Friday, 02-Aug-2024


All throughout the week, I’d been seeing posters and signs and billboards and advertisements for a traveling exhibition – the Harry Potter Visions of Magic Experience.

I’d asked one of the folks I’d gotten to know, a lovely new friend named Gina, if she’d heard anything about it… and when she hadn’t, we decided to check it out together in the afternoon on Friday. I mean, how often does one get to explore a pop-up art exhibit in a new city?

…

Okay maybe I’m a bad example for this… but you know what? That’s part of the fun! I adventured in the morning, we met up, and headed into a land of wizards and magic…

From the outside, the building was just that – a simple building, with a big wrapping sign around it. A warehouse, in no uncertain terms.

But… that kind of fits with Harry Potter, doesn’t it? An unlikely building, that opens up into a magical world inside? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I read that once or twice in the Harry Potter series.

Inside, we were greeted with some amazing interior design and beautiful props. We showed our tickets, collected our wands, and got a quick run-down on how to use them. A flick and a swish to interact with various elements inside the experience, a quick tutorial, and we were on our way onto the Knight Bus…

Having lived with a scenic artists, and interacted with quite a few others from the film industry, this whole thing was amazing to me. I mean, it would have been amazing anyways, no doubt in my mind. But knowing a bit of the “behind the magic” magic actually made it even more exciting for me. Imagining the prop-masters going through and selecting interesting little bits… imagining the scenic artists spending hours and hours perfecting the bus rails and bedsheets… It added a bit of awe to the stunning rooms.

The lighting, too, was absolutely amazing! Holograms were used in a few places, huge projectors in others, and our wands even reacted to the various rooms by glowing different colors as we proceeded through the different areas of the world. Making a point to take it all slowly was definitely a challenge, instead of just racing through to see the next amazing piece, but take it slow we did… enjoying each little piece of set decoration, and wondering at the cool lighting and interactive segments.

Of all the rooms, my two favorites were the Hall of Prophecies and the Room of Requirement – interestingly, for completely different reasons. The Hall of Prophecies was absolutely stunning, with beautifully lit globes, interesting ethereal music, and cool areas to interact with… but was slightly overwhelming in the lights and sounds and mirrors giving the sense of falling to infinity. The Room of Requirements was drab and dull in comparison, but had an endless sea of interesting props, stacked high and to the ceilings, with a new neat little thing everywhere we looked.

I’ll be candid, here, and admit that the ending was a bit anti-climactic. It was the big battle between Harry and Voldemort, but played out in pantomime on big screens with still images… though being able to “launch fireworks” with our wands afterward was definitely a fun little thing for the first minute or two.

The slow ending didn’t tarnish the whole fun, though, and I still had one last bit to try after the end – Butterbeer!

That… Okay yeah that one did tarnish it a little bit. Turns out – I don’t eat or drink many sweet things anymore, and having a horrifyingly sickly sweet rootbeer / butter combination drink was… well, it was a little bit too much for my poor tastebuds.

Still. I sipped it, Gina and I chatted about the spots we’d especially enjoyed, and we perused the gift shop before heading out of the magic and into the cool summer sun.

Definitely worth it.