Right before we moved to England, my husband told me that Warner Brothers had announced that they were opening the Harry Potter Studio Tour. It immediately went to the top of our list of things to see. I went to the website and discovered that they did not open officially for tours until April 22. We booked our tickets in January for our tour on May 19th. We booked it with our friends, the Innuendos.
The tour on average takes about 3 hours. We were told that the longest tour was 8 hours! We were the last tour going in for the day. We rented the digital guides which was really neat way to hear additional things about what we were seeing. It turned out to be a really nice addition to the signs and other posting and films that were placed through out the tour. Our digital tour guide was Tom Felton, better known as Malfoy, and he did a really nice job! When we reached a number we punched it into our guide and he told us about the section. There was also usually additional content on the digital guide as well, sometimes additional things to watch, listen to or occasionally just view various images.
The tour was AMAZING. Here are some of the highlights!
This was our tour group entering the Great Hall. Once inside it was incredible. Two of the four house tables were set up along the sides. We saw so many of the details that are often ignored when watching the films. We also saw each of the costumes from each of the houses and the house crests. There was an interesting story on our digital tour about the tables, the kids apparently used the silverware to scape off the finish of the tables and of course carved their names in the tables with the knives!
Our kids were given a passport during their tour and it included a list of things to find. Each section contained a snitch to find as well. This snitch was located outside the Great Hall, suspended up in the air. How cool!
This was the boys dormitory. You can see Dean Thomas, Harry and Ron's bed, with his hand knitted quilt! What you can't see is the personal items on the bedside table. I took additional pictures of the bedside tables with my digital SLR.
Here are my younger guys posing with the mirror and the portrait of the Fat Lady.
I am posed with the Goblet of Fire. It was craved from a very large piece of British Elm! How cool! The details were truly amazing!
This is a picture of the wands that the cast children used. They had different wands to use depending on the scenes. The wands were made out of different material, wood or rubber. The children would use the different wands depending if the scene was an action scene or not. The actors were not allowed to run with the wooden wands, kind of like the rule no running with scissors! Good thinking in retrospect, don't you think?!?!
This was part of the Potions Classroom. Here is the book that Harry used, if you remember it was originally Snape's book. The Potions Classroom was amazing, it contained over 500 different bottles of ingredients. The set room originally started out being where Fluffy was housed guarding the trap door but was reused and expanded over the course of the movies.
Here are my younger boys in front of the Knightbus. I did not manage to make it onto the bus, but I did see my oldest son's photos. He explained to me that the roof did not start until after the second story.
Arthur Weasley's flying car. How cool that the boys could actually get in it!
I waited in line for the Butterbeer! My husband and I shared it with my youngest two boys. My older two and our friend's the Innuendos ended up ahead of us during the tour. We were slower, trying to take in all the detail that we could.
This portion of the tour was outside and the Butterbeer was cold as was the day! My family liked the Butterbeer. Our friends that Innuendo’s did not care for it. It was made of cream soda with a butterscotch flavored cream on top. It was delicious! I think that it probably the same recipe that is used at Universal Studios.
You can see my Canon camera and the green lanyard is the digital guided tour that we listened to. We bought 3 cameras with us that day! No joke! We took our Harry Potter tour memories very seriously. Unfortunately, I am not able to download my photos from my Canon as my Mac does not have the right port and I have yet to buy the correct adaptor. I can't wait to see the pictures though.
There were a number of things that we saw outside: number 4 Privet Drive, Tom Riddle's grave, Hogwarts Bridge, Harry's parents' home in Godric's Hollow and some of the gigantic chess pieces from the first movie.
From there we moved back inside and into the Animatronics section.
It made me sad when I saw this figure of Dobby. You can't tell by the picture, but there is a blood stain on his chest.
The amount of animatronics that was used was really neat. Owls, Scabbers, Creature the house elf, Dobby, the werewolf, Padfoot and even Hagrid's head are just examples of things that they automated! Robbie Coltrain played Hagrid, but since he was shorter then the actual character a Rugby player stood in for him and wore the head. It was very interesting!
From there we moved onto on of the coolest part of the tours, Diagon Ally!
Here we are in Diagon Ally. If you look down to the red building you will notice that it is the Weasley brothers shop, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes.
Olivanders!
We ended the tour with Hogwarts castle, an art gallery and the wand room.
The tour on average takes about 3 hours. We were told that the longest tour was 8 hours! We were the last tour going in for the day. We rented the digital guides which was really neat way to hear additional things about what we were seeing. It turned out to be a really nice addition to the signs and other posting and films that were placed through out the tour. Our digital tour guide was Tom Felton, better known as Malfoy, and he did a really nice job! When we reached a number we punched it into our guide and he told us about the section. There was also usually additional content on the digital guide as well, sometimes additional things to watch, listen to or occasionally just view various images.
The tour was AMAZING. Here are some of the highlights!
This was our tour group entering the Great Hall. Once inside it was incredible. Two of the four house tables were set up along the sides. We saw so many of the details that are often ignored when watching the films. We also saw each of the costumes from each of the houses and the house crests. There was an interesting story on our digital tour about the tables, the kids apparently used the silverware to scape off the finish of the tables and of course carved their names in the tables with the knives!
Our kids were given a passport during their tour and it included a list of things to find. Each section contained a snitch to find as well. This snitch was located outside the Great Hall, suspended up in the air. How cool!
This was the boys dormitory. You can see Dean Thomas, Harry and Ron's bed, with his hand knitted quilt! What you can't see is the personal items on the bedside table. I took additional pictures of the bedside tables with my digital SLR.
Here are my younger guys posing with the mirror and the portrait of the Fat Lady.
I am posed with the Goblet of Fire. It was craved from a very large piece of British Elm! How cool! The details were truly amazing!
This is a picture of the wands that the cast children used. They had different wands to use depending on the scenes. The wands were made out of different material, wood or rubber. The children would use the different wands depending if the scene was an action scene or not. The actors were not allowed to run with the wooden wands, kind of like the rule no running with scissors! Good thinking in retrospect, don't you think?!?!
This was part of the Potions Classroom. Here is the book that Harry used, if you remember it was originally Snape's book. The Potions Classroom was amazing, it contained over 500 different bottles of ingredients. The set room originally started out being where Fluffy was housed guarding the trap door but was reused and expanded over the course of the movies.
Here are my younger boys in front of the Knightbus. I did not manage to make it onto the bus, but I did see my oldest son's photos. He explained to me that the roof did not start until after the second story.
Arthur Weasley's flying car. How cool that the boys could actually get in it!
I waited in line for the Butterbeer! My husband and I shared it with my youngest two boys. My older two and our friend's the Innuendos ended up ahead of us during the tour. We were slower, trying to take in all the detail that we could.
This portion of the tour was outside and the Butterbeer was cold as was the day! My family liked the Butterbeer. Our friends that Innuendo’s did not care for it. It was made of cream soda with a butterscotch flavored cream on top. It was delicious! I think that it probably the same recipe that is used at Universal Studios.
You can see my Canon camera and the green lanyard is the digital guided tour that we listened to. We bought 3 cameras with us that day! No joke! We took our Harry Potter tour memories very seriously. Unfortunately, I am not able to download my photos from my Canon as my Mac does not have the right port and I have yet to buy the correct adaptor. I can't wait to see the pictures though.
There were a number of things that we saw outside: number 4 Privet Drive, Tom Riddle's grave, Hogwarts Bridge, Harry's parents' home in Godric's Hollow and some of the gigantic chess pieces from the first movie.
From there we moved back inside and into the Animatronics section.
It made me sad when I saw this figure of Dobby. You can't tell by the picture, but there is a blood stain on his chest.
The amount of animatronics that was used was really neat. Owls, Scabbers, Creature the house elf, Dobby, the werewolf, Padfoot and even Hagrid's head are just examples of things that they automated! Robbie Coltrain played Hagrid, but since he was shorter then the actual character a Rugby player stood in for him and wore the head. It was very interesting!
From there we moved onto on of the coolest part of the tours, Diagon Ally!
Here we are in Diagon Ally. If you look down to the red building you will notice that it is the Weasley brothers shop, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes.
Olivanders!
We ended the tour with Hogwarts castle, an art gallery and the wand room.
Our guide, Tom Felton said that the model of Hogwarts Castle was breath taking and he was right, it really is. The bricks were hand-painted EVERY YEAR! It was almost the last part of the tour and so incredible! My youngest boys noticed that the model was missing Hagrid's Hut and the Whomping Willow.
We ended the tour in the wand room. There were over 7000 people involved in the shooting of the Harry Potter films and each of them had a wand box with their name on it. Afterwards we wandered into the gift shop and the boys picked a memento, they each picked out a wand. Two boys picked Harry's wand and the other two picked Dumbldore's Elder wand.
Are there things missing on the tour? There are lots of things, I am sure. The one thing that I would have liked to see was the graveyard where Harry's parents were buried in Godric's Hollow. It probably would have bought tears to my eyes to see the "grave" of Harry's parents. But, I feel that it is an important part that was missing. The graves were not anywhere that I could see on display. My oldest son wondered about the flying keys from the first movie. He wondered why they did not sell the keys in the gift shop.
One thing that I thought was extremely cool was the animal actors. They were rescued and trained to be in the movies and found homes afterward. Mrs. Norris was played by 3 different cats and each one did different roles! They showed the animals on a big board and told little tidbits about their personalities, it was really heartwarming to read!
It was all incredible, I don’t have a favorite. This is just our tour with some of the highlights. The amount of detail that was put into the movies was brilliant. This tour is a must see for any Harry Potter fan and even though we stayed the full three hours, I could very easily go back again and go for longer. Before we even left the building, Kid 3 told me that he wanted to come back again. I have to say I agree. I think that another trip may be in order before we leave.
We did most of everything, there was a virtual flying experience that we did not do. The que was quite long. I would be interested in going back and giving it a gander when the lines might not be so long. I think that the lines are always going to be long!
I have a feeling that the Bearys maybe headed back for one more trip before we leave England.
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