UK 2013 Day 7 Leavesden

Day 7 - Friday, June 14 2013: Harry Potter Studios
As the day dawned we were all quite excited.  We were leaving London today headed toward a nice B&B in Windsor, but the big event for today was that we were going by way of Leavesden to see the Harry Potter Studio Tour.  We're all big HP fans and the chance to see the sets, costumes, props, and other things involved in making the movies was something we HAD to do!  The studio offered a limited number of timed entry tickets each day, so I'd purchased our tickets several months in advance.  We didn't know how much time to allot for our visit, so I'd arbitrarily put it down for 4 hours (including lunch) and had some additional destinations we could visit on our way to Windsor, just in case.  We ended up spending just over six hours at the studios - and frankly could have easily spent another hour or two.  It was FANTASTIC!!

When we went in 2013 the studio hadn't yet built out a significant on-site food presence.  They offered Butterbeer and drinks and had a few snack-type items, but you couldn't at that time get a substantial meal.  (By 2018 this problem had been fixed with a large cafeteria being up and running.)  The website made it clear that if you wanted real food you had to bring a picnic lunch, which they indicated you could eat at the midway point, which was a courtyard area between Studios J and K.  (J&K - an homage to JK Rowling.  Get it?)  So first thing in the morning we walked over to a Subway sandwich shop that was conveniently near the car park and picked up sandwiches and chips for use later that afternoon.

But first we had to get there, so with food packed for travel we went and picked up the car and started our journey.  To get to Leavesden from London was a straight shot up the A5 motorway.  Very conveniently, we exited the carpark by turning left on Edgeware Road...which is the A5!  So simple!  Even better, Edgeware Road was the border of the London Congestion Zone.  What that means is that, had we needed to go even one block to the east we would have been subject to having to pay a large fee.  Essentially, central London streets are a toll area.  But we didn't have to do any of that.  We just kept following the A5 signs until we reached Leavesden, at which point we followed the signs to the Warner Brothers studios.

We pulled into a mostly empty parking lot around 10:15A, with time to spare before our 11:00 entry.  They did check our tour ticket at the parking lot gate, so I suppose if you show up too early they might tell you to come back later, but we had no worries.  From the parking lot you don't see much - the only major HP items were a few of the oversized chess pieces from the Sorcerer's Stone.  But even that small touch was enough of a teaser to keep the excitement level up.  Entering the lobby area you see mostly a ticket counter, a large shop, and then the rope queue area for ticket holders.  Around the high walls were displays of some larger props, such as the Weasley Ford Anglia motor car, and luggage items from platform 9 3/4.  Near the queue was the Closet Under the Stairs set piece.

The main entry.  I'll be adding a LOT of photos to this page, so going to use smaller thumbnail images.  Click on the photo to see it larger size.

Some chess pieces from Sorcerer's Stone.

Mr. Weasley's flying Ford Anglia.  This is hanging from the ceiling of the main lobby.

The Closet Under the Stairs.  This is near to the rope queue line where you wait for your timed entry.

You're held outside until your entry time.  (Actually, I believe that the 11:00A entry started letting people in around 10:45.)  Once the room is filled the doors are closed and everyone is standing in a large room where things are projected onto the high side walls.  Here they talk a bit about the global impact of the movie series, showing things like movie posters from around the world, and videos from various global premiers where cast members would be in attendance.  When that presentation concludes the doors open and you exit into a sit-down theater where you're welcomed in a short film by Harry, Ron, and Hermione.  That presentation concludes with the screen retracting and you find yourself facing the door to the Great Hall at Hogwarts.  That is opened to reveal the Great Hall set, and in you go.  They do control access to this room, because they want each subsequent group to see the Great Hall devoid of people.  So at some point they ask you to clear the room because the next group is about to arrive.  You can go right back in as soon as the next group gets the "big reveal".

The Great Hall is revealed!

A small sampling of some of the things on display in the Great Hall.

The House Points tracker.  You get some sense of how expensive these movies must have cost to produce by noting that this large set piece is buried in the corner of the Great Hall, which is (I think) where it was in the movies.  And yet it must have cost a pretty penny to build this!

Once you are done with the great hall you enter the rest of Studio J, which has a huge number of set pieces, costumes, props...and on and on and on.  You carry around headset-based narration, which was issued to us as we sat in that small theater room outside the Great Hall.  In the event that your batteries died they instructed you to simply grab any staff member and they'd issue you a different unit.  I had to do this with my headset somewhere around hour three, and it was a really smooth process.  I found a staffer to give him my headset, but he found me for the swap, meaning I didn't have to stand around doing nothing while the swap happened.

The range of things to see is so vast it exceeds my ability to document here.  The photos - which are a VERY small subset of the hundreds we took - can serve as a reminder to what we saw.

I was intrigued by a display of actor wigs.  When you stop to think about it, over the course of a multi-week shooting schedule the actor's real hair would vary in length.  By wearing wigs, the character's hair would be under control.  They seemed to have wigs for pretty much EVERYONE.

A series of jackets for Harry from a single movie.  Each one was progressively more distressed than the other and therefore could be used in a series of scenes showing the progressive wear and tear of Harry's activities.

A portion of the Gryffindor boy's dorm.  There were parts of dozens of sets on display throughout both buildings.

The Gryffindor common room, with typical main character costumes.

One of many display cases showing off smaller props.  Some of the props were of interest because you could see their construction.  The destroyed version of Tom Riddle's diary, for example, was clearly some kind of casting.  It most definitely was NOT a leather bound book!

Dumbledore's study.  When viewed up close, many of the items on his shelves appeared to just be simple geometric shapes.

Hagrid's cottage interior.

One of the practical locking doors at Hogwart's.  This piece was about 12' tall.  Behind the door you can see a bit of the supporting frame which has a significant amount of "plumbing" for pneumatic valves that drive the locking mechanisms.

A portion of the Ministry of Magic set.  It isn't clear whether these were the only sets of windows they built or this was just a sample of the larger set.  So much of the films are digitally composited it is sometimes hard to tell what is real and what is computer-generated.  I suspect that there were actually more physical window pieces built.

A tableau showing successive generations of Professor Umbridge's dresses.  As she gained power her costumes took on deeper tones of pink.

Near the exit of Studio J were a couple of display cases against the wall.  One of them was stuffed full of items that were created to stock the shelves of the Weasley's magic store.  Clearly the designers were allowed to let their imaginations run wild and create some fun, whimsical stuff...almost none of which you can distinguish on-screen!

Once you finish Studio J you reach the concessions area.  As noted previously, the big attraction at the time we went was their Butterbeer.  We bought one cup and shared it amongst us while also enjoying our packed lunch.  In addition to some tables (a small number, considering the potential crowd sizes), the outdoor area also has a number of items from the movies, including the Night Bus, the Dursley house exterior, the ruined Potter house exterior, a section of the Hogwarts covered bridge, and the death angel sculpture from the graveyard seen in Goblet of Fire.

Our Butterbear.  The bubbles have some real structure to them.  It takes a good 20-30 seconds for them to pour out each cup, so the line to buy this was pretty slow!

Eating our lunch with the Hogwart's bridge in the background.

The ruined Potter house in Godric's Hollow from Deathly Hallows Part 1.

From there we then entered into Studio K, which had more of everything, but with a particular focus on creature effects and set design.  So while there were still large set pieces here we also saw stuff like the Phoenix animatron, a Hagrid animatronic head, grindelows, Buckbeak, and goblin prosthesis.  The major set pieces in this building was Diagon Alley, with dramatic theater lighting.  In the latter parts of the tour (you can go anywhere at any time, but there is a definite programmed flow to the order you see stuff - and that's encouraged by the ordering of the narration) we also saw lots of design sketches and prototype models.

A shelf of goblin masks, used for the Gringott's bankers.

An animatronic head for Hagrid.  I'm not sure exactly when this was used, but I know they had a really tall (like 7') actor stand in for some scenes, and it is possible that this was placed on top of him.

The Weasley's joke shop on Diagon Alley.  The alley was the single largest set piece of display, and included most of the shop fronts found in the movies.

The Puking Pastilles display.  This was a really humorous piece, with the figure perpetually barfing into the bucket courtesy of a conveyor-belt type of arrangement.

The penultimate piece of the tour is a room wholly devoted to the massive Hogwarts model.  This was a living model, in that it evolved across the entire series of movies with parts being added as needed.  For example, when Deathly Hallows introduced a need for a boathouse, the model had one added.  Between interior fiber optics and exterior scenic lighting they could simulate any time of day and, in fact, they cycled between day and night on a timed loop so you could see the model in all lighting conditions as you walked around.

An example of one of the dozens of white card models on display.  This was the model used to help convey the look of Hogsmeade to the creative teams.  Artists sketches and, in some cases, blueprints line the walls.

The great model of Hogwarts, with lighting in the range of sunset.  This thing is about probably about 12' tall at its highest point - perhaps taller?

Another side of the model.  In this picture the lights have cycled to represent night time and the fiber optics inside the model are on, simulating lights inside the castle.

A close up of the Owl Tower.  There are small owl models in several of the windows.

The final display on the tour is a room with hundreds - maybe thousands - of wand boxes, each labeled with the name of a person involved with the production of the movies, from actors to crew and staff.  They have someone stationed there with an index book so you could say something like "where is <name's> box?" and they could point you to the proper section.  While tourists tend to ask about actors, apparently a lot of friends and family will ask about someone they know who was involved.

As expected, you exit from there into the large shop where you can purchase stuff for OUTRAGEOUS prices.  I don't recall exact details now, but I think something like a set of Gryffindor robes was in the range of $500!  So, needless to say, we didn't buy anything.  Our tickets did come with a commemorative booklet but we totally forgot this and failed to pick it up as we left.

Overall, we had an AMAZING time.  For technical theater types like us who love Harry Potter it was such a perfect match.  Would do it again in a heartbeat, confident that there'd be more to discover.

From the studio we still had about a 45 minute drive to our lodging, the charming B&B of Rainworth House.  This was a wonderful choice, and far and away one of the nicest places we've EVER stayed.  The house and grounds were beautiful, and the hospitality simple but effective.  We checked into our room, which had a comfy King bed and two twins tucked under the sloping roof, and then spent a bit of time exploring the grounds and sitting in the common room before we finally went to grab some dinner.

The back yard at Rainworth House.

The twin beds in our room.  The foot our our King sized bed is in the foreground, bottom left.

The common room.  Guests were welcome to come have a relaxing sit down...

...which is what we did!

Dinner this night was really meh.  We had been worried pre-trip that the boys might be jones-ing for something more American, so we purposely picked the Windsor Lad, which is part of the Harvester chain.  Basically, it is like Chili's or Appleby's...except not as "good" (sic).  The restaurant was kind of a dump - lots of food on the floor, in particular.  This was just a sign of the large amount of kid traffic.  On top of all this, I had a problem parking the car and ended up wedged up next to a hedge at the back of the parking lot.  When backing out at the end of the night a branch broke out the red tail light on the passenger side.  Grrr.

We finally returned to Rainworth House (where our hostess bemoaned the fact that we hadn't asked her for a better dinner recommedation) and called it a night.