Day 7 in London: Natural History Museum + Harry Potter Studios!

Wednesday, March 26

Day 7 already! This was a great day.

This was a more structured day, because we had Warner Brother Studios: The Making of Harry Potter tickets for 4:00 p.m., and the studio is quite far away.

I had strategically planned to do the Natural History Museum in the morning, because our apartment was located just 1.5 blocks from it! This allowed us to do the museum and then stop back at the apartment to regroup before heading out for Harry Potter in the afternoon.

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is free, but I had reserved a 10:00 time slot (when they open), just in case. (I had read sometimes there can be long lines to get in; there’s also a security checkpoint. When we arrived, there weren’t long lines, so perhaps it’s seasonal. There were a LOT of little tiny people! It seems that the schools in London are big on field trips! Haha. Almost every place we went throughout the week had at least one school group there, and the subways always had groups of very small children in yellow vests being herded around by surprisingly calm teachers. Ha. I would be very nervous about losing one in those crowded tube stations!!!)

We walked over from the apartment right around 10:00:

It’s a gorgeous building! And it’s huge.

Gardens at the eastern entrance:

Once inside, you’re immediately in this impressive entrance hall with dinosaur bones hanging from the ceiling! Super cool.

We went straight for the ground floor cafe to grab some pastries quickly, as we were out of any breakfast stuff at the apartment.

Then we set out to tour the museum! Given those 4 pm HP tickets, we didn’t have all day here. I figured we needed to be OUT no later than 1:30, to give us time to eat lunch, stop at the apartment, and start making our way to the Harry Potter studios by 2:30 p.m.

We decided to start with the “blue” area on the map, which is where the dinosaurs and mammals were.

*Side note about museums on vacation: I am often torn about whether or not to visit famous museums on trips. I know museums aren’t for everyone, but we generally like them. However, with limited time, I typically prefer to prioritize sights that are unique to a certain location. Some museums are amazing but contain things that could technically be put in any museum in any part of the world. For example, a science museum. There are very cool science museums in many cities! But they usually have nothing to do with the place they’re located. Whereas say, the Tower of London is unique to London, because it was built FOR London and contains LONDON’S specific history. Same with Churchill War Rooms, or Westminster Abbey, etc.

That being said, I think London is known for its incredible museums that contain some pretty incredible things, presented in interesting ways. And while yes, some things “could” be found elsewhere… they aren’t! They’re here. So, we felt it was worth it to get to at least a couple of their great museums!

Second side note: This Natural History museum ended up being listed in Ivan’s “top things he liked in London” when I polled everyone over dinner on our last night. The boys enjoyed it a lot and were engaged the whole time, too. So it was definitely a good call to go!

The dinosaur section is awesome:

This was an animatronic dinosaur that moved and roared…. those brave tiny people weren’t scared at all! Haha. 😅

I’ve seen dino bones before, but there seemed to be a HUGE collection of extremely well preserved, full skeletons, which was really neat and unlike collections I’ve seen before.

We also found the exhibits to be so well done. Really digestible! Some museums’ placards are long, and dry. Here the little “blurbs” were short, to the point and very easy to skim and understand. Great for younger people (or all ages, really) who want to know what they’re looking at, but to be able to keep moving.

This was a cool spot!

It’s also such a pretty building! I think the backdrop alone makes it worth visiting.

The whale collection was out of this world. Fascinating displays and information.

These are the heaviest elephant tusks to ever be recorded from an adult male elephant killed near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tunisia, sold in 1898. The exhibit talks about the sad history of elephant poaching and how the disproportionate poaching of males with extra large tusks has literally extinguished that trait from offspring today.

After the Blue zone, we went to the Red zone, which covers the Earth’s history, human evolution, and volcanoes and earthquakes.

This whole section was awesome too. We obviously could have used even more time, but we got through a majority of it.

One of the oldest rocks on Earth! 3,850 million years old, from Greenland. It has aged well. 😉

Exploring some hands on exhibits:

The volcano and earthquake exhibits were favorites, too.

There’s a spot where you can stand on a big platform and you watch video footage of a real, devastating earthquake in Asia (from a store’s surveillance camera) and the platform shakes and the lights flicker, etc. Ha. Everyone got a kick out of that.

We missed a bunch of the Green zone, unfortunately, but breezed through a few parts. Oh well! We still saw a ton.

At 1:30 we walked back to our street, through this other cute pedestrian area right by the museum. This is also just around the block from our apartment.

We decided to eat right ON our street, at a place just outside our door. It was a beautiful day!

We got a couple pizzas and garlic bread to share. We’d been wanting to try the pizza place below our apartment, and now was our chance. Nothing fancy but it was REALLY good!

By 2:30 we set out for Harry Potter Studios! I had estimated it would take us 1.5 hours to get from our door to the studio door. It’s really not even that “far away” but required multiple steps.

We had to take the Circle line to Victoria, then change to the Victoria line to the Euston tube station. Then we had to walk to the Euston railway station and take a West Midlands Railway train out to Watford Junction. (These run often; no advance ticket needed and they also allow the contactless tap in/tap out payment option which is SO CONVENIENT!)

From there, we’d need to show our tickets to get on a Harry Potter shuttle bus which would then drive us another ~15 minutes to the actual studios. None of the legs of the trip were particularly long, but with some walking and waiting in between, it took a while in total.

My estimates turned out to be spot on and we boarded the shuttle bus right about 3:40 p.m., which was perfect to arrive just before 4:00 at the studio.

Harry Potter Studios

They got us in the Harry Potter mood with a little introductory video and of course, the theme music. 🙂

We snagged a great family photo outside!

In the entryway:

One thing I failed to research was the audio guide option. I wasn’t aware that they even had audio guides, but this was presented to us on arrival for an upcharge. We weren’t sure what to do; in some places, the audio guides are essential! I wasn’t sure if this was one of those places, or if the exhibits would be clearly marked with text….

The boys said they didn’t want audio guides anyway, so we ended up getting a 4 for 15 pounds combo deal for the adults. In the end, we felt the audio guides were okay, but not really necessary, and sometimes they felt like a hindrance. It wasn’t always easy to find the stops that matched my audio guide. (Many areas are large and you can wander; you don’t follow a strict path.)

Some tracks were also more like “background info”, like interviews with actors or producers, etc. All very interesting, but it ended up making it hard for us to keep our group together, and then instead of experiencing it all together, we had headphones in our ears.

I probably ended up only listening to about half of the tracks. The sets and exhibits are clearly marked with signs, and there are also a lot of interactive stops, so I’d say I would not really recommend paying for the audio guide.

Anyway, the self-guided tour starts out in the Great Hall! This was so cool. They close the doors and do a little “action scene” to kick things off, with lights and sounds and pyrotechnics!

We spent 4 full hours touring this place. It is AWESOME. I am sooo glad that I at least read 1 1/2 books so far and watched the first movie, because while sure, there were lots of references I haven’t made it to yet, I at least knew all of the main characters and sets. Most everything “meant” something to me, which was great.

This place is an absolute must do for any Harry Potter fan. It’s just incredible. They start out with a welcome video in which the actors (now adults) welcome you to the studios and give some background. They talk about how they literally grew up here, spending TEN years living and filming here… they literally became like family. It’s so cool.

I have photo overload here, but it was just amazing to see all the sets, the real props, etc. Seeing the immense work and years it took to make these movies was mind blowing!

I kept telling Asher, who is very artistic by nature, “You should consider trying to go into something in movie making! What an incredible and interesting career that would that be.” I mean, the people who made the magic behind this stuff are so talented. The filming techniques, computer generation, props, costumes, set design, special effects… amazing. I have no idea how they figure out how to do all of that.

The actors all wore wigs! Here is Snape’s, Hermione’s and Professor McGonagell’s!

The portrait wall:

This is Harry’s dormitory room set. They used this throughout the years, even when Daniel Radcliffe got too big to fit on the bed! They had to do special film angles to avoid catching his legs bent or hanging off the end. Haha.

We got to see all the common rooms for the different houses:

I forget what this is called, but that special mirror that lets you see what you most desire:

Slytherin’s common room:

There are a bunch of live demos by staff members about special effects. Here they were showing us how they made people invisible on screen with the invisibility cloak.

The potions room was super cool:

And Dumbledore’s office was my fave!! It is so intrique and cool to look at.

The real sorting hat!

We got to see Hagrid’s hut:

Real costumes and quidditch robes:

Hogwart’s doors. So many things were made in smaller scale and made to appear larger with camera angles, but these were actually really big!

The boys’ favorite part was the dark forest. This was so neat and spooky. There’s dim lighting and fog…

Then you get to an awesome part with multiple huge, moving, animatronic spiders, a thunderstorm with real wind and more.

Up next was the real Hogwart’s Express!

Of course we had to take pics at Platform 9 3/4. 🙂

My dad even got in on the photo op, though he’s much older than 11. 😉

Hogwart’s Express is a real train! The inside has a bunch of different cars, each labeled with which movie they appeared in, along with specific props.

At this point in the tour you can stop off at a cafe to buy food or very expensive treats. lol.

They caught us, because of course we had to buy butter beer. And, while we were at it, a butter beer doughnut and butter beer ice cream. Oh well, it’s not every day we get to have butter beer at the real Harry Potter studio.

It was very delicious! 🙂

My parents even tried it, and took this funny pic with whipped cream on their lips. 😅

There is an outside section, where we got to see the Dursley’s house on Privet Drive!

We had learned previously how they made that “letter flying” scene (they used a mail sorter to make the envelopes spit out of the mail slot).

Then on to the greenhouse which was a fun stop:

Hagrid’s motorcycle:

The flying car!

Back inside, there was a whole exhibit about masks and molds and props.

Asher making Dobby move on screen with computer sensors:

I didn’t know Hagrid wasn’t a real giant! Ha. They put this big animatronic head with moving eyes and lips on the actor.

Goblins!

Little Gringotts, made to look big on screen.

The actual invisibility cloak:

Gringott’s IS real and life sized. This section was awesome.

(Universal Studios has a very similar Gringott’s, but this is the real one!)

Here we saw a set with live props strategically placed in front and behind so it looks like we’re really in the scene:

And of course, Diagon Alley:

At the end was this amazing Hogwart’s model, which was used for all of the aerial shots of Hogwarts. They did film a lot on site in Scotland at the real castle they used, but this one was what they used for the aerial views and also the fighting/ fire scenes.

They closed at 8:00 (I had thought it was 10:00! I guess only in peak seasons they stay open until 10). We had just enough time to browse the great gift shop before reversing our trip back to London.

By 9:30 or so we were seated at an Italian restaurant near our apartment for a late dinner! We were hungry after many hours on our feet today.

I had pasta carbonara and it was delicious. This was the cutest little place, too.

After dinner, the boys walked themselves back to the apartment and the adults stopped for a quick beer at our other corner pub, Hoop and Toy.

By about 10:45 p.m. we were home and called it a night!

This was a really fantastic day. I absolutely loved the Harry Potter Studios and am SO glad we decided to do it. (At first, before I had read the book, I had thought, Well, if none of us are “huge” HP fans… is it worth eating up half a day to do this? But I am quickly becoming a big HP fan and this was awesome.)

Important note!! IF you plan a trip to London and want to do this, you must pre-book the tickets as soon as your know your dates. The tickets WILL sell out, in all seasons. This is not a situation of, “Eh, we’ll wait and see if we can walk in.” You can’t! They always, always sell out at least a couple months in advance. (Only possible option for later tickets would potentially be a 3rd party tour, for a lot more money, and that’s not even guaranteed.)