Friday, July 13, 2007

PotterMania 2009!

Well, hell--I'll just buy my plane tickets now and plan to be in Orlando for every long weekend of the year after this opens.

That's right--Universal and Warner Brothers are opening a Harry Potter theme park.

And you know what? I don't care if there are rides, or authentic merchandise in the stores or anything. I just love the idea of getting to walk through the places I have imagined (and seen in the movies) my very own self.

Back in the olden days, when we only had the HP books and no movies, the local department store turned Sorcerer's Stone into a holiday display. We saw half sized vignettes of Harry's bedroom under the stairs, envelopes flooding the Dursley's house, and even Hagrid on Sirious's motorcycle. But the moment that literally took my breath away was walking around a corner and seeing Diagon Alley laid out before me. The stores lined either side of the pathway, and you walked down the street in a way that simply had not been possible before. Over to the right was Gringott's Bank, and here was Madame Malkin's, across from Ollivander's Wands. It was the most magical thing I could imagine.

Now--well, not now, but in 2009, we will have the chance to walk through Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, and I can hardly stand it, that just thrills me. Yup, it makes my dried up and cynical heart of evil actually soften a bit.

Don't tell anyone about that though.

1 comment:

~moe~ said...

OH Cate - I can't believe this is one moment where I disagree with you! See, I love the land where we didn't have the movies and it was just the books and our imagination. I had everything pictured just so in my mind of how Hogwarts looked and how they got into Diagon Ally...and the movie ruined my thoughts and pictures. I even had the voices in my head figured out and they didn't really sound like what the actors voices sounded like.

But then again...the voices in my head often tell me things I shouldn't really hear.