In the fall we took a vacation to the UK and one of the things on my “must do” list was the Harry Potter studio tour! I am a huge Harry Potter fan and I was super excited about this part of the trip! I took a ton of photos and it was hard to narrow down which ones to include in this post. I had a hard time picking because I want to show it all, but I don’t want to spoil it for those of you who plan to visit the studio tour some day! I narrowed it down to these ten pictures for a good overview of the tour, without giving away too much!
Harry Potter Studio Tour
The tour is organized by timed tickets. So when it’s your time you get in line and go into the first area which is a short intro video, then into a larger room for a sit down video. This is a great way to space out the tours and the movies get you into the happy Happy Potter spirit! After the movie section, you then go into the first room, the Great Hall!
Throughout the great hall you will see displays of many different costumes from the movies. They also have the tables set up. It was a little overwhelming, I just kind of stood there staring around! All the sets, props and costumes are really from the movies! After the Great Hall set you go into the large main room of the studio where you find all sorts of props and sets from the movies from the Griffindor common room set to the seven Horcruxes to the Burrow set and everything in between! There’s Dumbledors office, the clock from the school, costumes from the Yule Ball and so much more. I honestly wish I could go back just to get another look because I’m sure I missed plenty!
Platform 9 3/4
After the sets/props room you go into another area where they have the Hogwarts Express set up as well as platform 9 3/4 walls where you can take photos. You can take your own and they also sell photo packages. They have an interactive train with a green screen so you can pretend you’re on the train to Hogwarts!
Heading into Platform 9 3/4 for his first year at Hogwarts!
Heading Outside
After Platform 9 3/4 you go into a cafe where you can get butterbeer (of course!) as well as ice cream and other snacks. Sit and relax for awhile before heading outside to see all the outside sets! Carter and I had fun posing in Sirius/Hagrid’s motorbike! Just so you know, most of the tour is inside, but you do have to go through the outside section to get to the last building. So, if it’s really cold outside take that into consideration when you check your coat in the lobby.
Some shots of the outside sets! We saw 4 Privat Drive, the Potter’s House, the Knight Bus, Mr. Weasley’s car and the bridge to Hogwarts (not pictured here)! Carter loved sitting in the car, but was disappointed he couldn’t go inside the bus all the way.
Finding Magical Beast
In the last building you enter through the creatures room where they show how many of the magical creatures are created for the films including animatronics and special make up. They even show how the scenes are filmed with Hagrid actually looking like a giant! You also get to see some of the creatures up close such as Buckbeak and Aragog the spider.
Next, we walked through the Diagon Alley set which was really cool, but had very poor lighting for pictures. Honestly, it’s very similar to the one at Universal Studios in Orlando, except you can’t go in any of the shops!
The last room is bit of a surprise, so I’ll end the tour with this pic of Carter picking out his wand in the wand shop set! You then exit through the gift shop (of course)! There’s also a cafe and Starbucks in the lobby if you get there early and need a snack, or want to grab a coffee before you head out.
And that’s a wrap!
Carter fell asleep mid-lollipop on the train back to London! It was very cute, even the happy hour goers thought so! To get to the studio tour you can take a train from London and then a special bus from the station takes you to the studio. You can also drive, there is a good sized parking lot, or take a tour bus from London. They have really good directions for all of this on their website. I also would recommend booking your tickets in advance, as you cannot go on the shuttle bus from the station without them.
If you didn’t get enough, I will share some more pics in a separate post soon for those of you who want to see it all! If you made it this far, congratulations, you must be a true HP fan (or just really like me)! I’ll leave you with this pic of what I wore. Sadly, I was one of few people I saw who wore a Harry Potter themed anything to the studio tour!
Mischief managed!
