Report on the Harry Potter Store
Jun. 29th, 2021 06:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kelly_chamblissI've made it into the Chamber of Secrets! -- or in other words, Partner and I managed to get inside the new Harry Potter store in New York City.
To enter, you have to go to the store and physically scan a QR code; then the store sends a text when your turn approaches.
Partner and I had tried to QR scan a few days earlier, but they'd already reached the maximum number of customers per day. The helpful attendant told us that the limit was usually reached by 3:00 or 4:00 on weekday afternoons but as early as 11:30 or noon on Fridays and weekends.
So we went back at 10:30 am and scanned our phones. We were Party #828, with 699 parties ahead of us.
According to the website, an average of about 100 parties per hour gets to enter, so clearly we were in for a long wait. We did some shopping and then went home, keeping our eye on the QR page, which was slowly ticking down the number of parties. At 4:00 pm, with 325 groups ahead of us, I got The Text: "It's almost your turn! Start making your way to the store." The QR screen turned bright green and read "IT'S YOUR TURN" in all caps.
Once we arrived at the store (after your number comes up, you have an hour to get back there), we joined the lucky green-screen queue and were checked in quickly. Indoor masks were mandatory, luckily, but I still found myself a little jumpy, because social distancing wasn't possible. But. . .vaccine, so I pressed on.
To the right of the short entryway is the "Houses" room featuring merch (shirts, jackets, scarves, ties, journals, robes, pens, caps, etc) from the four Houses. Video screens on the wall move through a long series of movie characters -- first the staff, then the ghosts, then the Quidditch teams, etc. Each character has a moving element: The Snape screen features bubbling potions, the Flitwick screen has a Levitated feather, the Lupin screen has the moving shadow of a howling wolf, etc. The McGonagall screen supposedly shows her morphing into a cat, but though I stood in front of the screens for a good five minutes, I never saw hers. Here's Pomona instead:
In the main room, you're greeted with a giant revolving griffin statue that sits atop a spiral staircase to the basement level of the store. The staircase and griffin are a riff on Dumbledore's office, of course, though unfortunately, the stairs don't revolve.
The main floor contains the House room, the wand shop, the Butterbeer Bar, the stuffed animal menagerie, the sweets room (with chocolate frogs, butterbeer in bottles, Bertie Botts Beans, etc.), and assorted random shelves of merch and movie props. There's also a contraption that lets you have a simulated wand duel, but the line was long, and we didn't wait. But Young Man and I are going to return at some point, so we'll try to kill each other then.
There are a lot of clever touches all around, from a "Marauders' Map" floor to a Ministry of Magic phone booth to flying books on the ceiling. Here are some mandrakes from the Menagerie:
Another view of the menagerie. (Just about every canon animal was here, from Aragog to Hedwig to Fang to Fawkes to Cornish pixies to nifflers to pygmy puffs to Fluffy. All fairly pricy.)
Some random merch and props:
I thought these purses (they had ones for each house in different styles) were very cute -- also expensive, alas. . .from $35 to $50.
.
Here's the wand shop:
And here's the Butterbeer Bar. It serves liquid butterbeer (in a souvenir mug) for $10 and Butterbeer ice cream (one cup for $7), along with Hedwig cupcakes and a few other baked goods. The ice cream was vanilla soft serve with an intensely-flavored butterscotch ribbon. Partner and I split one; it was pretty tasty. (When we arrived at the bar, there was no line, but by the time we got our ice cream, there were at least 30 people behind us.)
On the basement level, there's a "virtual HP experience" room that hasn't opened yet; you'll need separate tickets once it does. Other shops include the book room (which didn't have as much stock as I would have hoped; I was looking for a variety of editions, etc), the "personalization" room (where they'll put your name on a wand or a Hogwarts letter or a Quidditch jersey), a jewelry and make-up shop, a "Dark Arts" room (with Death Eater masks, stuffed Naginis, etc), and my personal favorite, a room containing replicas of some of the movie props, including blank classroom "exercise books" with fun covers (yeah, I bought one), posters, copies of the Daily Prophet, and so on.
Here's a bad photo of the book room; unfortunately I couldn't manage to get both the book stacks and the sign in the same pic.
There was a HUGE amount of merch, much more than you could imagine, so it's ironic and greedy of me to complain that there wasn't enough. BUT. . there wasn't enough. I was really hoping for some character-specific items, but aside from a few items featuring the Trio and Luna (and of course the endless stuffed animals), there was very little that connected to particular characters. Sadly, no McGonagall t-shirts, no Snape capes, no Sprout hats, nothing. Many of the wands do feature character names, but the designations are mostly random; they don't epitomize the characters.
Overall, there was so much to see that I couldn't really take it all in. Young Man and I plan a return trip.
To enter, you have to go to the store and physically scan a QR code; then the store sends a text when your turn approaches.
Partner and I had tried to QR scan a few days earlier, but they'd already reached the maximum number of customers per day. The helpful attendant told us that the limit was usually reached by 3:00 or 4:00 on weekday afternoons but as early as 11:30 or noon on Fridays and weekends.
So we went back at 10:30 am and scanned our phones. We were Party #828, with 699 parties ahead of us.
According to the website, an average of about 100 parties per hour gets to enter, so clearly we were in for a long wait. We did some shopping and then went home, keeping our eye on the QR page, which was slowly ticking down the number of parties. At 4:00 pm, with 325 groups ahead of us, I got The Text: "It's almost your turn! Start making your way to the store." The QR screen turned bright green and read "IT'S YOUR TURN" in all caps.
Once we arrived at the store (after your number comes up, you have an hour to get back there), we joined the lucky green-screen queue and were checked in quickly. Indoor masks were mandatory, luckily, but I still found myself a little jumpy, because social distancing wasn't possible. But. . .vaccine, so I pressed on.
To the right of the short entryway is the "Houses" room featuring merch (shirts, jackets, scarves, ties, journals, robes, pens, caps, etc) from the four Houses. Video screens on the wall move through a long series of movie characters -- first the staff, then the ghosts, then the Quidditch teams, etc. Each character has a moving element: The Snape screen features bubbling potions, the Flitwick screen has a Levitated feather, the Lupin screen has the moving shadow of a howling wolf, etc. The McGonagall screen supposedly shows her morphing into a cat, but though I stood in front of the screens for a good five minutes, I never saw hers. Here's Pomona instead:
In the main room, you're greeted with a giant revolving griffin statue that sits atop a spiral staircase to the basement level of the store. The staircase and griffin are a riff on Dumbledore's office, of course, though unfortunately, the stairs don't revolve.
The main floor contains the House room, the wand shop, the Butterbeer Bar, the stuffed animal menagerie, the sweets room (with chocolate frogs, butterbeer in bottles, Bertie Botts Beans, etc.), and assorted random shelves of merch and movie props. There's also a contraption that lets you have a simulated wand duel, but the line was long, and we didn't wait. But Young Man and I are going to return at some point, so we'll try to kill each other then.
There are a lot of clever touches all around, from a "Marauders' Map" floor to a Ministry of Magic phone booth to flying books on the ceiling. Here are some mandrakes from the Menagerie:
Another view of the menagerie. (Just about every canon animal was here, from Aragog to Hedwig to Fang to Fawkes to Cornish pixies to nifflers to pygmy puffs to Fluffy. All fairly pricy.)
Some random merch and props:
I thought these purses (they had ones for each house in different styles) were very cute -- also expensive, alas. . .from $35 to $50.
.Here's the wand shop:
And here's the Butterbeer Bar. It serves liquid butterbeer (in a souvenir mug) for $10 and Butterbeer ice cream (one cup for $7), along with Hedwig cupcakes and a few other baked goods. The ice cream was vanilla soft serve with an intensely-flavored butterscotch ribbon. Partner and I split one; it was pretty tasty. (When we arrived at the bar, there was no line, but by the time we got our ice cream, there were at least 30 people behind us.)
On the basement level, there's a "virtual HP experience" room that hasn't opened yet; you'll need separate tickets once it does. Other shops include the book room (which didn't have as much stock as I would have hoped; I was looking for a variety of editions, etc), the "personalization" room (where they'll put your name on a wand or a Hogwarts letter or a Quidditch jersey), a jewelry and make-up shop, a "Dark Arts" room (with Death Eater masks, stuffed Naginis, etc), and my personal favorite, a room containing replicas of some of the movie props, including blank classroom "exercise books" with fun covers (yeah, I bought one), posters, copies of the Daily Prophet, and so on.
Here's a bad photo of the book room; unfortunately I couldn't manage to get both the book stacks and the sign in the same pic.
There was a HUGE amount of merch, much more than you could imagine, so it's ironic and greedy of me to complain that there wasn't enough. BUT. . there wasn't enough. I was really hoping for some character-specific items, but aside from a few items featuring the Trio and Luna (and of course the endless stuffed animals), there was very little that connected to particular characters. Sadly, no McGonagall t-shirts, no Snape capes, no Sprout hats, nothing. Many of the wands do feature character names, but the designations are mostly random; they don't epitomize the characters.
Overall, there was so much to see that I couldn't really take it all in. Young Man and I plan a return trip.