Warner Bros Studios Harry Potter Tour!!!

Alright, as already mentioned, I am a Harry Potter fanatic and living in England only adds to the problem. On Monday, May 19th, we made our way to the Harry Potter movie set!! This was beyond exciting, obviously. I will try not to overload this post with photos since I did take a few (I also don't want to ruin the whole experience for others). It's only about an hour and a half drive from us and was a really easy drive on really nice roads!! Yay! We had a 2:30pm slot for our tour and left early to be sure to arrive on time.

We finally arrived at the studios and made our way inside. The entrance lobby had pictures of all the cast members and was very nice. Eventually we meandered our way to the line and waited very excitedly. The line itself held a surprise that just showed how mind blowing this studio would be: Harry Potter's cupboard under the stairs!

 Now if that doesn't get you excited to see the rest of the site, I don't know what would. After making it through the ticket line, we finally made it into a room where the kept the group. After a speech, we were herded into a small film room. They had a film that gave a brief introduction and served to get us more excited. When the film ended, the screen moved and there were the doors to the Great Hall! Pretty sure I had tears, I kid you not. They flung the doors open and there was the Great Hall, even more amazing than I could have imagined. They had two table set up and outfits from all the houses and professors. It was beautiful.

Alright, I promise I am keeping these photos to a minimum. There were just so many awesome things and I took a billion pictures. After the great hall, we continued into the rest of the tour (only the Great Hall was guided). The first area was indoors and had most of the indoor sets, props, and costumes. Here are just a few of the billion pictures I took of this section. By the way, here is an interesting tibit for you all: apparantly I was super excited and kept running off in every direction. Poor Lee kept coming up to me and saying "I lost you. I couldn't find you!" I think he said that more than anything else that day. Also, at the end, he said "I should have kept you on a leash." Whoops!

Harry Potter's outfits from the last movie.

Cast member's wigs

The invisibility cloak!

Ron's bed

Gryffindor commonroom

All the major characters' wands!

Staircase to Dumbledor'es office!

Dumbledore's office!

Horocruxes

Door to Chamber of Secrets

Hogwarts' door. You see this locking in Prisoner of Azkaban

Hagrid's Hut

The Burrow

The Weasley's clock!

Magic Is Might statue

I have this book as a journal!

The potions room

Lilly's letter

 After getting our fill of the indoor sets, we made our way outside. They had Harry Potter's childhood home (see the resemblence to Lavenham?), the Knight Bus, 4 Privet Street, John Riddle Sr's grave, chess pieces,  and the Hogwarts bridge. They were also selling Butterbeer so of course, we had to try that (not so much my taste, by hey, still great)!

Hogwarts Bridge

Lee drinking a butterbeer

Next we headed back indoors for more props, makeup and special effects. We got to see all of the creatures!

 We also got to see artwork from the films. There were everything from full color paintings to sketches in order to bring the world of Harry Potter to life. So much skill involved.

Hogsmeade was the next attraction! Oh my gosh, this was absolutely amazing! The detail they put into everything was impeccable. I cannot even imagine the talent of everybody working on these sets.

 The very last set was Hogwarts itself!! The lighting kept changing for the different times of day, hence our picture sequence! Again, so much detail. It was great seeing it all up close! I always knew Hogwarts was REAL!! I am still waiting on that letter, I must have gotten a dud of a post-owl.

Alright, there actually was one last room. We were led into a wand room! Soooo many cases they made!

Everything had so much detail! I took over 300 pictures so these are obviously only a tiny fraction. It was all just so amazing, I couldn't help myself. I definitely recommend visiting here as the sets are beautiful and it is great to see all the tiny details and behind the scenes that goes on for movies. It took us a little over three hours to go through everything but you have all the time in the world!