July 19 – Harry Potter Studio Tour

We are still in the heat wave, but we left early enough that it wasn’t too hot for our walk to the tube station to take the Underground to the motor coach station. We found our guide at the Victoria Motor Coach station where we boarded a bus for the hour drive to the Warner Brothers/Harry Potter Studio Tour.  After getting our tickets we joined the mass of people entering the large tour area.  The entry had a mural showing a mass of letters flying around…just like in the home of Harry Potter’s aunt and uncle’s home.

There was also a pretty massive dragon hanging from the ceiling and lots of screens showing actors in the movies.

And there were huge screens showing some of the main stars of the series.

The massive queue of people wandered through various movie displays, including the cupboard under the stairs where Harry lived with his aunt and uncle.

The queue then stopped in a large staging area where we listened to some videos about some of the early decisions about buying the rights to film the book and then we saw a short movie about some of the preliminary work.  From there we were finally dumped into the actual tour/museum area.  And oh my!!!  They have such a rich treasure trove of props and sets and costumes and prostheses and stuff from the movies.   This place is fantastic.  I'd recommend it to anyone, even if you aren't a Harry Potter fan.  They give so much information about the entire planning process...building schematics, models, props and prosthetics, set construction and so much more.  Watched a great video on how they made "marble columns" for Gringotts Bank.  What an amazing process.  

We saw the dining hall…

with a student choir holding singing frogs/toads,

and props and costumes from the Winter ball.

We also saw the inside of the Weasley’s home

and the train station with the Hogwart’s express. 

Liam and Paul got to sit in one of the carriages with a green screen at the window.  And they had some of the footage from the movie projected on the window.  A couple of times they jumped with something scary leaped into view.

We stopped mid-way through for lunch.  Liam had some butterbeer…he liked the foam but not the drink.  

Just outside of the dining area was a central courtyard with a number of props and set pieces and a Knight bus... 

the house on Privet Drive,

the footbridge to Hogwart's,

From there we reentered the building and continued the tour.  We saw Gringotts Bank that is rung by goblins and where the wizarding world keeps their treasurers.  They had some video’s about how they made the realistic looking marble wallpaper used to make the marble columns in the bank. 

There was also a sequence showing the destruction of the bank by a dragon.

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Video of dragon destroying the bank
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Of course, we had to see some of the treasure stored in the vaults of the bank.

We went through an area with lots of masks and prosthetics used in the films.  They had a lot of information about how they made the prosthetics…starting with molds of the actor’s faces...

and scale models of various sets and creatures.

And there was even a green house where they grew mandrakes that you could try to pull up.

And Diagon Alley was set up full scale so that we could walk the street and peer into the windows.

The tour ended in a large room filled with a large-scale model of Hogwarts.  It is truly magical.

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More Harry Potter Studio Tour
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Liam spent some time checking out the very large shop and eventually found a wand he liked.  It made it all the way into London where we stopped at a restaurant for something to drink.  And it got left there.  Sigh.  Maybe we will find another somewhere else as we are stopping at lots of Harry Potter places.