Harry Potter Tour of Warner Bros. Studio London

The past few days we have been meeting my mother’s friends and exploring London. On Sunday we had to take more than one train to reach Watford Junction. When we exited the station there were signs everywhere telling us where to go for the Harry Potter Studio Tour. Outside the station there was a double decker bus with Harry potter written along with pictures of some of the characters on the sides. It took us about fifteen minutes for us to reach there. The building from the outside was massive, It had “The Making of Harry Potter” written on the front. We had booked our tickets in a festive seasonal event so everything inside would have been snowing and with Christmas decorations so outside there was a big Christmas tree next to three giant rusted medieval statues in front of the entrance.

When we walked inside there was music playing from the movies. Next when we opened the door the first thing we saw was a gigantic Ukrainian Ironbelly dragon with its wings open roaring in the air. The dragon had scratches and wounds all over its body. The café behind the dragon was nearest to the tour room line where our journey began. When we entered the walls were full of concept art, scripts, pictures and paintings. The first attraction was Harry’s little room under the stairs. Next they took us to a room and a little theater where they explained what there is to do and what there was to explore. When the video in the theater ended they slid the wall that the screen was on and behind that wall was a massive door for the Great Hall. They had artificial festive food that looked very real on the tables, they had cake, chicken, vegetables, sweets and much more. You could see the grease on the chicken and all the different textures on the foods. When we exited the Great Hall, there was information about everything in the first few stations!

There were enormous amounts of examples and information they put up for different areas and fields. The first stations were about how they made the costumes, how they made everything, even optical illusions had their own section. The first thing from the movie that they put for display was one of the shifting stairs. To the right of the stairs was the Gryffindor dormitory where Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom, Ronald Weasley, Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnagin lived. There were many attractions till we got to the interactive parts. First for the interactive parts there was an attraction where you walk up to the broom and yell the word “up” for it to rise into the air and into your hand. Another interactive part was where I had to learn 3 moves with a wand in front of a crowd, it was embarrassing but fun. On the right of that was the gigantic statue built showing the entire top top part of the statue crushing muggles. To the left side of the wand combat learning was the Gates to the Forbidden Forest.

When we walk into the Forbidden Forest there are 3 characters you will see and they are Lord Voldemort, Hagrid and Harry Potter. The Forest has a snowy biome in the winter time which gives it a much scarier and dead look. They also made the temperature colder than it was outside. After the characters, we meet Buckbeak the Griffin. Buckbeak was moving his head down into a bow and looking in different directions. If you were to get lucky you could touch Buckbeak when it would come to a bow. To Buckbeak’s right you would have to go through a dark tunnel with spider webs foreshadowing Aragog the giant spider. As you kept walking you would see massive spiders coming down from the ceiling. As we looked at the spiders, when we looked behind us in the big dark cave you will see 8 black, glossy, beady eyes staring at you. There was a button that you push and when you push it you see the massive spider himself, Aragog. As I keep walking down the trail a wolf stares at you and howls. Everything is dark with lightning, thunder, howling, branches colliding, wind whooshing with scary music with it until you exit into the bright lights of the first gift shop of three. When we exited the gift shop the first thing my eyes picked up was the Hogwarts express blowing steam out. There was a line to go inside the train too. After the pictures I quickly queued for the line. While I was waiting to go inside there were Hogwarts emblems on suitcases and bird cages on the side. When I got inside the train there was very little room to walk down the aisle. To my left would be the sliding doors. I could see different items inside each room like food, drinks, books and more.

When we exited the train there was a trolley with a variety of wands outside the gift shop. This gift shop had everything on the Hogwarts express. Next we went to the food court where almost all the people in the food court were queued in line for food and the most popular drink, Butterbeer, Butterbeer is made of Butterscotch. There was also an ice-cream flavor of it too so I had to get it. The ice-cream had a sweet caramel vanilla type taste. We ate at the outdoor area where they have artificial snow coming from pipes on the rooftops. The snow is foam getting carried by the wind which makes it look very real and makes the ground a little slippery. There is also a shop right next to the life size Knight bus. The Knight bus has a button in front of it when you press it the bus honks in it’s weird way. Next to the bus was the Privet Drive house where Harry and the Dursley lived. It looked like the actual thing from the movies; it also had vines growing on the sides. Right beside the house was the Weasley’s flying car which we could go inside of.