did it because we were three girls. After he pointed out all the obvious things in the room we left him and headed across the isle to the potions classroom. Two minutes later who pops up but George. He offered to tell us about this set too and looked at Emma 90% of the time. We humored him a little bit but then he said "well I guess I should probably get back to my post." Haha we were afraid he was going to follow us the whole way through. Thank goodness he didn't. After ditching George we got some green screen time. They have you sit on some blocks and you can see yourself in the flying car. You then put on some Gryffindor robes and get to "ride" a broom. They blow a fan on you and you and everybody in line gets to see you soaring over London and Hogwarts. Of course they take your picture hoping you'll buy them but I definitely was not going to pay £12 for a piece of flimsy paper. So we cut the line to get out and walked through the doors building J to the outside sets. These included the Knightbus, Number 4 Privet Drive, the Hogwarts bridge, the wizard chess pieces, and the Potters cottage. We bought ourselves some butterbeer, which was delicious, and sauntered around outside. Thank goodness it didn't rain today.
The second building had a lot of art department pictures and such. I thought I wasn't going to be impressed with building K but I was wrong. They had the set of Diagon Alley (which is also used as Hogsmead) and the real Hogwarts. As you know Hogwarts isn't based on a real castle, it's based on many. The real Hogwarts is a 20 ft.-ish model that is used in front of a green screen to make it look large. It took 40 days to build it and has real electricity, which makes it able to go from day to night. Every couple of minutes lights slowly come on in the castle and then a couple minutes later they slowly dim until it reaches day again. The tour then finishes in a room with a couple thousand wand boxes. Each wand box has a name on it of either a cast member or a crew member. An employee is there to help guide you to any box you wish to see. Name any person and he's got the map to show you where their box is; see a box with a name you don't know ask him who it is and he'll tell you exactly what their job was.
The tour opened exactly one week ago so the employees are still extremely friendly (remember George?). we had at least 5 come approach us asking how we were liking the tour and offering to take pictures for us. I bet they'll get bored in a couple months when the newness wears off but we were impressed with their costumer service, which was refreshing due to the lack of good customer service in the U.K. So if you're ever in the neighborhood pre-order your ticket and explore the magical world of Harry Potter. Soak it all in because at the end of the day you have to return to your old mundane muggle world like I did.
"The stories we love best do live in us forever, so whether you come back by page or by the big screen,
Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home."
-J.K. Rowling
No comments:
Post a Comment