An English Odyssey Part Six: Harry Potter Studio Day
What a day! I should preface this by saying I’ve been a Harry Potter fan since I was close to 11 when the U.S. version of the first book came out. My fandom began slowly at first. I remember being in 5th grade (just after my kidney transplant) and reading an article about Harry Potter. The book was this mysterious phenomenon that was all kids around me could talk about. It was a force of nature that captivated the world. I don’t know how I came to own the first book, but it was love at first read.
I have loved reading since I was a kid, but it took me longer to learn to read than the average person. It’s been a long time, but I can still vaguely remember how hard it was to understand these bewitching symbols that have become familiar friends to me now. I do have a faint recollection of staring out of the back of my mom’s early 90s soccer mom minivan and being excited at being able to read something on the back of a passing car.
It was like a light had clicked on inside my head. This was around 1st or 2nd grade. Something in my brain just reprogrammed itself; the cogs and gears started working, and suddenly, reading was easy.
Reading Harry Potter for the first time as a relatively new reader was as effortless as breathing. It didn’t feel like reading at all to me. It felt like a movie was playing in my head. It might have helped that this was a formative time in my life, and I was going through stuff with Cystinosis. Harry Potter was a port in the storm for me. It was comfort food. It’s one of the few stories I read from childhood that I still continue to read today.
When the movies first came out, I had a love-hate relationship with them. I loved 1–3, but 4 was missing things like Winky the Elf and almost all of the Quidditch World Cup. Essentially, being someone who loved the books, I became a frustrated fanboy when the movies strayed away from the source material a little too much. As I‘ve matured, I’ve grown to love all the movies as much as the books. It’s a minor miracle that they managed to create eight high-quality films with most of the original cast staying intact for over ten years.
Today, we saw the studio where the movies were made. It was incredible. They recreated many sets (Hagrid’s Hut, The Great Hall, The Forbidden Forest, and many more). We saw Thestrals, Hippogriffs, and Gringotts Bank before and after a dragon destroyed it. We saw Privet Drive and the Hogwarts Bridge. It was like stepping into the movies. The detail was astonishing. The kids who played the Hogwarts students almost didn’t have to act because their sets were so immersive. I learned they made a realistic animatronic replica of Hagrid actor Robbie Coltrane’s face that his stunt doubles would wear. There was a massive miniature of Hogwarts Castle, and the Grounds surrounding it were incredible. It made me feel like a giant looking down at a real Castle.
There was a little drama. My dad and I lost our tickets and we had to figure out how to get into the tour. Luckily, they let us in any way. My mom was hangry and dealing with back issues, which made her lash out a little bit at my dad and me, who were overenthusiastic fanboys in fanboy heaven. We decided to explore the delicious (and probably overpriced) food of the Harry Potter Studio museum.
Butterbeer at the WB Studio tastes different from Butterbeer at Harry Potter World in Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. They are both good in their own ways, but after trying both, I think I liked the WB Studio one a bit better. I can’t think of how to describe it, but it was better balanced with the sugar content than the Florida Butterbeer was. There also, maybe, might have been something about drinking Butterbeer in England, where the story of Harry Potter takes place. There was something extraordinary about the ambiance of having Butterbeer there.
I also had a British Hot Dog. The Dog itself was good. It was basically a bratwurst with sauerkraut on it. The ketchup tasted strange to my American taste buds. I’m usually someone who enjoys eating food that is vastly different from what I get daily. It could be that being exposed to the ketchup I was exposed to at an early age, my taste buds could never accept a new twist on the recipe. The ketchup was made from cucumbers and did not mix well in my belly with the brat dog.
We were approaching the end of our day when a tour guide informed us there was much more to see. This was music to the ears of me and my fellow Potterhead (as no one calls Harry Potter fans), but it was also screeching nails on the chalkboard to our exhausted and back-broken companion. Thinking that we had very little time, my mom went to the bus, and my dad and I went to try and see everything before we had to be on the bus.
It is incredible how big Harry Potter Studios is. When we started our day we had no idea that it would be so expansive. I recommend any Harry Potter fan that happens to be in England or travel to England to see this insanely wonderful place. My dad and I saw so much more than I can detail here. They truly went all out when they made those movies. There were so many more practical sets and props than I thought there would be. We wanted to see all of it, but we decided to return to the bus to avoid more wrath from our beloved matriarch.
Alas, stomach issues occurred briefly, possibly brought on by a British Hotdog (and/or maybe the fantastic butter beer I consumed). However, the trip was truly magical in every sense of the word. I wouldn’t change a thing.
