Wizarding World of Harry Potter
Jan. 15th, 2011 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanalaylaLast week, I got to text something to a friend that I never thought I'd be able to say in a million years:
Am standing in line at Ollivander's. Hogwarts right behind me. Drinking butterbeer.
Excuse me while I take a moment to relive that moment in my mind. If you're a Harry Potter fan, I think you can guess how my fingers were trembling with excitement as I typed out that text on my Blackberry. Ten years of being a fan of this series and now I was actually STANDING in the universe that I loved.
Back when the HP books first came out, I never imagined that the books would be so huge that this would even be a possibility.
I admit that I stumbled upon the awesomeness that is HP a little late in the game. I didn't even know that these books existed until "Goblet of Fire" came out in the year 2000. (I had a lot of personal issues going on in my life from 1996-2000.) One day, I'm listening to the radio on my way to class and I hear these people talking about Harry Potter and how they can't wait for the next book to come out. My brows furrowed in confusion, because I'm like, "Why on earth are they talking a BOOK on the radio?" Because, see... before HP, people just didn't DO that. Book publications were no big deal. Folks just didn't randomly talk about the release of a book like it was The Event of the year.
So... needless to say... I got myself to a bookstore STAT. And I purchased the paperback copy of the "Sorcerer's Stone" with much skepticism. (Not really a fan of the cover art.) I sat down to read it that night. And ended up staying up through the whole night to finish it. (I was working for 30 hours a week at Merrill Lynch during the time, along with taking 4 evening classes -- all of them being upper level Finance classes. Man, did I pay for it the next day.) All I could think about was getting my hands on "Chamber of Secrets" and "Prisoner of Azkaban". As soon as my busy schedule was over the next day, I hightailed to the bookstore and got the other two books. All thoughts of studying and being useful at work completely went out the window.
This all happened around March 2000. And then the countdown began to mid-July when "Goblet of Fire" was going to come out. I had suddenly become one of those American who couldn't wait for this book and it was all I could talk about. The kicker? My wedding was July 1st. And, yet, if someone asked me, I was probably more excited about "GoF" coming out than the wedding. I'd be talking to people and going, "I can't WAIT for July to be here already!!" And they'd go, "Because of your wedding?" And I'd say, "Um... yeah. Of course."
When I got married, I still had a month of school left to finish. I lived in Colorado and my husband lived in California. We got married and then - immediately - I went back to CO and he went back to CA. We were going to have to wait until the end of August for me to move in with him. But we were married, so we wanted to be together and my husband managed to track down a cheap ticket to go visit him in CA a couple of weeks after our wedding. It was the weekend that "GoF" came out. I went, at midnight, to go stand in line to buy the book. Six hours later, I was on a flight to CA. And then I proceeded to spend that whole weekend ignoring my brand-new husband to read "GoF". (Did I mention that I had the flu and had a 103 fever the whole time? But I still kept reading.) I knew I'd married the right guy, because not only did he not mind, my husband just pulled out his own books and sat next to me reading his own stuff.
Fast forwarding... I did the midnight party thing with a family friend's nine-year-old kid for "The Order of Phoenix". By the time "Half Blood Prince" came out, I was too old and much too tired to be able to stand in line for six hours to get a book nine hours early. (Or maybe I learned patience.) For the last two books, I placed an order before-hand to get 40% off and then I'd wake up in the morning and immediately drive to the bookstore to pick up the book. Unfortunately, when "HBP" and "Deathly Hallows" came out, I had relatives visiting each of those weekends. They were remarkably unsupportive of my need to ignore them to read the books, but I really didn't care.
I've spent many wonderful hours immersed in the HP world. I've done many re-reads of the series since that time - 10 years ago - when I was first introduced to these books. I've graduated, changed jobs 5 times, moved to a different state, and had 2 kids. But every time I sit down to read these books, I feel like I'm that 22 year old girl again -- letting her real world just slip away as I read about the delicate nuances required to cast a spell effectively.
And so that 22 year girl was in full force when I was in Orlando this past week. My own son (who is nine) has read the books and fallen in love with them. That was something I never dreamed of when I first read these books. That I would be able to share my love for them with my own son, who would be just as excited as me. We eagerly ran into the Hogsmeade area and stopped, in awe, when we saw Hogwarts Express. (I believe I may have let out an undignified squeal of delight.)
For those of you who have not yet made it there, here's a rundown of what we saw and what it was like...
* Butterbeer: It tastes incredibly yummy. If you like butterscotch. My son doesn't like butterscotch, so he didn't like it. You can either purchase it from a cart or you can buy it at Hog's Head or the Three Broomsticks. Basically, imagine that you're drinking cream soda with a shot of butterscotch flavor added in. It's very sweet, but not too sweet. They serve it to you in a disposable cup (for about $4) or a collectible mug (about $11). First, they fill the cup up with the soda and then they put a layer of foam on the top to make it look like beer. The foam tastes like vanilla cream. Very yummy.
* Pumpkin Juice: Unlike butterbeer, you can actually buy this in a bottle. The cap has a plastic pumpkin on top. This basically tastes like a cross between apple cider and pumpkin pie. Does that sound gross? Well... it was a little gross. I mean, it wasn't horrible. But I can't imagine that I would sit there and go, "Oh, man, I feel like having some pumpkin juice right now." I would feel that way with butterbeer... not so much with pumpkin juice. It's essentially apple cider with a lot of the spices used to make pumpkin pie and it's quite sweet. I'm not a fan of apple cider, but I am a fan of pumpkin pie. But the combo just didn't work for me.
* Zonkos/Honeydukes: These two stores are joined together. Zonkos has a lot of the stuff you would expect. Sneakoscopes, Remembralls, Extendable Ears, etc. Honeydukes has chocolate frogs and all kinds of the kind of candy you read about in the book. (Sugar quills, alas, were just basically sugar lollipops in the shape of feathers. Nothing fancy.) My son and daughter each bought a chocolate frog and he got the Gryffindor card. My daughter got Hufflepuff. (The only 4 cards available were the four founders of Hogwarts.) At $10 per frog, I told him there was no way he could keep buying them until he got all four cards. The chocolate itself was a fairly huge frog and they're still working on it. My son got a chocolate wand and some peppermint candy. Other than the frogs, etc, there wasn't much to the candy store that made it different from a normal candy store. On the inside. From the outside, all of Hogsmeade is set up to look exactly like an very old series of shops. A display for chocolate frogs shows samples of the cards with moving pictures.
* Ollivander's: Well, first of all, this shouldn't even have been there. Since it's not at Hogsmeade... it's at Diagon Alley. But, I suppose we must live with that. The line for this was HUGE. Basically, they take people in about 20 at a time. It's a small little store with wands piled high all the way up one wall with a little balcony area. Ollivander comes down the stairs and picks a child (or two) from the audience and then does a little presentation. He talks a little about how the wand chooses the wizard and has the kid (in our case they were sisters) try out their wands. Once kid made the place lose the lights and then he had to turn them back on. The other kids caused some flowers to wilt. And he had to fix them. And then he thought for a second and then switched the wands around. The second the girls held the wands, the Harry Potter theme started playing and there was wind blowing on them with lights glowing. (An exact reenactment of what happened to HP in the movie when he got his wand). Then you file out of the presentation area into the wand shop and you can pick out your own wand. There are some choices... you can either go by your birthday (they've got them divided into sections, nothing special) or you can just randomly pick whichever one you like. Or you can buy a "character" wand. They've got Harry Potter, of course. And pretty much every major character. Hermoine, Ron, Sirius, Lupin, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Ginny, etc. My son picked out his own (it was a reed wand) and I got Ginny's wand for my daughter. Ginny's wand is black and somewhat on the shorter end.
* Dervish and Banges: This store was very crowded, so it's hard to describe it. Basically, you can get HP merchandise and the idea is that you can Hogwarts school supplies there. They had the monster book of monsters. Cauldrons, etc. It's connected to Ollivander's.
* Hogwarts: This was the highlight of the trip for me. I loved walking through Hogwarts. First, you go though the outside were there are bunch of plants, etc... I think the idea is that you're walking through the area that Harry's classes with Prof. Sprout take place. This leads you into Hogwarts, where you can actually see all the House points in their canisters. (Gryffindor was winning, with Slytherin a close second.) You walk by Dumbledore's office and he's standing there, talking to you about things. (I admit that I went through the line so quickly, I couldn't see all of Dumbledore's presentation. I still regret that.) This leads you to walking by Professor Binn's classroom (History of Magic) and Hermoine, Ron, and Harry appear on the balcony. They're urging you to make a run for it before Binn's class begins, because he's very boring. Essentially, they do this whole thing where they're telling everyone to meet them in the Room of Requirements because Harry is going to take us to see a Quidditch game. Ron tries to cast a spell and makes it snow (like, it literally snows on us) and then Hermoine has to fix it. They get under the Cloak of Invisibility and then disappear. And we hear them leaving the room. Eventually, you end up where the ride begins (the Forbidden Journey) and it takes you on this "trip" where you're on a broomstick and flying over Hogwarts. You ride through a Quidditch game (Draco shows up and sneers, "Showing off for your muggle fans, Potter?") and you're essentially following Harry as he zooms around on his broomstick. At some point, Death Eaters kind of veered us off track and you end up in some dark areas (you meet the huge spider... you meet a dragon) and then you're back on point and land back at Hogwarts.
* Filch's Emporium of Confiscated Goods: This basically the store you head into right after you get out of the ride. It was very crowded, so can't describe it much. You can get things like clothes here, as well as the Marauder's Map.
* Three Broomsticks: This was pretty much exactly like one would imagine. It's got wooden beams everywhere... a bunch of stairs that lead to an upstairs that you can't go to (it's purely decorative). Wooden tables with mismatched chairs. You can get standard English fare (with American stuff). We had lunch there one day and breakfast the next. It was kind of cool sitting and imagining the characters hanging around and drinking butterbeer on their trips to Hogsmeade.
Overall, it was a great experience. It's very TINY, though. I don't think they designed it very well. I can't even imagine what it would be like in the summer, during the popular season. We went in the dead of winter at a time when most people are in school and we STILL couldn't navigate through portions of Hogsmeade. The stores, in particular, are very small and can't handle a crowd of more than 20 at a time. It's not helped by the fact that two of the stores are connected to rides/attractions, so they're constantly filling up with people trying to get out of the ride. My husband thinks they planned to make it so small to make it true to the books and movies. I think they were just cheap when it came to land. In any case, it was a mistake.
It's also incredibly expensive. If you're an HP fan, you can imagine how hard it is to not just buy everything in sight. I ended up limiting myself to three things. I got a Quidditch blanket/throw (for my sofa), an Hogwarts sweatshirt, and a Sneakoscope for my office desk. My son got the wand (which was about $32 and I think was a waste) and candy/chocolate, along with the extendable ears.
Have any of you managed to make it there, yet? If so, what were your thoughts?
Am standing in line at Ollivander's. Hogwarts right behind me. Drinking butterbeer.
Excuse me while I take a moment to relive that moment in my mind. If you're a Harry Potter fan, I think you can guess how my fingers were trembling with excitement as I typed out that text on my Blackberry. Ten years of being a fan of this series and now I was actually STANDING in the universe that I loved.
Back when the HP books first came out, I never imagined that the books would be so huge that this would even be a possibility.
I admit that I stumbled upon the awesomeness that is HP a little late in the game. I didn't even know that these books existed until "Goblet of Fire" came out in the year 2000. (I had a lot of personal issues going on in my life from 1996-2000.) One day, I'm listening to the radio on my way to class and I hear these people talking about Harry Potter and how they can't wait for the next book to come out. My brows furrowed in confusion, because I'm like, "Why on earth are they talking a BOOK on the radio?" Because, see... before HP, people just didn't DO that. Book publications were no big deal. Folks just didn't randomly talk about the release of a book like it was The Event of the year.
So... needless to say... I got myself to a bookstore STAT. And I purchased the paperback copy of the "Sorcerer's Stone" with much skepticism. (Not really a fan of the cover art.) I sat down to read it that night. And ended up staying up through the whole night to finish it. (I was working for 30 hours a week at Merrill Lynch during the time, along with taking 4 evening classes -- all of them being upper level Finance classes. Man, did I pay for it the next day.) All I could think about was getting my hands on "Chamber of Secrets" and "Prisoner of Azkaban". As soon as my busy schedule was over the next day, I hightailed to the bookstore and got the other two books. All thoughts of studying and being useful at work completely went out the window.
This all happened around March 2000. And then the countdown began to mid-July when "Goblet of Fire" was going to come out. I had suddenly become one of those American who couldn't wait for this book and it was all I could talk about. The kicker? My wedding was July 1st. And, yet, if someone asked me, I was probably more excited about "GoF" coming out than the wedding. I'd be talking to people and going, "I can't WAIT for July to be here already!!" And they'd go, "Because of your wedding?" And I'd say, "Um... yeah. Of course."
When I got married, I still had a month of school left to finish. I lived in Colorado and my husband lived in California. We got married and then - immediately - I went back to CO and he went back to CA. We were going to have to wait until the end of August for me to move in with him. But we were married, so we wanted to be together and my husband managed to track down a cheap ticket to go visit him in CA a couple of weeks after our wedding. It was the weekend that "GoF" came out. I went, at midnight, to go stand in line to buy the book. Six hours later, I was on a flight to CA. And then I proceeded to spend that whole weekend ignoring my brand-new husband to read "GoF". (Did I mention that I had the flu and had a 103 fever the whole time? But I still kept reading.) I knew I'd married the right guy, because not only did he not mind, my husband just pulled out his own books and sat next to me reading his own stuff.
Fast forwarding... I did the midnight party thing with a family friend's nine-year-old kid for "The Order of Phoenix". By the time "Half Blood Prince" came out, I was too old and much too tired to be able to stand in line for six hours to get a book nine hours early. (Or maybe I learned patience.) For the last two books, I placed an order before-hand to get 40% off and then I'd wake up in the morning and immediately drive to the bookstore to pick up the book. Unfortunately, when "HBP" and "Deathly Hallows" came out, I had relatives visiting each of those weekends. They were remarkably unsupportive of my need to ignore them to read the books, but I really didn't care.
I've spent many wonderful hours immersed in the HP world. I've done many re-reads of the series since that time - 10 years ago - when I was first introduced to these books. I've graduated, changed jobs 5 times, moved to a different state, and had 2 kids. But every time I sit down to read these books, I feel like I'm that 22 year old girl again -- letting her real world just slip away as I read about the delicate nuances required to cast a spell effectively.
And so that 22 year girl was in full force when I was in Orlando this past week. My own son (who is nine) has read the books and fallen in love with them. That was something I never dreamed of when I first read these books. That I would be able to share my love for them with my own son, who would be just as excited as me. We eagerly ran into the Hogsmeade area and stopped, in awe, when we saw Hogwarts Express. (I believe I may have let out an undignified squeal of delight.)
For those of you who have not yet made it there, here's a rundown of what we saw and what it was like...
* Butterbeer: It tastes incredibly yummy. If you like butterscotch. My son doesn't like butterscotch, so he didn't like it. You can either purchase it from a cart or you can buy it at Hog's Head or the Three Broomsticks. Basically, imagine that you're drinking cream soda with a shot of butterscotch flavor added in. It's very sweet, but not too sweet. They serve it to you in a disposable cup (for about $4) or a collectible mug (about $11). First, they fill the cup up with the soda and then they put a layer of foam on the top to make it look like beer. The foam tastes like vanilla cream. Very yummy.
* Pumpkin Juice: Unlike butterbeer, you can actually buy this in a bottle. The cap has a plastic pumpkin on top. This basically tastes like a cross between apple cider and pumpkin pie. Does that sound gross? Well... it was a little gross. I mean, it wasn't horrible. But I can't imagine that I would sit there and go, "Oh, man, I feel like having some pumpkin juice right now." I would feel that way with butterbeer... not so much with pumpkin juice. It's essentially apple cider with a lot of the spices used to make pumpkin pie and it's quite sweet. I'm not a fan of apple cider, but I am a fan of pumpkin pie. But the combo just didn't work for me.
* Zonkos/Honeydukes: These two stores are joined together. Zonkos has a lot of the stuff you would expect. Sneakoscopes, Remembralls, Extendable Ears, etc. Honeydukes has chocolate frogs and all kinds of the kind of candy you read about in the book. (Sugar quills, alas, were just basically sugar lollipops in the shape of feathers. Nothing fancy.) My son and daughter each bought a chocolate frog and he got the Gryffindor card. My daughter got Hufflepuff. (The only 4 cards available were the four founders of Hogwarts.) At $10 per frog, I told him there was no way he could keep buying them until he got all four cards. The chocolate itself was a fairly huge frog and they're still working on it. My son got a chocolate wand and some peppermint candy. Other than the frogs, etc, there wasn't much to the candy store that made it different from a normal candy store. On the inside. From the outside, all of Hogsmeade is set up to look exactly like an very old series of shops. A display for chocolate frogs shows samples of the cards with moving pictures.
* Ollivander's: Well, first of all, this shouldn't even have been there. Since it's not at Hogsmeade... it's at Diagon Alley. But, I suppose we must live with that. The line for this was HUGE. Basically, they take people in about 20 at a time. It's a small little store with wands piled high all the way up one wall with a little balcony area. Ollivander comes down the stairs and picks a child (or two) from the audience and then does a little presentation. He talks a little about how the wand chooses the wizard and has the kid (in our case they were sisters) try out their wands. Once kid made the place lose the lights and then he had to turn them back on. The other kids caused some flowers to wilt. And he had to fix them. And then he thought for a second and then switched the wands around. The second the girls held the wands, the Harry Potter theme started playing and there was wind blowing on them with lights glowing. (An exact reenactment of what happened to HP in the movie when he got his wand). Then you file out of the presentation area into the wand shop and you can pick out your own wand. There are some choices... you can either go by your birthday (they've got them divided into sections, nothing special) or you can just randomly pick whichever one you like. Or you can buy a "character" wand. They've got Harry Potter, of course. And pretty much every major character. Hermoine, Ron, Sirius, Lupin, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Ginny, etc. My son picked out his own (it was a reed wand) and I got Ginny's wand for my daughter. Ginny's wand is black and somewhat on the shorter end.
* Dervish and Banges: This store was very crowded, so it's hard to describe it. Basically, you can get HP merchandise and the idea is that you can Hogwarts school supplies there. They had the monster book of monsters. Cauldrons, etc. It's connected to Ollivander's.
* Hogwarts: This was the highlight of the trip for me. I loved walking through Hogwarts. First, you go though the outside were there are bunch of plants, etc... I think the idea is that you're walking through the area that Harry's classes with Prof. Sprout take place. This leads you into Hogwarts, where you can actually see all the House points in their canisters. (Gryffindor was winning, with Slytherin a close second.) You walk by Dumbledore's office and he's standing there, talking to you about things. (I admit that I went through the line so quickly, I couldn't see all of Dumbledore's presentation. I still regret that.) This leads you to walking by Professor Binn's classroom (History of Magic) and Hermoine, Ron, and Harry appear on the balcony. They're urging you to make a run for it before Binn's class begins, because he's very boring. Essentially, they do this whole thing where they're telling everyone to meet them in the Room of Requirements because Harry is going to take us to see a Quidditch game. Ron tries to cast a spell and makes it snow (like, it literally snows on us) and then Hermoine has to fix it. They get under the Cloak of Invisibility and then disappear. And we hear them leaving the room. Eventually, you end up where the ride begins (the Forbidden Journey) and it takes you on this "trip" where you're on a broomstick and flying over Hogwarts. You ride through a Quidditch game (Draco shows up and sneers, "Showing off for your muggle fans, Potter?") and you're essentially following Harry as he zooms around on his broomstick. At some point, Death Eaters kind of veered us off track and you end up in some dark areas (you meet the huge spider... you meet a dragon) and then you're back on point and land back at Hogwarts.
* Filch's Emporium of Confiscated Goods: This basically the store you head into right after you get out of the ride. It was very crowded, so can't describe it much. You can get things like clothes here, as well as the Marauder's Map.
* Three Broomsticks: This was pretty much exactly like one would imagine. It's got wooden beams everywhere... a bunch of stairs that lead to an upstairs that you can't go to (it's purely decorative). Wooden tables with mismatched chairs. You can get standard English fare (with American stuff). We had lunch there one day and breakfast the next. It was kind of cool sitting and imagining the characters hanging around and drinking butterbeer on their trips to Hogsmeade.
Overall, it was a great experience. It's very TINY, though. I don't think they designed it very well. I can't even imagine what it would be like in the summer, during the popular season. We went in the dead of winter at a time when most people are in school and we STILL couldn't navigate through portions of Hogsmeade. The stores, in particular, are very small and can't handle a crowd of more than 20 at a time. It's not helped by the fact that two of the stores are connected to rides/attractions, so they're constantly filling up with people trying to get out of the ride. My husband thinks they planned to make it so small to make it true to the books and movies. I think they were just cheap when it came to land. In any case, it was a mistake.
It's also incredibly expensive. If you're an HP fan, you can imagine how hard it is to not just buy everything in sight. I ended up limiting myself to three things. I got a Quidditch blanket/throw (for my sofa), an Hogwarts sweatshirt, and a Sneakoscope for my office desk. My son got the wand (which was about $32 and I think was a waste) and candy/chocolate, along with the extendable ears.
Have any of you managed to make it there, yet? If so, what were your thoughts?
