About an hour’s journey north of London, if one uses England’s excellent rail service, is the city of Watford. An unassuming place except for the fact that it is the home of Warner Brother Studios in England, which was responsible for bringing the Harry Potter series of books to life.
Once you leave the Watford Junction train station, you hop on a bus to travel the rest of the way to the studio.
Hogwarts Castle
A main part of the entire first building set, is all about Hogwarts; including the Main Hall, the Student Rooms and many other sets that changed from one movie to another.
The main hall is pretty much as you see it in the movies. It even has a real stone floor, necessary since this prop apparently had to be used for the entire series of movies. I purposely did not caption any images for brevity and most who are familiar with the movies will probably understand what they are looking at. The tour itself is broken up into several parts, since the tour spans two whole set buildings.
Of course, like the other Hogwart’s children, Harry had two homes. One with the Dursley’s and the other at Hogwarts Castle.
Near the end of the tour, there are massive models of the castle.
The Hogwarts Train
There is another set all about the train and one can tour the inside of the cars that were used during shooting. Each carriage enclosure is cast for each one of the movies, eight in total.
The Dursley’s House
As part of the outside set, you can find the house that was created for the Dursley home.
The set is complete with Harry’s numerous invitations to Hogwarts, a very well done treat.
Hagrid’s House And More
A favorite of everyone’s, is probably Hagrid’s House, that small, stone, iconic little shack where three friends and Hagrid used to talk about the suspicious goings-ons at Hogwarts.
The Dark Forest where the spiders live, is a real thrill where kids can participate in pressing buttons to cause lightning, thunder and the descent of the giant spiders.
Gringott’s Bank
The bank teller stations and set remain also as they did in the movies. There is a very good explanation on how they mimicked the goblins, marble and glass chandeliers that you see.
Other Sets
There are many other sets, almost too many to put in one blog. Here is a virtual tour of other sets and things you can see while there.
We therefore recommend, if you ever are in London and have time to get to Watford, go see the Experience; it is well worth the 2 to 3 hours you will have to spend there just to get through it!