I'm Lauren and I am a Harry Potter fan.
And I have had the absolute pleasure
of being able to travel around the world going to different
events and locations that are really great for Harry
Potter fans. Also recently, one of you asked me to compare
the different Harry Potter travel destinations that I've visited
because it can definitely be overwhelming to narrow down
all of the options and choose a place that would be worth
the trip. So this is just a list of some of my favorites out of all
the places that I've been to. I'm going to put information for
all of these locations in the video description below if you're curious
and you want to check any of them out. If you're a Harry Potter fan
too, give this video a thumbs up and here is a list
of my top 7 Harry Potter travel destinations!
Number 7 is Platform 9 and 3/4 at
King's Cross Station in London! If you've read the Harry
Potter books or seen the Harry Potter movies, you know
how important this location is for the books.
And even though it isn't actually between platforms 9 and 10 like it
is in the books, they've put it in an easily accessible location
that anybody can get to even if you don't have a train ticket.
It's also right next to a bookstore and a huge
Harry Potter gift shop which is full of things that you can't get anywhere
else. When I was there in the summer of 2013, I got a
Platform 9 and 3/4 keychain and I also got a hoodie
with the same design on it. And we picked up a couple of Harry Potter books that had
some new covers that we really really liked 'cause
you know, can't have enough of those. So basically, Platform 9 and 3
quarters is a brick wall that they put half
a trolley cart up to so when you hold onto the cart, you can take a
picture and it looks like you're running right into the wall. They have
professional photographers there and when I was there, they also let
you take photos with your phone or your own cameras. I personally thought that
it was worth the wait even though there isn't that much to do there just because
of how much the location means to me as a Harry Potter fan.
This is a place that I've dreamed about going since I was a kid and
it was really fun to go. I don't know if I would go back
and wait in the line again, but I would definitely visit
that gift shop again. It was very cool. Number 6 is a
kind of general answer rather than a specific
travel destination and what's good about that is that it takes
place all over the world so it's very likely that depending on
where you are in the world, you can probably get to one someday.
And that is wizard rock concerts! If you are not familiar with
wizard rock, it is music that spans all genres
that is inspired by the Harry Potter books. Back in
2005, I started a wizard rock band with my best friend
Nina called The Moaning Myrtles and that was my gateway into
the real life iteration of the Harry Potter fandom.
I had been a very active fan online before that but I didn't
realize that I could actually go to events in person and meet
other fans and make friends with them in real life. And it was
absolutely life-changing for me! Wizard rock concerts are some of
the most fun, weird, accepting environments
that you'll ever be in and I absolutely
love them. For the past eight or nine years, I've been performing wizard rock
music under my own name, Lauren Fairweather, from a bunch of
characters' perspectives and it is so much fun! At its
peak, there were something like 700 wizard rock bands
in the world but some that you might have heard of are Harry and the Potters,
Draco and the Malfoys, The Parselmouths, The Whomping Willows,
Tonks and the Aurors! And while a lot of people seem to have
gotten the idea that wizard rock doesn't exist anymore, there
are a lot of bands that are still regularly playing shows and
I am one of them. Tonks and the Aurors especially have been
touring every year for a really long time and her
shows are amazing. You should absolutely try to go see her
the next time she's near you.These concerts typically feature more than
one wizard rock band because we like getting together and playing shows
together so going to a show is definitely the best introduction
that you can get to the scene and what it's all about. If you are interested
in going to a wizard rock concert, I would recommend following
all of the bands that you're interested in seeing on social media
and subscribing to them on YouTube, that way you can hear when they have
announcements about future tours. I'm going to list a few recommendations
in the video description below. And on a similar note,
another kind of event that you can go to that will occasionally
feature wizard rock bands, number 5 is the Yule Ball.
This is an event that took place in Harry's fourth year at Hogwarts
and a lot of event planners around the world have been throwing Yule
Ball themed events around Christmastime! My favorite Yule Ball
takes place every year in Boston, Massachusetts at the Middle East
Downstairs, it's hosted by Harry and the Potters,
and it's basically a big holiday-themed concert and it's really fun. The
success of this event has led Harry and the Potters to expand
their Yule Ball event and it usually also takes place in New York
City! But there's also one in Scotland every year, I've
played at a few Yule Balls in Oklahoma City, this one was hosted by a Harry
Potter Alliance chapter and it was hosted in Edmonton, Alberta.
And this one was by far the most beautiful Yule Ball I've attended.
It was up in Toronto a few years back! So if you're looking to
dress up and dance and possibly go to a concert, the
Yule Ball is a really fun event that you should definitely check out.
So I'm counting this next destination as two and you'll see why in a second.
and that is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at
Universal Orlando. I'm putting Hogsmeade at number 4
and Diagon Alley at number 3.
The Hogsmeade side of the park is the first Wizarding World of Harry Potter
park to open and it's cute and winter-themed,
there's snow on top of all of the buildings and
Hogwarts is the big main attraction there.
There are little shops that you can go in with tons of exclusive
Harry Potter merchandise to buy, there's the
Ollivander's wand experience where one lucky person
gets to try out a wand and do some magic,
there's the Dragon Challenge roller coaster which
used to be Dueling Dragons at Universal, there's
a much smaller roller coaster called Flight of the Hippogriff that's
intended more for younger kids, and then there is Forbidden Journey
which is the ride inside Hogwarts castle. My favorite
part of that ride is getting to walk in the line which goes through Hogwarts,
there's a classroom, there are hallways with moving
paintings, you get to walk through Dumbedore's office, and
all of these different locations are amazingly detailed and
beautiful and I highly recommend taking your time and looking
at everything. The Hogsmeade side is in Universal's Islands
of Adventure park and more recently, they've added
the Diagon Alley side which is in Universal Studios.
They connected the two sections using a Hogwarts Express
train ride which is adorable. Unfortunately,
you have to have a park hopper ticket to be able to go on that
ride because it takes you into the other park essentially, but it is
so cute and heartwarming and it's different depending on the
direction you're going. I loved it.
Now, the Diagon Alley side, I thought, was very different.
It feels more like a city instead of a small town, the buildings
are much much taller. Every direction you look, there's something
to see, there are little alleyways everywhere,
it's really really beautiful. They even have a Knockturn
Alley section which is always dark and pretty well air
conditioned which I enjoyed. The shows
and performances on the Diagon Alley side, I thought, were really cool.
When I was there, they had a beautiful show that integrated these
amazing puppets and told the tale of the three
brothers from Beedle the Bard, the only ride on the
Diagon Alley side besides the Hogwarts Express that I mentioned
earlier is Escape from Gringotts and I unfortunately have not been on
that ride yet because I was pregnant the last time
I was in that park but I did walk through the line and they have
some terrifying goblin animatronics that
look you directly in the eye so, you know, if that's something
that won't give you horrible nightmares, go for it.
Otherwise, I recommend like, staring down at your
feet while you walk through that part.
I thought that the Diagon Alley side of the park really fixed a lot of the
issues with the Hogsmeade side, there is one whole section
that has a big ceiling on top of it so you can get
some shade whereas I feel like they didn't think about that a whole lot
on the Hogsmeade side so you have the Florida sun beating
down on you and it's a little difficult. And then since these
aren't their own theme parks, you get to go to the rest of
Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure while you're there.
So I highly recommend that if you're ever able to
visit Orlando, that you check out both of these. I have not been able to
go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter parks in Japan and
Hollywood yet, but I definitely would like to.
I'm not really sure what the differences are, but I'm pretty sure that
the one in Orlando is the biggest just because it takes up these two
sections of the parks.
So this next one is another category of Harry Potter themed events
that you should definitely try to make it to at some point in your life
if you're a big Harry Potter fan. So number 2 on the list is
Harry Potter fan conventions! I cannot speak
highly enough of these conventions. They are some of the most
enthusiastic, warm, accepting environments that
I've ever been in and I absolutely love them. My favorite
is LeakyCon and I've been to every one so far.
The next one they're hosting is in Dublin, Ireland
and I am going to be performing there so I'm
so excited! I cannot wait to see what Dublin is like. But really,
it doesn't usually matter to me that much where the conference
takes place because honestly I don't leave it very often.
The thing for me at these conventions that I look forward to the most
is that they are a place where you can be who you are
and you can celebrate the things you love and be surrounded by
other people who get it, who understand what it's
like to be such a big Harry Potter fan. I know that when I talk about
Harry Potter in most social circles, people roll their
eyes at me, they don't quite get it, and I've had to kind of
suppress that side of my personality which is unfortunate because
it makes me very happy. On top of getting to make friends who love Harry
Potter just as much as you do, there are also all kinds of things
that you can do there. There's a marketplace where you can buy all sorts of
merchandise that is related to Harry Potter in some way.
There are panels dissecting everything you could ever want to
talk about with the series. There are workshops and
roundtables that you can participate in, there are wizard rock
concerts and while these don't take place as often as the
wizard rock concerts and the Yule Balls because they are much larger
events, I highly recommend traveling to get to them if
you're far away, but they also do take place in lots of different locations.
This May, I will be performing at MISTI-Con which is
a Harry Potter convention in New Hampshire. MISTI-Con is very
immersive and cosplay-focused and it's
very fun to be there. And if you keep an ear out over the next
couple months, you'll be able to hear where I'm performing this fall!
So yeah. Definitely go to a Harry Potter convention.
We've reached the end of the countdown! There's only one left.
Now obviously, I love all of these places, I hope
that I make it back to all of them eventually. But I felt
like this one was really something special and I was
actually not expecting to love it as much as I did. My
number one Harry Potter travel destination is the
WB Studio Tour in London. Now
this is basically a giant warehouse where they have kept sets and
costumes and props that they used in the filming
of the Harry Potter movies. And they have set
them up like a museum and you can walk through them,
some of them you can interact with, and it is amazing!
I've never really been that excited about pop culture museums
and places like Planet Hollywood where you can see costumes
from movies up close, it's obviously pretty cool but I never
had the emotional reaction until I went
to the WB Studio Tour. There is so much detail
that you don't see in the films that the artists
that were working on these set pieces and these costumes,
you can tell that they put so much work and thought into
every little detail even though they knew you probably would
never even see it on screen. There were big things
that I never even noticed like giant statues of
each of the Hogwarts house mascots in the Great
Hall. You get to see how much smaller some things were in
person. You get to see some of the film tricks
that they used to make them look a certain way. And what
I think is most effective about the way that they've
arranged this whole thing that you walk through
is that they have the lighting and the music and
it's not just a warehouse with bunch of
stuff in it. They've arranged it in ways that
really make you feel like you're there.
And it is
absolutely wonderful. I, I want to go back.
because the other thing that's really interesting about this is that they
change it and add to it constantly. They
recently opened up a giant Forbidden Forest section that I haven't
seen yet. They have the Hogwarts Express there now. They even have
hundreds of pieces of graphic design that MinaLima designed. The
newspapers, the candy packaging. You can look into the mirror
of Erised! One of the coolest parts is the outdoor
section where they have the entire Privet Drive
house, they have the Knight Bus, They have Godric's
Hollow in the state that Voldemort left it.
They have moving life size wizard chess pieces.
They have the bridge that Neville blew up in Deathly Hallows and you can
walk on it! I want to go back so badly, I want to stay there for
hours, I just loved it so, so much!
I just hope that someday, I get the opportunity to go back because
I loved it so much. So that's it! That is my top
7 Harry Potter travel destinations. So obviously there are a
lot more than that that I would definitely love to visit someday.
I'd love to go see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child because I've heard
that the play is much better than reading the script. I have not been to any
of the traveling Harry Potter exhibitions so I'm not sure
how similar they are to the WB Studio Tour in London.
I'd love to go to the Elephant House and sit at JK Rowling's table!
Like I said earlier, I'd love to go to other Wizarding World of Harry
Potter parks around the world. And I've heard that the Lockhart
which is a Harry Potter themed bar up in Canada is
really great and I would love to go there someday. If
you're new here, subscribe to keep up with my future nerdy travel
adventures. I'm lucky enough to have the opportunity to go
to places like this pretty often and I'd love to take you along
on the ride. In the comments below, tell me about your
favorite Harry Potter themed travel destinations.
Have you ever been to any of these? And would you recommend any that I didn't
mention? I'd love to hear about them. Anyway, that's all for now.
Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon!



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