Hogwarts Part Two

Well I have so many pictures that it was easier to break into two parts so let's continue, shall we?

The sign outside the Knight Bus

Batgirl in front of the Dursley Family Home

The Potter Family Home

The chess pieces from the Philospher's Stone

So it's a brief break looking at these sets and enjoying a mug of Butterbeer which by the way is incredibly sweet. Lindsay and I were trying to figure out what they mixed together in order to create Butterbeer. It's a cross between cream soda, butterscotch syrup and the foam on top is similar to butterscotch flavoured marshmallow fluff. So you can imagine how much sugar is involved. Then it's onto the second part of the studio tour and this section has everything involved in producing models, animatronics, graphic design and conceptual art.

Ah, the exploding Aunt suit

The biting monster textbook

Aragog

An animatronic Buckbeak with incredibly lifelike movements

After the models and animatronics it's off to one of my favourite places - Diagon Alley!

Weasley's Joke Shop

I laughed out loud when I saw this in the bookshop

Lindsay window shopping!

After Diagon Alley it was off to the 3D model display where they had every type of physical model for a building or piece of equipment that would appear in the films, whether it was a building or even the faucets in the prefect bathroom, this display was filled with the paper models they created before actually building the physical pieces.

Paper model above and then they had the much larger model which was used in filming. It filled an entire room.

Batgirl imagining she is flying through the spires of Hogwarts. If this was a big budget film we would have her on guide wires and remove them in post production. Sadly we are low budget!

After taking way too many photos of the Hogwarts large scale model, we took a look at all the concept art that had been created for the 8 films. Some amazing pieces that I would hang on my wall.

The final part of the tour was a visit to Ollivander's Wand Shop. You see it externally when you walk down Diagon Alley but they have recreated a room filled with wand boxes to look like the actual location. What is incredible about the room is that all 4000+ wand boxes are personalised and each box has the name of a cast or crew member who worked on the films. Totally original way to acknowledge everyone's hard work. So of course, I had to go looking for some well known names on the boxes.

Part of Ollivander's Wand Shop

Bellatrix LeStrange

Remus Lupin

Sirius Black 


Harry Potter

Original Dumbledore

Severus Snape

Hagrid

Lord Vordemort/Tom Riddle

It just wouldn't be complete without the gift shop purchase, three hours later I still wanted this mug. Now I have a proper Marauder's Map mug.

So after 3.5 hours it was back on the Knight Bus to return us to Victoria Station. A great afternoon, cannot recommend this tour enough. Lindsay and I loved it so much we are thinking of going again in February when they will have a special couple of weeks with animal actors...Hedwig! Scabbers! Hopefully not a lot of spiders. And just to finish things off with one more picture because apparently there are not enough Batgirl photos.