THE HARRY POTTER EXPERIENCE ⚡

Holy fucking shit. I don't know how else to start this blog. It was such a time that I decided to do a stand alone blog for it. My only complaint was that it was kind of expensive, but overall, it was a great hour and a half, maybe even closer to two hours. Oh, okay, I was just being cheap, it was really a reasonable price for the time and experience. The best part? You get to keep the interactive bracelet that you get to participate in the HP experience. The place was packed. It was a good thing that I booked this two months in advance because rain or shine, this event was marked to sell out in the spring and by Christ, if it wasn't I would have wondered how many tickets they were having per day-honestly, the place was like a Walmart the first week of the month. People dressed in their house robes, all sorts of Harry Potter jumpers, wands, drawn on scars and house pride tees met me as I arrived 10 minutes before the museum opened. Meanwhile, I was dressed in a tee featuring lucifer, sliced and ripped jeans and retro skate sneakers. (Remember those? The etnies and adio shoes? I needed to get me a pair on eBay or was it Mercari? One of the two...) A bright and sunny Philadelphia day greeted me as I stepped out of the rental property to head to the Franklin Institute for The Harry Potter experience. The perfect spring day; not to hot not too cold. I get to the museum a good 15 minutes before it was set to open; I was worried that I might get lost on my route and would miss the timed enterence for my ticket. There's already about two dozen people out on the steps of the building watiting to get in dressed up. I took it all in. While I would never be caught wearing wizarding robes in public (or in private for that matter) I did appriciate the comrodery of it all. They opened the museum a few minutes early seeing the line of people in. Upon entering the museum, they directed all of us going to the HP Experience to one side of the building to sign up it. You put in your name, take a selfie and fill out your house, wand, all that good stuff as you're given an interactive bracelet for the journey. By tapping the little bracelet with the snitch tag on it, youd be able to play games and complete small challenges to win points for your house! I slected my house and wand, then followed the stream of people up the stairs and round the bend to a room that projected the Maurader's Map with everyone's names for that entery time. Once you found your name, you were allowed into the interactive exhibit. You walked through the Grand Staircase, seeing dozens of the Hogwart's portraits move, just as you would at the school as you made your way into the "sorting room" of the exhbit. Each small room had a stained glass window for each house, in the colours of the house and depecting the house's animal. You headed down into the set areas where you saw various costumes many of the actors wore for filiming. It was amazing to see the clothes knowing these are the outfits these stars have worn. I will admit for a few minutes, my stoned ass got a little star struck. Harry's outfits, Dumbledore's robes, Snape's bat outfit. I loved playing the challenges with other kids as we did the Potions exam, make potions, that was the highlight. I knew every potion recipe back to front. I guess years of watching the films and reading the books turned out to be really useful afterall! They had Umbridge's office, but not Dumbledore's which really threw me. It must be at the exhibit in London, I might go when I'm back. They had the chamber of secrets door too. Personally, I think they should have gone all out with the chamber, but they probably didn't due to space limitations. They had Harry's room at number 4 and Sirus's childhood room with the family map at number 12 as well. It was amazing to be on the sets, seeing them come to life in a way that film can't capture. You could expore herbology, defense against the dark arts but not transfiguration-not that I'm surprised, it would be rather hard to try to make that happen in the non-magical world. I got to look into the cup featuring The Grim in the Divination room and have your future read in the crystal balls they set up. Mine was "True Happiness is like finding the secret tunnel into Honeyduukes". Which really is true. It's hard to find true happiness and when you do, it's some of the sweetest types of rewards. Exiting, you made your way to the gift shop. I was so happy they had one that was just for the experience, but seeing the prices of some of the stuff almost caused me to have a stroke. $58.00 for a fucking tumblr? They can keep that shit. I ended up getting a few mystery monster chocolates and a pencil case for all my art on the go stuff. They had Sweets like you would in Honeydukes, tees, hoodies and more galore. It was fun wandering around inside, taking in all the colours and sights of the Harry Potter world. I left the exhbit feeling like I got a great value for my money and that I would have to come back to the institute next year when they had different exhbits on.