Harry Potter Studio Tour with Penny

Post date: Jun 09, 2019 9:28:43 PM

Always down for a trip to London. Whether to visit Penny, or Nick, to meet up with friends, or to see a play, or or or.

So when Penny told me she got tickets to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, I booked my flight.

Now. I love Harry Potter. I’m very obviously a Ravenclaw and have a lot of house pride. Penny is equally in love with Harry Potter, and is a hardcore Hufflepuff with an equal amount of house pride.

When we were getting onto the bus to go to the studio (located in Watford outside of London) there was a girl in full wizard garb behind us. We were talking about how much we were likely to spend at the gift shop and the girl behind us commented: “that seems like a good use of a paycheck”. For the record, my financial advisor (Penny) approved of the expense.

Penny received her letter and off we went!

This is in the lobby, before the tour starts. This is one of ~100 photos I took of a real life dragon. Because… Real. Life. Dragon.

I feel like I’ve made my point.

They start the tour by entering hogwarts through the great hall.

And naturally we had to take photos in front our respective houses (they had tables for each house!).

AND THEY HAD DUMBLEDORE’S OFFICE! I mean, they had all the sets from the movies, and we took copious amounts of photos. I’m going to have a highlight of them, and Dumbledore’s office was important to me. It’s like the dream of being an academic but an academic professor at Hogwarts. The dream.

And not only was there a whole quidditch section, but there was a quidditch referee! Black and white stripes for life.

Awesomely, there was a tour group that were simply the best cosplay I have ever seen. Including a fierce Bellatrix Lestrange and an awesome Umbridge. Here was Umbridge, in front of Umbridge. Very meta.

And Snape taking a photo in front of the Mirror of Erised. To be specific, here’s Snape taking a selfie in front of the Mirror of Erised.

There was an entire forbidden forest, with a moving hippogriff. He bowed to me. I really think we connected. We might have a future together.

Penny and I decided that the photo below should be our album cover. It’s in the covered bridge to Hogwarts (in the movies but not hte books). Also, this expression really captures how we looked all day everyday.

And Penny takes photos of me that belong on Tinder. All of the photos. It’s really impressive because I’m not very photogenic.

THE HOGWARTS EXPRESS IS REAL!

As is Platform 9 ¾

Everyone who had been to the studio before told us that the butterbeer was terrible. For the record I loved it, but I love sweet things.

So I genuinely was onboard with it.

This was Penny’s response:

And this billboard was on the way to the butterbeer. I had to look it up, apparently it’s from the movies, but struck me as hilarious that it was hanging by the bar.

The newest set that they setup at the studio was Gringotts bank. It was incredible the amount of detail they had. The floor alone was incredible.

They also had a scene where the destroyed bank (destroyed by a dragon).

It also had a dragon.

And they had Diagon Alley!

After all the amazing, there was the more interesting concept art. I had just enough money to blow WAY too much of it in the gift shop. Life goal: to have enough money to buy some of this art. It was so cool.

Last but definitely not least: Hogwarts Castle.

Remember the amazing Miniature Wunderland that Penny and I went to in Hamburg?

It was like that. Only better.

It had a night mode! It cycled through every 15 minutes or so. We stayed for at least two cycles exploring every inch.

The miniature boathouse was my favorite. Super favorite.

CJ included for size comparison.

Last but not least was this amazing room full of wands. The boxes are all named after the cast and crew as a way of saying thank you.

Remember the group of people that were doing cosplay that we saw while we were wondering around? Well, the Dumbledore was simply spectacular. Seriously, spectacular. Down to the tie he used on his beard.

So I asked to take a photo with him. He said yes (many people were asking if they could). But I asked if I could hug him. He said yes…

I love the look on Snape’s face.

I think overall this was one of the best adventures Penny and I have ever had.