Deep thoughts on the Harry Potter Experience

By Will

LONDON—Today we went to the Harry Potter movie studios. We got up and I ate a doughnut. After breakfast, we walked to the bus stop and stood in line for the “Harry Potter Bus.” It took about an hour to get to the Warner Bros. studios site, a former WWII airplane manufacturing site, because it is way outside of London where we are staying. When we got off the bus, we saw big statues of wizard chess pieces and we walked through the big doors inside an enormous warehouse-like building that had been the set for the movie and where the young actors spent most of 10 years.

We waited in line for a while before going into a big movie theater, where we watched a short movie about the production of the seven books leading to eight movies. Once the movie had finished, the movie screen floated through the ceiling and we were led through a giant set of double doors leading to the Hogwarts Great Hall! It was really neat because we got to see some of the costumes that the Hogwarts teachers wore; it looked exactly like in the movie, except there was no enchanted ceiling — that was added later. After we were finished gazing at the costumes in the Great Hall, we walked into another big room that was about the size of a convention center. There we saw the sets for the Gryfinndor common, Dumbledore’s office, and numerous props and costumes. The coolest props were the animatronic ones, like the pewter cauldrons that stirred themselves.

I got to fly with my mom in a magic car in front of a green screen, which made it look like we were actually flying over the Hogwarts Express. And I also put on a wizard robe and flew through the skies on a broomstick. See the video above, and make sure you watch until you see me!!!

We stopped on the “back lot” for a glass of butter beer, which was cream soda topped with cream to leave a smudge on your upper lip. We saw the Knight Bus and No. 4 Privet Drive and part of the Hogwarts Bridge.

Next, we went into a different big room where we saw most of the creatures that were in the movie. We saw Dobby the house elf, a troll, many goblins, Fawks the phoenix, Buckbeak the hippogriff, and a dragon head. It was pretty neat. We also ran into someone from Catlin Gabel!!!

The next room had blueprints and drawings of the original characters and monsters. The final room was pretty neat. It was the real castle of Hogwarts. It was really small and kinda disappointing (I thought that it was a real castle) but awesome anyways. After that we toured the impressive gift shop before I dropped a bunch of my chili from my chili dog onto my clean pants, and my mom was mad. At the end of the day, we hopped back on our bus and went home where we ate dinner in our hotel room.

* His mother, who is doing laundry as we speak: What Will really meant to say, was that he has been obsessively reading and re-reading all the Harry Potter books for weeks in preparation, and he really loved the day, though it was sweet and sad to his mother that some of the magic of the movies didn’t seem quite as magical to him when the illusory tricks were revealed. He loves to believe in the magic of the movies. But it was a little like realizing the Candy Fairy who takes away uneaten Halloween Candy and leaves a toy in its place is really me. “Hey no it’s not,” he’s shouting now. “There’s a real Candy Fairy.”