Harry Potter: The Exhibition

Back in May my friend and I went to the Discovery Museum to go see the Harry Potter exhibit that's there. I used to be a much bigger Potter fan than I currently am, but I was still really excited to go. I'd been to the exhibit of Star Wars: The Magic of Myth when it opened at the Brooklyn museum of art in 2002, and the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination while it was in Boston in 2005. Both exhibits were fantastic and I had a lot of fun at each of them so I was similarly looking forward to the Harry Potter exhibit. It's always really cool to see the costumes and get a sense of what they're like in person, and often times it's really fun to see just how tall the actors are in real life since that's hard to get from a movie screen. In fact, in Boston, my friend and I (the same friend who accompanied me to the Harry Potter exhibition) were surprised to see the actual size of a droideka and realize just how tall they are! It gave us a better appreciation for why they're able to give even a Jedi a hard time.

Anyway, back to the Harry Potter exhibit.

The fact that they had the Weasley car coming out of the building was a nice touch. But the nice touches ended there. Once inside you were told that there was no photography allowed. That in and of itself was extremely disappointing because what's the fun in seeing the costumes if you can't pose next to them for pictures, or take a picture of some of the props that they had to show your friends how cool they were?

Also, it was a very small exhibit. Most of the costumes were from the last two movies, meaning The Half-Blood Prince and the first part of the Deathly Hallows. There were a few costumes from the other movies, though. We were done with the whole exhibit in less than an hour. That's probably because once you were inside there weren't many labels for the costumes aside from telling you what movie the outfit was used in and who wore it. So my friend and I pretty much just wandered through the whole exhibit just glancing at the costumes and moving on, especially since people would crowd around the more popular costumes (such as Harry's trunk that had some school books in it or the Quidditch players costumes) and it was frustrating to try to squeeze in with the other people to get a good look.

I know I probably shouldn't compare, but I can't help it. I had a lot more fun at the two different Star Wars exhibits than I did at the Harry Potter one. For one, we were allowed to take pictures and I would put some up but they're on my mom's computer and I don't have access to them. And two, the exhibits were just more friendly when it came to how they were set up and more than anything, they were set up and meant to be fun. The labels for the costumes were more detailed and just the way it was laid out in the museum lent itself to be enjoyed more since you were able to wander around the area and go wherever you wanted rather than be shuffled along with a crowd of people all trying to get a look at one thing.

In my opinion, the Harry Potter exhibit wasn't worth the $30 that I paid to get in. In fact, I wish that I had instead spent my money on the new dinosaur exhibit at the natural history museum, the World's Largest Dinosaurs. When I have money to spare again that's where I'll be going and I'm sure the museum won't let me down.