Wands and Butterbeer

*Disclaimer formatting pictures on blogger is a pain in the rear so sorry if the layout looks strange. For some reason the program designer decided it would be a good idea for pictures to show in one layout in the draft versions and then look totally different when you publish it.*

I WENT TO THE HARRY POTTER STUDIOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

(And I'm a little bit excited about this as you can see.)

FIE had several day trips over the course of the semester that you can sign up to go on (for a fee of course), and naturally when the list came out and I saw Harry Potter Studio Tour on it I signed up immediately. And so this past Sunday, February 9, me, Morgan, other Sarah, and Ashley got on a bus to go live out our childhood dreams and see Hogwarts.

This is what the studio looks like from the outside. The building used to be the sound stage where they filmed the movies for ten years and then when they finished someone wonderful soul realized that nothing they could possibly film there would ever come close to Harry Potter in any way so they shouldn't even try. Instead they turned in into a shrine to the best movie/book series ever written.

When you first enter the building you're in a big room with a few props around the walls and pictures of all the actors staring down at you from near the ceiling. 

 

While waiting for our turn to enter the studio we decided to take a few pictures, naturally. Sarah is the one on the left and Morgan's on the left.

Everyone's ticket had a time on it when you were allowed to enter the promised land, so we decided to kill some time in the gift shop. Oh. My. God. I have never been more tempted to spend more money in my life, but unfortunately nothing that I wanted way less than $100 so alas I left empty handed. But while we were there we got to take a picture in wizards robes and get put on a wanted poster!

There were also some props scattered around the store if you looked for them which were super cool! Even the shelves they had the books on where used in the library scenes in the movies!

 

 

After killing time drooling over things I can't afford we got in line for the studio, where we were greeted by the Harry's cabinet under the stairs (yes I know what it's called in the book but my attempts at spelling it are so bad that spell check doesn't have suggestions for me so I have to call it a cabinet, which I also spelled wrong on the first try).

 

This quote is the last thing you see before you enter the studio.

When you first enter the studio you watch a 10 or 15 minute video with Dan, Rupert, and Emma welcoming you to the studio, then when the video ends the screen lifts up and you see the door to the Great Hall.

  

From here you enter the Great Hall, not a replica, but the actually set they used in the filming. This is the only part of the tour where you have a guide. She told us an interesting story. Does anyone remember how in the first book the kids wear hats in the finals scene? They're mentioned in every book but they only appear in the first movie. Apparently when they threw them in the air in the final scene some of them caught on fire from the real torches on the wall and fell on people (no one was hurt) but health and safety told the studio they weren't allowed to use them again because they were endangering the child actor by doing so.

Snape and Hagrid

 

Slytherin

Ravenclaw

 

Gryffendor. The small robes on the left were the first ones Daniel Radcliffe ever wore in the first movie. And the sweat is Neville's from the last movie. 

From the Great Hall you enter the rest of the exhibit where there are thousands of props and sets from all eight of the movies. You can take as many pictures as you want, you just can't touch anything. I bought on of the audio guide, which is narrated by Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) which gives you a bit of info about each part of the exhibit. As you can imagine I took a couple of pictures, and by a couple I mean over 150, so I'm only showing you a fraction of them here.

Yule Ball Outfits

Belitrix's wig and Flue's dress

Educational Decree's and me at the Castle gates

The Griffendor Boy's dorm and the Fat Lady. Apparently
 when the beds were made for the first movie instead of making
 them the size of a standard twin they made them smaller
 because the actors we all only about 11,
 but as the actors grew they never made them
bigger so by the later movies the boys barely fit.

Tonks Sirius and Lupins robes

The Goblet of Fire

Wands

This is the door to the Chamber of Secrets. I think the fact that they still have this is so cool. The used it for one scene in a movie over 10 years ago, it's huge and they kept it in storage for years somewhere before they put it on display here.

Ministry Fireplaces

Beatrix and Voldemort

The Black Family Crest

The pictures above were all taken in the first big room full of props, which was once the first sound stage. After this room you go outside into a courtyard where there are some larger props and food. This was where you can get butterbeer. I got some but it was so cold outside that I only drank half of it because you weren't allowed to bring it inside and my hands hurt it was so cold out.

The Night Bus

Tom Riddles Grave Stone and Butterbeer 

Some lovely Frenchmen took this picture of me and Sarah

After escaping the cold the next stop was the special effects room. This was full of masks and figures used in the different films to make the creatures from the magical world.

Thestrals

Aragog. So this was pretty creepy because you rounded a
corner and the first thing you say was a giant spider hanging
from the ceilings looking down at you.

Diagon Ally

The next stop after the Creatures was Diagon Ally. I felt like Harry in the first book when he first went with Hagrid. There were people everywhere and it was noisy and colorful and everything was moving and I couldn't decided where to look because everything was so cool.

This was moving just like it did in the movie

Olivanders

Anyone need some robes?

After Diagon Ally the next stop was a room of models and sketches that were used in drafting and the development of the sets. These were interesting because a lot of them were rough drafts and never made it into the films so you got to see the process they went through to develop the sets they ended up using.




To the right is one of the early concepts for Dumbledoor's funeral. To the left are sketches of the Quidditch Pitch.

There are a ton of these small white models there of
almost every building used in the movies.

After the room of models came my favorite part of the tour, Hogwarts. In the first six movies all the shots of the outside of the castle were done using a hand made scale model of the castle that was added onto for every film as more and more parts of the castle were revealed, and it's still standing.

When you enter the room you're at the top of a ramp than goes around the entire perimeter of the room so you can walk around and see the castle from every possible angel. And, to make the whole thing even cooler, the room is wired so the lights go through the entire cycle of a day from dawn to dusk and back again every five minutes or so, so you get to see it in every possible light too. At this point in the tour my camera was out of battery but not to worry I was able to take a few (dozen) pictures using my phone.

After saying goodbye to the castle there was one final room in the exhibit. The final room was also the smallest, the walls are all shells rilled with wand boxes, and each box bears the name of a person who worked on the films.

In the middle of the room was a screen with this quote on it so the last thing you saw before leaving the exhibit (though the gift shop of course) was this quote from JK Rowelling promising that Hogwarts will always welcome you home.