My friends and I were all in Junior school when the Harry Potter books first came out, so we all remember the year we turned 11 and didn’t receive our Hogwarts letter. Tears were shed. Fortunately, thirteen years later, those clever people at Warner Bros. have found a way for us poor muggles to go anyway, hurrah!
So, albeit briefly, I became a wizard. And all I had to do was pawn my Grandmother to get there.
Twenty-five we may be turning but that did not stop us from squeaking like excited children on the bus all the way to the studios in Watford Junction. We spent a long time in the entrance hall staring at the giant photos of the cast, making numerous over-excited toilet trips and messing around with the audio guides. When we finally got into the queue for our tour we could barely contain our excitement, and the mock-up of the cupboard under the stairs nearly tipped us over the edge. That was nothing compared to what was coming next.
After a brief introduction we were led into a small cinema and sat down to watch a video of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson introducing the tour. It wasn’t the most fascinating video, for the whole time they were just stood in front of the iconic doors of the Great Hall. HOWEVER, everyone should at some point in their lives witness the joyous hysteria that then occurs when the projector screen subsequently rolls back to reveal those very doors right before us in the cinema. (I think it is worth noting here that my older sister, who also recently visited the studios, at this point released an involuntary yelp of excitement, which is fairly adorable.)
Now I’m not a die hard fan of the Harry Potter films, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been more of an advocate of books, so my relationship with the films has been tolerant at best, but I was absolutely blown away by the Great Hall. Walking in through the doors into the long, sweeping room really did feel like we were walking into Hogwarts. The attention to detail is fantastic and, as long as you don’t look up, the whole place feels like it could easily be an old castle somewhere in Scotland.
After the Great Hall the tour continues in a vast room crammed with props and sets from the films. The common room is just across from Dumbledore’s office, and the potions classroom backs directly on to The Burrow. Everywhere you look there are incredible objects, which took months to make, and only appeared fleetingly in the final scenes. Even if you have little interest in Harry Potter this place is worth going to for the craftsmanship alone. (Again, my tiny sister, who is not only the world’s biggest Potterhead but also a theatre design graduate, was so overwhelmed by the whole event that she probably should have been sedated. I wish I had witnessed her joy in person, that would have made me pretty happy.)
Of course we did not miss out on the opportunity to ride the broomsticks. After a brief stint driving the Ford Anglia, we took it in turns to don the Hogwarts robes and take a brief flight on a broomstick. This whole set up was made even more hilarious by the height differences between my friends, as the robes came to knee length on some of them and swamped others.
After successfully taking flight we practiced our wand manoeuvers, sampled some butter beer and maturely pasted our faces against the windows of the Night Bus. By this point we had been inside for hours, and were basically being chased out by the staff. We meandered our way through an absolutely incredible special effects section, where they had an anamatronic Hagrid head (who knew?!), the most incredible Buckbeak model, and a giant spider hanging from the ceiling. (I skipped past that fairly quickly, just in case it started moving. Ron had the idea about spiders, I’d much rather follow the butterflies.)
Even after all of that we still had to go all the way through Diagon Alley, which looked almost exactly like Quay Hill from my home town, but with slightly odder shops. Finally we reached the models, and spent some time discussing which of the tiny scenes they might of used for the aerial shots of the castle, when we stumbled around a corner and drew breath at the most amazing sight yet.
The model of Hogwarts used in the filming is incredible. It’s probably about the size of a small bungalow and made in every meticulous detail. As you walk around it the music from the films plays and the lighting dims from day to night. Inside the model castle all the lights come on, hundreds of them in every tiny detail. Steep steps wend their way up from the lake to the castle gates and at the back the famous bridge stretches out across a ravine. Apparently it took a team of around forty people several months to build, and to be honest I think they did it amazing quickly!
A final stroll through Ollivander’s wand shop completes the tour, and I think I was about twenty pounds poorer by the time we came back out the other end, as tired as four-year-olds on a sugar come-down. If there’s one thing I will say about the whole experience, Warner Bros. will take money from you at every available opportunity. After the thirty pounds for the ticket (and that’s without the audio guide and the souvenir booklet) you still have to pay for any photos you might want, butter beer and the bus to and from the site. Not to mention the fact that it’s physically impossible to get through the gift shop at the end without being distracted by SOMETHING.
However, as we sat on the train home playing Bertie Botts Every Flavour Jellie Bean Roulette, and throwing vomit flavoured ones around the carriage, I came to the conclusion that it was absolutely worth every penny.
Emma Pocklington 