Harry Potter and the Very Expensive Shop

I woke up with a seven in it because I was very excited. For ages I'd been dreaming of going to Harry Potter World and Jof had sprung for tickets for all of us.
I'd got up 6 hours before we were due to arrive so I played Minecraft while housework was done around me. We even did a bit in the park and hit the road at high noon.
Jof insisted we'd be late but it took us less than an hour and a half. That left us enough time to check into the hotel and find our family room but it didn't leave us enough time to have a carvery lunch at the Toby Pub next door.
We drove to Potter World and had a sandwich in the shop.
The Warner Brothers studios are very large indeed and we were shepherded into a room where the rules were laid down for us and then we saw a short film about how much work the cast and crew had to do to make the 8 films and I still want to be an actor.
Once the short film had finished, the screen went up and behind it were the giant doors of the great hall and it looks like stone but rings hollow when you knock on it.
The ceiling isn't enchanted but there's lots of girders and scaffolding and real props and costumes and every little thing is so intricately detailed you think it's lucky the films made money, because it must have cost a bomb.
Mostly I was distracted. They have a game for kids much like in many other attractions I've visited where you have to find things and stamp your visitor book. Here you have to find Golden Snitches and get your Potter Passport stamped at all the Stamping Stations, so I may not have seen everything.
The stage sets are ace and it all must be worth a fortune now but the metal skeletons and prize cups and models etc are behind fences or in glass cases.
I did the green screen thing where you ride on a broomstick and they superimpose you in various aerial locations and Jof got me the pictures and the video and the vault door is immense and I wanted an owl in the railway shop and we went on the Hogwarts Express and it hoots every now and then and you can see the carriages and the sweets trolley.
The room of wands has the names of everyone involved in the project ie millions of them and the draughtsman room is overwhelming because they drew everything in huge detail before it was made.
I suppose the single most visually stunning item is the model of Hogwarts Castle that takes up the whole room. Of course you can't go on it but a little boy tried to and he was removed by security and howled his way to Azkaban.
The animatronics suite has lots of terrifying models that move and Aragog was frightening and I liked the dragons and Dobby.
In the Backlot café we had a muffin and a sit-down and we got some Butterbeer which I didn't really like but I did get a moustache.
I couldn't reach the ding ding bell on the Knight Bus but it's really cool and authentic given that it was made from 3 actual buses. The Hogwarts bridge was excellent and I went on it lots.
A surprising number of our fellow travellers were French, must be the Chocolate Frogs which attracts them.
It is not the kind of place where you can keep still especially if you are Deep Purple on the madness spectrum so a lot of the photos I'm in only show the back of my rapidly disappearing head as I storm off to find another Golden Snitch.
The film people really have done very well in keeping all of this stuff together and it makes a great day out. We kept the Butterbeer souvenir tankard (plastic) and I might have my night-time milk in it.
In the shop we got a couple of shirts and a Time Turner and the Elder Wand and a set of coins with Galleon, Sickle and Knut and a chocolate Frog and peppermint toads.
They have some very impressive displays of wands and jewellery for the discerning Harry Potter fan at extremely discerning prices and you can get the full set of Hogwarts school uniform and sports kit for all 4 houses, a good idea perhaps if you are the parents of extremely competitive quadruplets and have a spare 17 1/2 thousand pounds.
The circuit took 3 3/4 hours and we drove back to the hotel in the rain but I didn't care. We had to forgo the pre-supper swim because the pool was out of action but it was so late anyway we battled with the smart TV (smarter than we were, until we bullied it into submission) and watched Pointless before going to the Toby Carvery next door to fill our deserving tummies.
After the roast I had Rolo ice cream in a goblet, although I failed to entirely gobble my goblet.
Then, to pass the time, we invented a small country called Beefgravia. The capital city is called Rump, and it is a large valley surrounded by mountains: they grow cows, have an annual Shoelace Festival and the local currency is the Roolo. Incidentally, the whole population is Lactose intolerant after a genetic bottleneck caused by a 14th century border dispute.