Entering the magical land of Harry Potter

30/01/2013

Entering the magical land of Harry Potter

Earlier this week I paid a visit to the Harry Potter studio tour just outside London with my friend Marcella .

As both of us are quite big Harry Potter fans, we'd been looking forward to this trip for quite some time and we like kids at Christmas on the train ride to Watford.

There are no 'rides', instead the studio tour features huge amounts of props, sets, costumes and special effects from all of the 8 Harry Potter films.

The potions classroom with one of Alan Rickman's costumes.

You get to see sets such as the potions classroom, the Great Hall (including the real stone floor that they used), Diagon Alley, Hagrid's Hut, and many more.

The Great Hall

There's also an outside area which features the Knight Bus and a little hut where you can buy your very own Butterbeer! (It tastes extremely sweet!)

Butterbeer

I really enjoyed the costume and makeup section that they had. Apparently a lot of the wigs were all handmade, with each hair threaded in by hand. Can you imagine how long that must have taken?! There was also a makeup artist's station mocked up showing some of the products they had used on set - hello MAC, Laura Mercier, Dermalogica and even Simple!

The makeup station

Harry, Ron and Hermione's wigs

I think this trip is a must for any Harry Potter fan. I'm so pleased that I went and it was really interesting to find out how they made certain aspects of the films. It might ruin some of the magic if you have kids though, so beware!

The gift shop (as with all these sorts of places) is expensive. I bought a chocolate frog and a keyring and it came to just over *cough* £15 *cough*. Still, I won't be going again in a hurry, so thought I'd better make the most of it!

And now, a few more pictures for anyone still reading...