When myself and my family were invited along to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour of the making of Harry Potter, there were a couple of very excited children in the Poppins home that begged me to say yes. Although we have yet to watch all of the movies, and the last ones possibly being a little too dark for my five year old to watch Miss. Poppins especially was very keen to see the sets where much of the action took place. Having a theatrical background myself, any opportunity to visit film sets I like to take and so we all looked forward to going. We got a little excited when we were greeted by this....
And this as we made our way through the entrance....
We couldn't help but see if our hands were bigger or smaller than Daniel's...
I really have only captured a very small glimpse of what is on offer in my photographs as there is so much more to see, but I couldn't help but give an idea of what is seen at the tour. After a superb trailer in the cinema, we were led into the great hall....
It really did feel very magical being on the Harry Potter set and couldn't resist a little photograph being taken of moi in front of the owl podium used by Professor Dumbledore. Then it was onto seeing more of the fabulous sets. The boys dormitory....
One of my favourite's, Umbridge's ministry of magic office....
Dumbledore's office....
I enjoyed reading about the animals involved in Harry Potter....
The Griffin stairwell....
The pendulum from The Prisoner of Azkaban....
Chamber of secret's door....
We wandered on, every little detail has been accounted for and I guess big fans of all the Harry Potter movies would be astounded at the attention to detail, it really is just amazing....
Then outside you get to see number 4 Privot Drive, ( made out of polystyrene, shhh don't tell )....
And was amazing to see the Potter house that Voldermort destroyed at Godric's hollow, I had a lovely chat with the workmen who were popping the finishing touches to the paving for the grand opening of the Studio Tour on the 31st March....
The bridge to Hogwarts was tres amazing....
Diagon Alley was very impressive....
Here's Master Poppins having his own little wander....
For me the grand finale is on nearing the end of the tour, where you are greeted with a breathtakingly scale model of Hogwart's castle, which was used in the films and you can get to walk around it, seeing every little detail. With a moving musical background, and excellent lighting effects I almost wanted to stay in this chamber for ever....
Pretty much everyone that was entering this room, and including us all said "WOW". A thoroughly enjoyable day out, and all in all the tour took us around 3 hours. I believe on this preview tour throughout the day there were around 1800 visitors, and on a normal day would be around 5000, so was nice and roomy, you could get up really close to all the lovely things on offer. My only negative really, is the somewhat slightly over priced retail souvenir shop that greets you at the end of your tour. Master Poppins really wanted a little wand, and anyone who has a five year old boy would know that it would have to be somewhat child friendly, even light up, maybe make a little sound. The only wands on offer, looked like collectors items and at £25 a pop, sadly he came away without one. For me, the shop being the last room to visit at the end of the tour as you are led into it, could cause issues with some children who want things, as they often do.
As for me, I cant justify spending £25 on a wand for a 5 year old that looks like a collectors edition and we did have somewhat of an unhappy child as we were leaving. I would definitely suggest there being more appropriate child friendly, less expensive wands on offer, as well as the ones we saw as we would certainly have bought one. What we did buy however were a couple of chocolate wands and at £3.95 each would be a lovely little souvenir of the day, however am not sure how long they would last ;) The wand issue was soon forgotten, and we got back to chit chattering in the car journey home of what a lovely time we had had....
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Disclosure: We gained complimentary entry for a family of four to the Warner Bros Studio Tour- The Making Of Harry Potter for the purposes of this blog post.
