Harry Potter Studio Tour

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On Thursday, December 11, after finishing my final exam (and thus the semester), I set out on my final travel journey before my family arrives. I was planning on traveling to Rome and to Athens, but since flights are cheaper to fly from London rather than Glasgow, and since there are cheap flights between London and Glasgow, I decided to fly through London. On the way there, I decided to make the most of my time in London and book the Harry Potter Studio Tour. I arrived in London late Thursday evening and crashed at the hostel before getting up early the next morning to head to the studio tour.

I booked the tour through Golden Tours, which worked really well since it included transportation to the otherwise potentially hard to get to studio location. The bus was decorated in Harry Potter images specifically for the tour and featured a short video that helped us to prepare for the tour upon our arrival. We arrived at the studio, which had been decorated for Christmas and immediately were met by a huge Christmas tree. Since it was before our tour time officially started, I had a look around the gift shop where of course everything was over-priced but also incredibly appealing. It would have been easy to spend a ton of money in the store. It was very cool to see all of the different gifts you could get, and there were even some artifacts in the shop such as one of the walls from the library.

We got in line to go into the tour, and on the way, we were greeted by the cupboard under the stairs, which was carefully situated next to the queue. We went into the first room, where they showed us a short movie to get us in the mood before taking us to the gates of Hogwarts, which were decorated with wreaths for Christmas. After a short introduction, we were led into the Great Hall, which was absolutely breathtaking. It was decorated for Christmas as it was in the first movie, complete with Christmas poppers on each of the table settings. There were mannequins that had the costumes that the actors wore in the position that they might have been. This included the first robe that Daniel Radcliffe ever wore in the filming. We were then led into the next room, which was more individualized as you could move at your own pace. They had a multitude of costumes and props along with Dumbledore's Office, the Gryffindor common room, the Gryffindor boys' room, the potions room, Hagrid's hut, the Burrow, and so many more! It was so exciting being so close to all of the real artifacts used in the filming. Specifically for the holiday season, they had a lot of artifacts from the Yule Ball, which was also super cool! After finishing in this room, the tour continued outside where they had larger set pieces such as the Hogwarts bridge, the Potters' house complete with a hole in the ceiling and the Knight Bus. This was where I got my butterbeer, which was a lot better than I had thought it might be. I walked around the outside, reveling in the beauty and wonder of all these huge set pieces. There was also a corner of the outdoor courtyard where they had it snowing in the manner that they used to make it snow in the movies. The next room featured exhibits on the masks, makeup design and animatronics that were used to create all of the creatures, which was really fascinating. There was also Diagon Alley complete with many of the stores. What was especially fascinating here was seeing the way that they created the footsteps in the snow when they were wearing the invisibility cloak. There were scale models of many of the rooms made in white cardstock which were displayed on the way to one of the final rooms, which displayed the scale model of Hogwarts that had been used for filming. Entering that room was absolutely magical; the castle was much larger than I thought it would be, and it had been carefully covered in snow for the season. It is so amazing to think that they used such a small model to film some of the scenes. I walked around the perimeter of the castle, taking in all of the detail, which notably was quite extensive. The final room of the tour was full of wand boxes that each had the name of a person who had worked on the movies.

All in all, the tour exceeded my expectations and I was so glad that I was able to fit this into my schedule. The most impressive thing about the whole tour was seeing the incredible amount of detail that had gone into every element of each film. It was truly staggering to think of all of the time and effort that went into everything. However, the result is clearly worth it and the films are a testament to the success of all of the people who worked on the films, which was really showcased beautifully in the tour.

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