England: Gloucester

For the first time ever, the Gloucester (pronounced Glow-shtr) hosted a tour where they openly got to commercialize the fact that Harry Potter movies were filmed there (info here!). I found out about it Tuesday night, but turns out tix were all sold out tuesday morning as soon as it went on sale. I got super upset, because I am a freakin nerd, and I sent some desperate emails and Denise from the event coordination department came through and got me a ticket! Thank you Denise!!

Gloucester is a town thats about 3hrs drive from London, and there are National rail services that take you directly there — which is what I took. I arrived at 6:30PM, but the streets were absolutely deserted already;; I felt unsafe.

I was pretty much the only 20’s person that came.. on their own accord;;

To start the tour, we were given mini broomsticks,

and this one girl was so adorableeeee.

Troll scene:

The Warner Bro team brought the troll to the cathedral to film but turns out the troll was too big. So they just brought in the only part that fit, which was the bottom half of the troll and CG’ed the top half of it. Here is the scene where the troll walks into the girls’ bathroom!

This is where Harry and Ron peek out to see the troll..

And this is sort of shown in the part where Harry and Ron run back to save hermione after dinner. Apparently you can see the face of one of the statues that decorate the inner courtyard in the movie, and it’s ironic because the statue dude is super christian. lawl.

The outlets in the cathedral cloisters were covered up with wooden boards painted to blend in with the wall, and the Biblical figures in the stained glass were dressed up to look like medieval characters. Then, the hallways were adorned with torches to give it the castle feel.

Gryffindor:

This hallway is the hallway where percy takes the first years into the Gryffindor common room for the first time. The common room shown in the movie when the first years walk in is actually just a photo! The scenes after they walk in are filmed in the London filming studio.

Mrs. Norris scene:

The wall says, “the chamber of secrets has been opened. enemies of the heir, beware. her skeleton will lie in the chamber forever” with Mrs. Norris petrified. The red doors were the doors to the girls’ lavatory, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione can be found here when the rest of the school comes back from dinner.

Here, Ron and Harry see the spiders and follow Hagrid’s suggestion of following the spiders, to Ron’s disgust.

Senior privilege:

Ron and Harry are seen here just chillin while the underclassmen are off to class in the half blood prince movie.

This place was initially supposed to be the great hall, but was rejected because of its small size. Instead, it was used to house actors and staff and house equipment.

We were sorted into houses randomly, and sadly I got gryffindor..

And they set up tables to provide “honeydukes” food — just gummies, chocolate, and cupcakes — and for people to taste “polyjuice potion” and something else.. but they weren’t made to really look like anything. They were just soda.

Then, there were tables for kids to make their own owls out of paper plates and wands out of bamboo rods!