The order of the day was to immerse ourselves in all things Harry Potter. We spent basically the entire day at the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour, capping things off with a quick trip to a London Mall and a delicious doner kebab for dinner.
I had missed the boat on booking a tour through Warner Brothers — if you want in on one of these tours, you need to book things way in advance — so I ended up booking a tour through another group that I’m sure was more expensive than if I had gone through the official studio ticket channel. But hey, it’s only money, right?
One thing to note is that I haven’t seen any of the Harry Potter films at all. Heck, I haven’t even read all of the books. I just started reading Harry Potter last year, and I’ve only finished the first two books.
The good thing about the tour, spoilers aside (haha!), was that it was still super interesting even for someone who hasn’t seen all of the movies. If you’re interested in how movies are made period, then the studio tour is basically a supercharged how-to for a major blockbuster film series that covers everything from CGI, set building and miniatures, costumes and makeup, prosthetics and animatronics, to storyboarding and concept art.
We left Victoria Coach Station on a white, unmarked bus which then drove us about an hour to the studio tour outside of London.
Once the bus arrived at the studio, we disembarked and were handed our entrance tickets. We had four hours to spend before returning to the bus for the ride back to London.
The entire tour consisted of two studio buildings with sets and exhibits inside, with a dining area and several exhibits outside in the lot between the studio buildings.
At the beginning of the tour, after you and a group of other visitors watch an introductory video, a pair of lucky volunteers get to push open the “front door” of Hogwarts, revealing to the crowd the main dining hall of Hogwarts.
Because we visited in the fall, the dining hall was all done up for Halloween. This was the actual set used for filming, and because it was such an important part of Hogwarts, everything was built to last. The floors were real solid stone to withstand the abuse of footsteps and filming for all eight movies.
Also, the set had no ceiling. Everything that would be seen “above” was added in digitally. Makes sense.
Our group was ushered along so as to have an empty hall for the next group of tourists. We stepped into a large warehouse like room filled with exhibits showing set pieces and props from different scenes in the movie.
At the halfway point of the tour, there was a cafeteria that sold expensive meals that I had no interest in. There was, off to the side, a stand that just served butterbeer drinks and butterbeer ice cream, which I was very much interested in trying out.
Lily had to explain to me what butterbeer actually was. What it is is basically a root beer, but it sure did look like a lager once the server added the cream foam on top. I got a single butterbeer drink and two ice creams, one in a waffle cone and one in a plastic sundae dish. Once we finished eating, there was a washing station where you could wash your butterbeer cup and sundae dish to keep as souvenirs.
We checked out some of the stuff outside, including the only physical Hogwarts Bridge set piece and a small exhibit with the screaming mandrakes in a miniature greenhouse.
We entered the second studio building to find an entire exhibit about the makeup and prosthetics used to create the goblins, which I found absolutely fascinating. Then immediately after that was an exhibit that went into the details of the animatronics built for several creatures in the film. Installing a flamethrower into the head of a mechanical dragon and lighting up a dark forest? Yes, do tell me about it!
There were two sets in this building of note. The first was the set of Gringots Bank, replete with the rows of bank tellers and a couple of the goblins situated at their desks. Everything looked fantastically regal and almost like the real deal in marble and crystal. I found it really interesting how they faked the marble on the set through a combination of torn and layered paper, painted cracks, and top coats of varnish. The chandeliers were plastic, naturally, but for the movie, they only created the “lower” portions of the chandeliers; like they did for the main hall of Hogwarts, the set only extended so high and the rest of the ceiling was done digitally.
The other set of note was the Diagon Alley. It was built up to look exactly as it did in the films, and an impressive amount of detail is in that set everywhere you look. It was at this point that a thought came to mind: if there was a Harry Potter theme park where the wizarding world was brought to life a la Star Wars at Disney World, one could make a lot of money.
And my favorite thing in the entire tour was in the second studio building: the Hogwarts Railway steam engine. Okay, that’s probably more to do with the fact that I really like trains more than its Harry Potter storylines, but still, it’s a cool train.
The very last thing on the tour is the scale miniature that was used for the wide shots of the Hogwarts Castle in the films. It was both surprisingly and unsurprisingly huge and very detailed. You wouldn’t make something like this anymore for movies — you’d just model the entire building in a computer and film inside digital space.
We returned back to London and decided not to head back to the AirBnB just yet. We grabbed a ride to Westfield Mall to do some wandering around. It was one of the few shopping areas that was still open after 7pm.
First things first, we went off and bought me a hoodie, as it was cool and getting colder and I was a dumbass and left my hoodie back at the AirBnB. Then we checked out a couple of shops: a Longchamp store, a super tiny Bath and Body Works display in a department store, a mall jewelry store where I nearly bought a Seiko 5 Sports reissue watch.
It was getting late when we left the mall and went off searching for a place to eat dinner. We chose a doner kebab place that turned out the be exactly what I needed for dinner.
We returned to the AirBnB and called it a day.