Hullo, my Pixels!
I just wanted to apologise briefly for my absence before starting the main blog post. I've realised now that I take forever to draw anything because I lack the creativity and I kinda suck at digital art still, so I've intended to change my blog over to focus more on getting to use my new camera and encourage that hobby. From now on, posts could include places I go, my opinion on products, films, books, etc, food, literally everything and anything with the occasional drawing thrown in as and when I finish them.
Hopefully, this will encourage me to start writing blog posts again because I really enjoy taking photos and messing around with them on Photoshop and what not, so without further ado, let's go into the magical world of Harry Potter!
Hopefully, this will encourage me to start writing blog posts again because I really enjoy taking photos and messing around with them on Photoshop and what not, so without further ado, let's go into the magical world of Harry Potter!
----
As an end of term treat, the college I go to decided to give a coach-load of students the opportunity to go to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London. I think we had to pay £28 in total, which covered the travel costs and actual entry, too, which was really good value considering it took about two/two and a half hours of solid travelling to actually get there and the normal ticket price for teens who are 16 and over is £30, so I already saved quite a bit of money. I'm not a super fan girl of Harry Potter, but I realised this was probably going to be the only opportunity I'd get to actually go and see what the studio tour was about (and I'm definitely glad I went!).
I'll admit, the entrance does look pretty grand and it really makes you feel excited to see what exactly is on the inside because you never know with the magic of Harry Potter. They run a double decker bus service from several surrounding areas in London to make it easier for people to get there for a visit as it's really far out on the outskirts. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos of the actual place whilst I was there, just because I prefer to enjoy situations whilst I'm there - I left the touristy stuff to my friends, but if you really want to see what it looks like and what to expect, I'm sure the official website I linked above will have several pictures of the whole place.
You start the tour off with a couple of movie clips and what not, then you're lead into the actual Great Hall, where there's a lot of creepy life-sized mannequins wearing the costumes of characters such as Harry, Professor Snape, Dumbledore and Hagrid - all the usual crew you'd expect to see in the Great Hall who wore amazing outfits. You're left unguided for the rest of the tour so you can go and look at all of the separate things in your own time. I think it took my friends and I about three hours in total to go round everything, and we didn't even go get a photo taken on the Quidditch broomsticks (we may have stayed in the outside food area for quite a long time though).
Actually, speaking of the food area, they sell butterbeer! Obviously everything is ridiculously expensive because they know people will pay for it as it's a food stop in the middle of the tour, but I was nearly tempted to try some butterbeer. I say nearly because I went to trusty Google and found out butterbeer was like a root beer/cream soda with a vanilla float, so no thank you.
Also in the outdoors area was the newest instalment to the tour 'Feathers & Flight'. I'm pretty sure it's not there any more because they're always changing the instalments around, for example this week is 'Wand Week'. 'Feathers & Flight' was something I really enjoyed though because I'm a great lover of animals, so getting to see the famous owls from the Harry Potter film series (obviously Hedwig) was really fun, as well as probably the most famous acting crow. He starred in Game of Thrones as the three-eyed crow, he's not just a single movie crow. Live owls also lined the streets outside the pet store in Diagon Alley - my friend and I honestly weren't sure for a good long time whether they were real owls or not, and then we realised they were all tethered down by one foot, so definitely real!
 |
| We even got cute little owl badges (for free, for once)! |
Finally, the gift shop, or should I say 'the shop where fans pay ridiculous amounts of money for not-so-amazing items'. I had to buy the Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and the Chocolate Frog, just because they're something you can't get anywhere else and are unique to Harry Potter. I wasn't going to spend loads of money on some normal sweets just with the Harry Potter Sweets Shop bags and logos. Everything else was super expensive, like the Weasley knitted jumpers with your initial on the front - £75! I'd recommend the jelly beans and chocolate frog to anyone, just because you can eat all of them but still keep the packaging as a souvenir/reminder of your trip so the prices are nearly justified.
 |  |
 |  |
 |
| The evil villain of the jelly bean world, in all his glory. |
 |
| 10 good flavours and 10 'bad' ones, so they're not all gross. |
 |  |
 |  |
 |
| Nice quality card, I will admit. I swear you used to be able to buy these frogs in Tesco years ago though. |
Sommer
♥
♥
No comments :
Post a Comment
Thanks very much for taking the time to read my post. Leave a comment and I'll make sure to get back to you! :3 ♥