To Hogwarts!

Today was the one day I’d requested from this trip.  The Warner Brothers Studio Tour in Leavenworth.  I’d had my eye on this for the last few years since it was first announced and had continuously said if I got back to London, I WOULD be going.  And boy was it everything I’d imagined and more.  

We started off the morning with about an hour of exploring the Science Museum since all national museums here are free.  From there, we caught trains and buses to Warner Brothers Studios where we arrived an hour early, so I had plenty of time to scope out the shop!  We picked up our little audio/visual tour devices (basically phones in giant cases) and started on our way.  The tour was absolutely amazing.  We got to walk through the Great Hall, Gringots, and Diagon Alley, as well as see into the sets for the dormitory, Hagrid’s Hut, The Burrow, Dumbledore’s offices, the potions classroom, and more.  The audio/visual guide was a nice little addition, telling us a few fun details that weren’t on the plaques such as two Hagrid’s Huts were built, one at a very large scale with oversized furniture to make normal people look small, and one at a small scale with tiny furniture to make Hagrid’s look big.  The audio/visual made it so we really didn’t have to read too much of what was posted around the sites and just got to look and listen.  I took LOTS of videos, so don’t worry, I’ll have those turned into a montage one day in the future...

They also had a few photo ops - I HAD to buy the one of my on the broomstick...  and butter beer, which we though tasted pretty similar to Universal, despite reading people online saying they liked one or the other better.  Overall we were on the tour from 3:30-7:00, and we really could’ve taken longer, especially since our little devices had more videos and pictures we didn’t look at.  We wanted to catch the last bus to the train station at 8 though, so we decided not to spend more time exploring and hit the shop to buy all the stuff I’d scouted out beforehand.  It was well worth the $50 ticket and afterwards Jared was already looking up if there were similar experiences elsewhere because we’d love to do it for other big movies (there are a few non-specific ones exploring multiple sets of different shows/movies at once).  

By the time we’d had dinner and were back at the hotel, it was after 10:00.  So we quickly showered and packed up.  Right at this moment we are already through security and just waiting to board our train to Paris!