Too much Butterbeer and larking about in Leavesden - fun times at Harry Potter World

I have a theory that my generation – through the combined effects of Playstation exposure, sugar intake and primary colour-heavy cartoons – is immeasurably more immature and youthful minded (for better or for worse) than those which came before it.

I and many people I know have very grown-up jobs, wearing a tie and everything, but to relax we like nothing more than cracking open a fizzy drink, busting out the Dual Shock 4 and, in between, snort laughing at memes involving cats or scenes from childhood culture.

Maybe it is a lot more socially acceptable to, in your downtime, have the mindset of a nine-year-old and live almost exclusively in the sepia-toned 1990s. Maybe it is simply you are not a fully-fledged adult just because you are in your 20s.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying, and attempting to justify, that I went to Harry Potter World on Monday and absolutely loved every single second of it.

There is no shame in saying I was giddy with excitement all the way through, whether it be walking through one of the carriages of the Hogwarts Express; wandering about The Great Hall; larking around in Diagon Alley; or simply nerding out looking at props, costumes and sets which are sealed in my memory vault forevermore.

There may even have been a stage where I got a tad too giddy after drinking Butterbeer and eating Butterbeer ice cream and then subsequently pretending to be a conductor on the Knight Bus and doing a high-pitched screaming Ron impression in one of the Ford Anglias.

As an aside, new-found extra kudos to Emma Watson, specifically for, in The Half Blood Prince, downing most of a stein of Butterbeer, the sweet sweet taste of which left me wanting to lick some soil to take the substantial edge off.

But I also enjoyed Harry Potter World in a more grown-up way – it’s essentially akin to visiting a museum about something you’re really, really interested in (rather than stumbling on something at a museum you then discover an interest in; also a lovely phenomenon).

The attraction gave me personally a more adult appreciation of the whole enterprise of creating the Harry Potter films from the size of some of the sets to the scale and diverse sectors of expert staffing required.

Something as simple as the stool which the Sorting Hat sits on was so lovingly and intricately carved – good quality wooden furniture has less craftsmanship and that gets seen every day.

Seeing how the special effects, visual effects, make-up teams, designers and so on went about their business was interesting but taking into account all of them working together with one end in mind brings in to stark relief just how huge film productions actually are, quite a realisation for a film industry layman such as myself.

Walking through the corridor to see the penultimate stop was off-the-scale – I won’t say what it is here but I do believe I gasped which usually only happens these days when it is really, really cold outside.

And best of all, Harry Potter World wasn’t really theme park-esque. It was well-presented, not over-the-top and respectful, letting the subject matter rightly be the attraction, not gimmicks.

That said, the gift shop was theme park-style; an array of the usual overpriced tat, a contemporary British approach which I love as it passes on the traditional fleecing of British people like me to a global audience. Thumbs up. (For what it’s worth, we bought a Harry Potter luggage-themed frame at £18.95 for what it’s worth plus 5p for a Harry Potter World bag which one suspects the attraction could have charged for before it became statutory.)

We spent around four hours there and not a single moment was not thoroughly enjoyed on an array of levels.

So, yeah, I’ve not really got a funny or particularly engaging sign off paragraph. It was good, I’d recommend a visit. That’s all I got…You can go now…

Ha, joking, here is something a bit thoughtful. Take childhood loves and revisit them as an adult – there is a whole new world of appreciation for them to explore.

TFI, the FA Cup and ticket prices

Everything that could be written in ten days about football ticket prices has been written in the last ten days and, with that in mind, have some more related content.

There is a more or less universal feeling that football is overpriced – if not ticketing, then all that comes with it; food, drink, replica shirts are all marked up football fans with, conversely, the quality going down (the Carlsberg and Fosters served at football grounds is somehow less appetising than it is normally).

Paradoxically, as a lapsed fan who does not go to many Reading homes games now as they cost too much for me, I feel as if ticket costs at the Madejski aren’t that bad – they’re too expensive for me in the sense there is more now I’d rather spend 25 quid on than watching another season of rudderless mediocrity.

If memory serves, tickets for matches when Reading were in the Premier League were similarly sensibly priced, despite the fact in a 24,000-seater stadium, the club could probably have got away with charging almost as much as they would like.

Furthermore, the young person’s season ticket introduced this year is also a massive step forward – if I had been a year younger, one would certainly now sit in my wallet.

Reading still have the wider football problem of overpriced tat and dubious quality food and drink, but the bottom line is you don’t have to pay for those, it is a choice (unless you have kids I suppose) and if one had to opt between relatively low ticket prices and low-cost extras, the preferred option should be obvious.

And, for non-season ticket holders like myself, the last week of this month allows you to go to three games in a week for £15 – a bloody good deal if ever there was one. £10 for a home FA Cup tie, a home freebie for friends of season ticket holders via a Reading scheme (a curious attempt to re-brand TFI – or The Fan Initiative) and £5 for an away day at Charlton Athletic, courtesy of an initiative run by the South London club.

All cheap, all good PR, everyone’s a winner.

However, the rub is, how many tickets would be sold for a cup tie against West Brom, a Tuesday night home league game against Rotherham and, from Charlton’s point of view, a match against a resolutely mid-table outfit, albeit while in a relegation battle, if tickets were priced normally?

From there, different tactics have to be used to sell tickets as the supply simply will not there – 13,000 for each of Reading’s home games in that week would be a reasonable target one imagines. In a 24,000 capacity ground.

Ergo, extra efforts have to be made to get people into the stadium and this fans vs customers argument works both ways; the cheaper it is, the more likely it will get your custom. Many economics terms sit uneasily in the realm of sport, but supply and demand works to an extent, especially if you’re not a fan of a Premier League regular where the lesser demand means fans who get fleeced will stop going and not come back or be replaced and the accountants are aware of this.

So, if Reading’s three games in a week were a cup tie against Manchester City and two Premier League games against say Newcastle and Aston Villa (two sides also in relegation battles like Rotherham and Charlton), that £15 fee for three games would probably be increased by 500%.

No harsh words should be levelled at clubs which slash ticket prices and run schemes to get more fans in their ground, especially kids, teenagers and people in their early 20s, but the wider context has to be appreciated that would these initiatives be run if most matches so far that season had been played at stadiums 90% sold out?

One suspects not.