Muggle Magic

::MAGICAL REWIND::

Back in November, before Thanksgiving, Tim and I took the ferry to Seattle for a very special occasion.  HARRY POTTER DAY!

In case you can't tell from my blog, I am a big Potter fan and thankfully, I've found other people in the area who share my enthusiasm (and who also have husbands that don't mind being dragged along).

We started the day with the IMAX showing of the newest movie.  I laughed, I cried, it was fantastic and I left thinking "IS IT JULY 15th YET!?!?" (That's the release date of the last movie.)

Of course, no pictures were taken of the movie.  Following the show, we had some time to kill before our timed-entry tickets to the Harry Potter: An Exhibition. We headed into the Science Center and immediately found the "Mindbender Mansion," an exhibit featuring puzzles and other mind-bending games...i.e. Timmy's Paradise.

In this game, we had to move 4 pegs from the black holes to make each line an equal amount of pegs.

We spent a long time trying to figure this one out.

Moving on to other games, Tim solved this one in mere seconds...it was a math game.

Can you take two oddly-shaped pieces and create a perfect triangle?  Tim can!

Finally, the four of us who had gone together, got into some bumper-car like things and played a game similar to this:

But LIFE-SIZE!  It was awesome and we did a pretty good job.  Unfortunately, the only picture I got was a bit blurry...we were racing against the clock!

 

FINALLY it was time to see the Exhibition I had been waiting for all day!

It was probably a good thing that pictures weren't allowed inside the exhibition, because I would have been there all night getting pictures from every angle.  

The exhibit starts with the sorting hat, which anyone can have placed on their head for a chance to be sorted.  Then, we were shuffled into a room that played an introduction to the entire movie franchise and the exhibit.  It was very exciting.  The doors opened and the exhibit began.  There were quite a few costumes, wands, movie props, and set pieces, including the four-poster beds from Harry and Ron's dormitory.  The exhibit felt like we were moving through different sets, from the grounds of Hogwarts, to the dormitories and, of course, it ended in the Great Hall.  I rented an audio-guide at the beginning, and my favorite fact from the movies concerns the Mandrakes in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  In case you aren't aware, the only cure to un-petrify the victims of the monster is a Mandrake potion.  The students had, conveniently, been learning about them earlier in the movie.  The cry of an adult Mandrake will kill you.  Oh, and the Mandrakes look like ugly, potato-esque babies.  Well, they had some of these animatronic plant-babies at the exhibit that you could pull out of the pots, like in the movie. Now for the fun fact:  The Mandrakes were each individual animatronic robots, powered by battery packs.  They were a popular item of theft on set.  

Like all good exhibits, it ended in a gift shop.  I couldn't resist buying a few things, but this really caught all of our eyes...     

Thinking back, I probably should have purchased it!