For my birthday this year, I decided to spend my money on taking us all to the Harry Potter Studio tour near Hemel Hempstead, as we all love Harry Potter! 😉
We traveled up on the Friday, straight from school, and stopped half way to have homemade pasties in the car. Whilst we all went to the toilet though, Coby decided to make a run for it so Kelly had to chase him all through the services and he nearly got out on to the main road. He was a very naughty boy for doing this and was properly told off! Anyway, we made it to our hotel in Hemel Hempstead in good time and sorted our stuff out. Kelly and the boys gave me my birthday cake there and I was surprised to see it was a Harry Potter themed cake that Kelly had made. It was great!
The next day, after not much sleep, we had our full buffet breakfast and made our way to the studios for the tour, which was only about 15 minutes away. We found it easily enough, parked up and got our reserved tickets from the machines. We then had to go and join a massive queue, even though we had a time slot, but had a good look around the reception area where there was Harry Potter memorabilia hung up. We were all quite excited, and probably too excited, as the boys were being naughty at this point. Once we made it through the queue, we started on the tour, which was brilliant. There was a short cinema where the actors described certain aspects of the tour and then the screen moved upwards to reveal the actual doors to the main hall at Hogwarts. We then had to go through them and thus entered Hogwarts’ main hall. It was great! We carried on through the tour and looked at various sets, such as the Gryffindor common room and bedrooms, other class rooms at Hogwarts, and lots of other exciting things to do with the movie. The Hogwarts Express train was amazing to see and we had some pictures taken of us sat in the set area where they filmed the actors sat inside the train. We also had some food in the cafe and Kelly and I had some Butterbeer, but the boys wouldn’t taste it! Next was the outdoor lot where number 4 Privit Drive was, and the Knight Bus and the bridge set that leads to Hogwarts in the films. Moving into the other stage area, we saw lots of dummies and puppets for the various creatures in the films but the best was towards the end when we walked through Diagon Alley and then to the actual scale model of Hogwarts that was used in the film. These two areas were absolutely amazing and the castle was breathtaking. By this time, Coby was tired out and fell asleep on me, so I had to carry him around the final part of the tour and into the shop, where he finally woke a little (surprise that!). We had a good look around and bought some souvenirs which included Harry Potter’s wand for Ben, and a glow tip wand for Aaron (where the tip lights up when you move it like casting a spell for light) and a Hogwarts mug for Coby. Kelly and I also bought a few things. We all had had a great time, apart from the fuss with the boys being naughty and not doing as they were told, and we would definitely go again, as it was a lot to take in in one go!
