What:
Harry Potter Walking
Tour
Where:
Leicester Square to
Kings Cross, London
When:
4th May, 2
- 4:30pm
Ticket
Price: £11 for 2 (Wowcher deal; usually £20pp)
What was it?
A Celebrity
Planet tour of the famous London sites depicted in the eight Harry Potter
movies, beginning outside the Leicester Square Odeon where the world premieres
for each film was held to Kings Cross St Pancras, the beginning of Harry’s
journey to Hogwarts.
My sister
found a deal for this on Wowcher and after our brilliant experience with the Jack
the Ripper tour in March we decided to give it a go.
The Tour
There are
lots of stop on the Harry Potter walking tour, but the first stop after leaving
Leicester Square is Cecil Court which inspired Diagon Alley. It’s a little side
street filled with bookshops, one of them the oldest Occultist bookshop in
London, and another that sells Harry Potter money. We also visited Great
Scotland Yard where the Ministry of Magic is based. Warner Bros wanted to use
the Ministry of Defence but obviously weren’t allowed so they settled for one
of the grand looking buildings nearby instead. Then we walked down a road full
of very swish hotels, including the one Emma Watson stayed in during the
filming of these scenes.
We passed
the Globe where David Tennant who played Barty Crouch Jr got married on the way
to Southwark which inspired Knockturn Alley (the only bit of the tour where I saw
the street and my brain screamed ‘Harry Potter’) before walking over to Borough
Market. Across the road from the market’s entrance is a florist that was the
building used for the outside of the Leaky Couldron and the street that the Knight
Bus flew down and set of a car’s alarm. And on a non-Harry Potter related note,
it was just across from the pub that was the flat Bridget lives in in Bridget Jones’ Diary! Our next stop was
my favourite – a ferry ride to Millenium Bridge! After that we walked to Bank
where we caught the Tube to Kings Cross station.
I was
pretty excited to see the Platform 9 ¾ tribute, but it has actually been moved
off of the platform and into the main station as it was causing massive
disruption. It’s actually kinda small and there was a huge queue to get a
picture at it. It was sadly underwhelming. Me and my sister decided to give it
a miss and headed straight for the gift shop. It’s a tiny and massively
expensive gift shop so I decided to save my money to the huge and massively
expensive one at the Leavesden Studios next month.
As with
most experiences like this, it’s the guides who may or break it. We were
incredibly lucky with our jack the Ripper tour leader as he knew so much about
everything and was genuine and interesting and funny. I didn’t get the same
feeling from the two guys who led this tour. There was sarcasm, slight derision
and even patronising tendencies at the fangirlishness of some of the tour
group. I don’t even believe one of them likes the films or the books and I thought
the same of the other guy until we chatted to him. Turns out he’s been to the
Studios eight times. Eight. Okay, he
is a fan after all.
This is
going to sound pretty bad but one of the things that distanced me most from the
tour guides was how they had to talk so slowly and basically using lots of
miming gestures because most of the tour group were tourists. It was really
quite irritating and I was glad they didn’t actually talk much more than to
point things out and give a few anecdotes. The group itself was pretty
unfortunate; there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm, rudely talking over the
guys leading the tour and wandering away from the group. I was a little
disappointed.
Overall Opinion
We had
lovely sunshine and got to see bits of the city that we wouldn’t normally see
which was lovely, but I wouldn’t pay full price for this tour. Most of the
sites were CGIed so heavily for the films (with the exception of Millenium
Bridge) that not much was recognisable as being from Harry Potter, but it was
still something different and a pleasant few hours.
Verdict: 5/10
Disclaimer: I wasn't in any way encouraged, paid
or asked by Celebrity Planet to review this tour. This is entirely from my own
want to share the experience.
Sophie
Awww, this sounds like it could have been really good - just goes to show how a tour guide and the tour group can influence how enjoyable something can be.
ReplyDeleteI think this is the same tour that Kirsty and I did last year. We'd booked it weeks in advance so typically it ended up being a wet and miserable day which was really disappointing. We actually had a fantastic tour guide though & he was able to tell us so much information about the locations and the movies so it's a shame that the guys with you weren't as good as he was. We didn't queue up for pictures at the station either - it would have taken FOREVER & I was disappointed with the shop (both for the ridiculous prices and for the small range of things on sale).
ReplyDeleteThese walking tours are always a nice way of finding parts of London that you wouldn't necessarily come across otherwise though :o) I've done a Jack the Ripper one too & that was really interesting.