The Wizarding World of Harry Potter ϟ

by

On the thirteenth April I went to see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Warner Bros. Studios  ♥‿♥ And the reason I haven't posted about it yet was that I couldn't find my camera cable and I have tons of pictures. Harry Potter has and always will hold a really special place in my heart, seeing as I grew up with it and it was what first inspired me to be an author. I first started reading them when the fourth Harry Potter book came out in 2000, when I was six, as my parents already had the first three books and hadn't let me read them in case they were too scary. They bought the fourth book and I remember racing through the first three as fast as I could, in order to read the fourth (partially because the cover had a dragon on it, but also because that thing was huge. I'd never read a book as fat as that one, and was determined to do so. I've always had a thing for nice, fat books that took me a good while to finish.)

Needless to say, I loved Harry Potter. I read those books again, and again, and again. I got them on audiotape, my mum read them out to the family after tea. When the fifth book came out we went to buy it from Waitrose at 7am, the shop's opening time, and when we asked for it the manager said we were his first customers and gave it to us for free! Excellent marketing strategy, as then everyone we met in town we told about it. We later bought a second copy for my mum, which we then did ever since as me, her and dad would fight over who got to read them first.

I read Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in a day, and every release after that we went at 5am to ASDA to buy the books. I would get so excited for the release days, I wouldn't even sleep! And then I wouldn't put them down until I finished reading them. They were the only days  I was allowed to read at the table, although little-kid-me always tried it. I miss those days so much! They were some of the happiest of my life. We even got a system going - I was the fastest reader and would finish within the day, then passing it on to my dad. My mum would finish her copy in two days, and then give it back to me to read again. ♥‿♥

The films were never as good as the books to me, but they were Harry Potter and so I loved them anyway. Thus, I was really excited when I heard about the studios tour, and desperate to visit from the offset. But the tickets are kind of pricey, so we had to put it off for a year. Finally we came across some vouchers to go (we are so cheap) and jumped at the chance ♥

These are the photos of the day! Be warned, this will probably be a stupidly long post. This isn't even half the stuff we saw that day, and the pictures don't do it justice at all! So if you are a fan of the Harry Potter series and you haven't been, go. It's absolutely fabulous, and I got quite emotional about it afterwards! It really was the end of my childhood, and I may just have teared in the car on the way home. Honestly, I think nothing will ever replace Harry Potter. Nothing will be quite the same, touch people quite the same. I can't imagine it, and that makes me really quite sad - but also happy, because I got to grow up with Harry.

 
The ice sculpture from the Yule Ball ♥‿♥ so much prettier in real life than in the picture!
To the left - do you remember these?  I don't care what anyone says - Umbridge might have been one of the characters people hated the most, but that didn't mean she wasn't an excellent character. To the right are everyone's wands. We bought Lupin's wand in the shop afterwards.
The Gryffindor common room :') Memories!
To the left - me and Mum in the Mirror of Erised. To the right, we're entering Dumbledore's office ♥
 
The Chamber of Secrets was always one of my favourite movies ♥♥
 
"I am Snape, the Potions Master."
 
A broomstick and a Gringott's cart~
 
The Weasley House, with character outfits.
Oh hello, it's most of my family. What you had to remember was that someone had to build all of this stuff.  Crazy! My dad kept saying that he'd have loved this to be his job.
Recognise these? :>
 
 Buckbeak! He was my favourite character when I first read the books ♥ This robot was moving when we saw it; it was amazing! A video above it explained that when some visitors from Japan came during the filming and were shown the robot, it bowed to them and they bowed to it. But then it bowed to them again, so they too did it again. The robot wouldn't stop bowing, so in the end they had to turn it off so the visitors could see the rest of the studios. What can be said? He is a very courteous magical creature, unless he is offended.
 
 
The last thing we saw was this huge scaled-down model of the Hogwarts castle itself. This was easily the most amazing part! It was huge, and someone made that. Well, a lot of people, but so much effort went in to every tiny detail.

(I'm sorry for the horrible formatting; blogger makes my text go really small whenever I insert an image. Normally I can fix it in the HTML, but there are so many images it's pretty much impossible.)