Harry Potter the Exhibition opened at its premiere location (Museum of Science & Industry, Chicago) on April 30, 2009. Yesterday on the second day of it being opened to the public I went to see the exhibit. The exhibit is located in white tents in front of the museum’s building, but you enter through the museum.
They admit in groups based on timed entry tickets. You start with being greeted by a person dressed in wizard attire and introduced to the sorting hat. A few volunteers got chosen to be sorted with the sorting hat talking aloud and announcing the house for them. Then you are corralled into a room with train window television screens that play a quick video of scenes from the Harry Potter movies.
After the movie ends doors open to show the Hogwarts Express and a prefect looking staff member corrals you into the main exhibit as if you were students going to Hogwarts. It sure gives the feeling of really being students, but personally I felt like I was being corralled along like certain Holocaust museums do on purpose to make you feel like the Jews were treated. It just is not an enjoyable rushed experience for this type of thing despite knowing their intentions.
The first room or so was annoying because everyone was trying to see the Gryffindor Common Room things and many would stop for very long as they were listening to the extra fee audio tour things. The stuff in here was interesting including the Fat Lady, Harry Potter’s trunk, and Ron’s trunk, however it kind of dumbed down feeling because the signs say the most common of info. Sure it might be useful for some, but honestly I doubt many pay the extra for this exhibit if they do not already know at least the common knowledge about Harry Potter.
The rest of the exhibit was not too bad, as we kind of skipped ahead of the crowd that entered with us and were taking forever listening and standing in the way using the audio tour things. The next main area was one of our favorites, as it had a place you could through quaffles through three quidditch hoops. Also, this area had a partial recreation of Hagrid’s hut including Hagrid’s chair that you could sit in.
Then there is kind of a random hallway of props with not that much in them before you get to a mini recreation of Hogwart’s Great Hall. The Great Hall was also a nice area with a display of feast foods. There were also several of the Great Ball gowns on display. This is basically the end of the exhibit, as soon you end up in the gift shop.
Honestly, the exhibit disappointed me because it only took us about 15 minutes to go through it. All the hype made me think it really had a lot of stuff, but really something that takes only 15 minutes to go through is not much considering we did still stop and play with quaffles and enjoy viewing all the stuff in the Great Hall and such. Actually browsing through the gift shop took us longer than going through the exhibit.
I really did enjoy the stuff in the gift shop. They had a lot of fun Harry Potter things including wands, stuffed animals, books, and movies. I ended up getting a few chocolate frogs, fudge flies (I had never seen these before), and a Gryffindor beanie for keeping at my mom’s Chicago apartment since I always forget to bring one.
Overall the most disappointing part is it costs almost $30 to see and then it is not much. Now this price does not seem too bad if you have never seen the rest of the Museum of Science & Industry, as the ticket price includes that. However, I have seen this museum many times and mostly recently only a few months ago, so basically I had only paid to see the Harry Potter exhibit. I think they have discounted after hours tickets that are for the Harry Potter exhibit only, which may not be bad, but bottom line was I felt like I was paying to spend more money in a nice Harry Potter gift shop and to be corralled like cattle into an exhibit that is trying to make more money off the fans of Harry Potter.
