Up until now our Virtual Roadtrip, we've been visiting parks that I have visited in real life and watching videos from our Theme Park Insider archives. But for today's stop, as we head across to ocean to Europe, I wanted to try something different.
So today, in lieu of visiting theme parks, we are going to spend the day visiting the sites that inspired one of my favorite theme park attractions - The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We are off to Harry Potter's Britain.
We will start where every term at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry begins, at London's Kings Cross Station. This is the one stop on our tour that I have visited in real life. If you want to see where they filmed the Muggle side of Platform 9 3/4, look between platforms 4 and 5 at the station, but there's an actual Platform 9 3/4 photo op located next to the Harry Potter bookstore in the station's central terminal area.
From Kings Cross, you can discover many more Harry Potter sites throughout London (follow the links for Google Maps), including:
Once the world reopens, several businesses offer Harry Potter-themed walking tours in London, which you can find through our international ticketing partner.
Beyond London, you can ride on the "Hogwarts Express," whose engine and carriages were supplied by the very much real-life West Coast Railways, which offers a trip across the Glenfinnan Viaduct from the films on The Jacobite.
The production team behind the films uses several cathedrals and schools throughout Britain for inspiration and filming locations for Hogwarts, including:
I also want to get to some of the exterior locations made famous by the Harry Potter films:
But the big attraction for anyone who wants to stand in the space where Harry Potter came to life is the studios where the movies were filmed, Warner Bros. Studio Tour London. Enjoy some 360-degree views of the actual filming locations from the movies, which have been preserved at the studios in Leavesden.
Diagon Alley
Hogwarts Great Hall
Potions Classroom
Dumbledore's Office
Gryffindor Common Room
Hagrid's Hut
Forbidden Forest
Theme Park Insider's Virtual Roadtrip:
Any of our American brethren visiting England/London from across the pond and loves Potter, please go to the Warner studios. The experience is wonderful. The finale, which I won't spoil, will make your jaw drop.........and I am not a massive Potter fan but my jaw was firmly planted on the floor. Nothing short of "stunning". A great day out.
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If you’re on your way up to Fort William for the Hogwarts Experess trip, let me know when your connecting train up to/down from there from Glasgow leaves, and I’ll wave to you from an appropriate distance as you go past.