We were walking along Tottenham Court Road station road, one day, and I just had to stop and stare at this beautiful building. It reminded me that for the longest time, it had been a dream of ours to visit the Harry Potter Warner Brothers studios. Like most dreams, we never did anything about it, then the kids grew out of Harry Potter, and we had pretty much forgotten all about it.
Once we saw this building though, all our dreams came back, and we decided that expensive or not, we were going to make a visit to the studios a priority.
One cold, dreary day, we made the long trek to the back of beyond – Leavesden. The bus ride lulled everyone to sleep and we had zero energy when we got there. But seeing the Harry Potter bus waiting for us boosted us back up.
The studio itself is indoors, so we were quite relieved to get out of the cold.
A quick, unappetizing (but super-expensive) meal later, we were all feeling meh. We had eaten themed food that was high on the expectations and the presentation, but low on the taste, and we were all apprehensive the entire studio tour was going to be like that – an overhyped, expensive, mistake.
All that changed when we saw this.
So impressive, that K (who is NOT a HP buff) ran to get clicked with the kids as well.
The entire studio is like catnip to a Harry Potter fan. Soon we were running around remembering the most obscure plot points from the books and movies. We took photos of all the props and getting stamps on our Harry Potter passports.
I’m not sharing everything on here – we took way too many photos for this post, but some of the highlights were – yanking out the mandrakes from the herbarium, going on the knight bus, visiting the Gryffindor dormitory, riding Hagrid’s bike, so many things.
Apart from the photo shoot opportunities, the real joy was seeing how all the special effects were recreated. There is a ton of information on how and where green screens were used. The way sets were created, a lot of the costumes were displayed. It was a lot! For the girl who’s aspiring to a career in design, it was an eye-opener, and she loved seeing how everything was built and then translated to the big screen.
It was amazing for Piglet to see Buckbeak the hippogriff and realize how this stuffed animal was animated in the movies. There was more too – Aragog the spider, the basilisk, the goblin heads. It was a real lesson in set design and animation!
Ending this post with shots of us walking down the corridors of Hogwarts.
One of our best days in London. Expensive, but totally worth it if you are a Harry Potter fan.
