Hello! It's Jesica. Today I will gush about the Harry Potter Studio Tours. Now, we all remember the ad at the beginning of the Deathly Hallows movie. I bet that all of you fangirled out wanting to go to it. Well, I actually had the opportunity last fall to go to England to visit my dad's friend who is stationed over there and I got to go to the Harry Potter studio tour!
It was the most magical moment of my life. We actually thought we were going to be late and miss the beginning of the tour. I was in the back seat praying, in near tears, that we wouldn't be late. We weren't late but from the very moment we pulled into the parking lot, I was fangirling out of my mind. Outside, in the front, are three of the chess pieces from the movie. I took a picture in front of them. So, we went inside and in little spot in between the doors was a little thing of the hand molds of Emma, Rupert and Dan. Their hands were surprisingly small. Then there was this HUGE lobby area. It had the flying car and a bunch of huge pictures up on the wall. All of our tickets had a character or creature on them. Mine had Dobby but after we got through the little gate thing, I forced everyone to give me their stubs. In the line, there was the cupboard under the stairs and a bunch of cool quotes from J.K. Then we got into another waiting room. (There were a lot of waiting rooms but i really didn't care) This one had a bunch of screen showing the movie posters in a bunch of different languages. Then they showed some clips from the making of the movies. Then we went into a theatre where we sat down and two people came out and started talking about how awesome it all was. They were like, "How excited are we on a scale from one to ten?" I screamed, "INFINITY!!!!" But they were like, "Actually, the correct answer was 9 and 3/4." Then the screen came down and they're like, "And now, we are going to watch all of the Harry Potter films back to back to back!!! See you in a week!" and i'm like "YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!" But instead we watched more about the making of them films. Then the screen went back up and there were these huge oak doors! They had three people who's birthday was that day come up and open it. Then we were in the freaking Great Hall. The real one it was soooooooooooooo freaking amazing. They had like all of the characters from everything and their costumes and the lady pointed to Neville's sweater from DH PT2 and she's like, "let's find out who loves Harry Potter the most! Who's was this?" I raised my hand and jumped about twelve feet in the air. She called on me and i'm like, "It's Neville's!!!!" and she's like "Right!" and i'm like totally fangirling beyond belief by now. Anyway, they had all of the wigs and stuff and they had the boars on the gates and the Wall of Educational Decrees. It was really funny because i was like "Ooo! There's that! And there's that!" Just spouting facts from all of the movies and books and my family was like clueless the whole time. They had Dumbledore's office and Umbridge's office and the Gryffindor Common Room and Dumbledore's Gryffin Door and Moody's trunk (which had a screen at the bottom, so cool!) They had the flying things like brooms and the bike in front of a green screen and everything. They had Snape's dungeon and a TON of movie artifacts and it was too amazing to describe. Then, we got to the courtyard. They had a ton of photo ops there with Hagrid's bike and the Knight Bus and Potter Cottage and the Dursley's house and that's where they sold the butterbeer! It really wasn't that great or at all what i imagined but the experience was fantastic! There are two warehouses full of stuff, warehouse J and warehouse K (hehe get it?) and the courtyard was in between. Then we went into the other warehouse. They had a place where you could take a replica wand and learn some tricks with a guy on the screen. The guy with the wands was like, "And who's wand do you think you have?" and i'm like, "Ginny's! And that's neville's and luna's and harry's and hermione's and ron's and you-know-who's and...blah blah blah" The guy was super impressed that i knew them all. Then we went to the place where you got to put on house robes, go in a little green room, get on a broom and record yourself like flying around with the green screen. I bought a flash drive with the video and a picture of me! They had the Buckbeak robot that was like moving around and they had Dobby and ooooo Did you know that whenever they showed like Harry next to Hagrid and he was so big? That was actually a robot face because none of the actors, big though they were, were half-giant sized. I got to see Hagrid's robot face! The coolest part by far was the scale Hogwarts. You know those scenes where they show like Hogwarts like the castle? That's a scale model. It fills this whole huge room and they have everything! It was insanely cool and beautiful. Sorry I can't post any pictures. All of my pictures were on my old ipod which died and took the pictures with it. (But that just gives me another excuse to go again and take new pictures!) There was a lot of other stuff too but after all that was the room of Thank Yous. Everyone who helped with the movies got their names on a box in Ollivander's wand shop. Dan, Rupert and Emma's were all very worn from people touching them. Of course, i touched them too. Then we got to the gift shop. Holy Christ Jesus heaven on earth, how to describe the gift shop. It was about as big as half of the studio itself. It had EVERYTHING YOU CAN EVER IMAGINE EVER HAVING ANYTHING TO DO WITH HARRY POTTER. I got a Time Turner keychain, Ravenclaw scarf, HP calendar, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember at the moment. It was the experience of a lifetime and I hope that some of you readers can experience it too. Well, that's it for the week! Happy fangirling!
Mischief Managed,
Jesica
It was the most magical moment of my life. We actually thought we were going to be late and miss the beginning of the tour. I was in the back seat praying, in near tears, that we wouldn't be late. We weren't late but from the very moment we pulled into the parking lot, I was fangirling out of my mind. Outside, in the front, are three of the chess pieces from the movie. I took a picture in front of them. So, we went inside and in little spot in between the doors was a little thing of the hand molds of Emma, Rupert and Dan. Their hands were surprisingly small. Then there was this HUGE lobby area. It had the flying car and a bunch of huge pictures up on the wall. All of our tickets had a character or creature on them. Mine had Dobby but after we got through the little gate thing, I forced everyone to give me their stubs. In the line, there was the cupboard under the stairs and a bunch of cool quotes from J.K. Then we got into another waiting room. (There were a lot of waiting rooms but i really didn't care) This one had a bunch of screen showing the movie posters in a bunch of different languages. Then they showed some clips from the making of the movies. Then we went into a theatre where we sat down and two people came out and started talking about how awesome it all was. They were like, "How excited are we on a scale from one to ten?" I screamed, "INFINITY!!!!" But they were like, "Actually, the correct answer was 9 and 3/4." Then the screen came down and they're like, "And now, we are going to watch all of the Harry Potter films back to back to back!!! See you in a week!" and i'm like "YESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!" But instead we watched more about the making of them films. Then the screen went back up and there were these huge oak doors! They had three people who's birthday was that day come up and open it. Then we were in the freaking Great Hall. The real one it was soooooooooooooo freaking amazing. They had like all of the characters from everything and their costumes and the lady pointed to Neville's sweater from DH PT2 and she's like, "let's find out who loves Harry Potter the most! Who's was this?" I raised my hand and jumped about twelve feet in the air. She called on me and i'm like, "It's Neville's!!!!" and she's like "Right!" and i'm like totally fangirling beyond belief by now. Anyway, they had all of the wigs and stuff and they had the boars on the gates and the Wall of Educational Decrees. It was really funny because i was like "Ooo! There's that! And there's that!" Just spouting facts from all of the movies and books and my family was like clueless the whole time. They had Dumbledore's office and Umbridge's office and the Gryffindor Common Room and Dumbledore's Gryffin Door and Moody's trunk (which had a screen at the bottom, so cool!) They had the flying things like brooms and the bike in front of a green screen and everything. They had Snape's dungeon and a TON of movie artifacts and it was too amazing to describe. Then, we got to the courtyard. They had a ton of photo ops there with Hagrid's bike and the Knight Bus and Potter Cottage and the Dursley's house and that's where they sold the butterbeer! It really wasn't that great or at all what i imagined but the experience was fantastic! There are two warehouses full of stuff, warehouse J and warehouse K (hehe get it?) and the courtyard was in between. Then we went into the other warehouse. They had a place where you could take a replica wand and learn some tricks with a guy on the screen. The guy with the wands was like, "And who's wand do you think you have?" and i'm like, "Ginny's! And that's neville's and luna's and harry's and hermione's and ron's and you-know-who's and...blah blah blah" The guy was super impressed that i knew them all. Then we went to the place where you got to put on house robes, go in a little green room, get on a broom and record yourself like flying around with the green screen. I bought a flash drive with the video and a picture of me! They had the Buckbeak robot that was like moving around and they had Dobby and ooooo Did you know that whenever they showed like Harry next to Hagrid and he was so big? That was actually a robot face because none of the actors, big though they were, were half-giant sized. I got to see Hagrid's robot face! The coolest part by far was the scale Hogwarts. You know those scenes where they show like Hogwarts like the castle? That's a scale model. It fills this whole huge room and they have everything! It was insanely cool and beautiful. Sorry I can't post any pictures. All of my pictures were on my old ipod which died and took the pictures with it. (But that just gives me another excuse to go again and take new pictures!) There was a lot of other stuff too but after all that was the room of Thank Yous. Everyone who helped with the movies got their names on a box in Ollivander's wand shop. Dan, Rupert and Emma's were all very worn from people touching them. Of course, i touched them too. Then we got to the gift shop. Holy Christ Jesus heaven on earth, how to describe the gift shop. It was about as big as half of the studio itself. It had EVERYTHING YOU CAN EVER IMAGINE EVER HAVING ANYTHING TO DO WITH HARRY POTTER. I got a Time Turner keychain, Ravenclaw scarf, HP calendar, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember at the moment. It was the experience of a lifetime and I hope that some of you readers can experience it too. Well, that's it for the week! Happy fangirling!
Mischief Managed,
Jesica