Spotlight Saturday - Harry Potter Studio Tour

Three years ago I went with the family to the Harry Potter Studio Tour for my birthday and absolutely loved it. You can read about it here. Since then there have been some additions to the tour including the Forbidden Forest and Platform 9 3/4 along with, of course, the train. Added to this the fact that I wanted to see the model Hogwarts in the snow and the Great Hall set up for Christmas, I decided that as Hugh and I had a long weekend break booked we would spend the day there and have some fun!

The Great Hall was really impressive set up for Christmas. We even got to see the Christmas puddings flaming!

 

Moving on from the Great Hall we spent a leisurely time looking at many of the sets and enjoying finding little details that are not so obvious on the film. It was nice this time too that there were 'cast members' who were stationed at some of the exhibits and gave you additional information.

We were really impressed with the first 'new to us' exhibit of the Forbidden Forest.

The spiders were excellent! They moved up and down into the tree canopy and there was some great theatrical lightening too!

And Hugh and I met a Hippogriff! We did bow to it so as not to offend it!

After the Forbidden Forest we came to Platform 9 3/4 and this made Hugh very happy!

There were lots of photo opportunities on the platform and a very nice American tourist also took a photo of the two of us!

As you can see, Hugh and I managed to push our way through the wall to get onto the platform!

Hugh found his luggage on the platform - well it does say HG (I think it might be Hermione's) lol.

And of course, what Hugh liked best, the train.

As we continued our tour we came to the outside lot area and loved the fact that they had fake snow falling. Also the fact that you can now go into the house on Privet Drive and see the front room with all the letters in it.

We had to have our photo taken on the bridge again of course.

And Hugh had to have a sit in the Ford Anglia and also ride Hagrid's motorbike.

We finished our tour with viewing the fantastic model of Hogwart's Castle which looked absolutely beautiful in its winter coat. It really is a stunning model.

So we had a wonderful day out - marred only slightly by the fact that on our return journey the M25 was closed and so a trip that took only about 75 minute to get there took us 3 hours to get home! I can thoroughly recommend this tour and if you haven't been for a few years there are definitely enough new exhibits to make it worthwhile going a second time.