I Went to Hogwarts, Literally! Visiting the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter

This experience was mentioned briefly during my honeymoon recap but it definitely could use its own post because there were so many fascinating things about our visit to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter!

The tour is located in Leavesden (about an hour outside of London). It is the physical location where the Harry Potter films were made and contains tons of costumes, props, artifacts, and sets from the movies. And you can take your time and look through it all! You can also get audio guides to tell you about everything. Be warned, the audio guides are LONG. We ended up sitting in the butter beer cafeteria listening and watching all of them so we could then walk around and enjoy what we were seeing. They also had the various backdrops from the movies. For example, Dumbledore's office:

It starts with the giant set of doors and opens into the Great Hall.

Fun fact: The Great Hall never had a roof/ceiling. It was just open to the sound stage lighting.

The costumes were the focused exhibition during our visit. So throughout the two warehouses they were displaying a bunch of the various costumes. Perhaps you recognize some from your favorite Harry Potter scenes?

There were also sets throughout the tour, including Dumbledore's office:

You could even walk down Diagon Alley and see Olivander's.

It was fascinating to see the scale of everything.

During filming, all the props were kept in giant racks so that everything was easy to find. It must have been so cool to be part of prop manufacturing for these movies! Imagine ALL the props! Here you can see a glimpse:

And scattered throughout the tour were some of the most important props, such as the sorting hat and the sword of Gryffindor.

You could even see Privet Drive and the Knight Bus.

You could also have a deeper look at the creation of the props.

Then once you made it through everything. You walk around a full scale model of Hogwarts.