Harry Potter Festival

Truly BRILLIANT!
I live in Philadelphia, so it’s easy access to the Festival. We go every year. AND every year it gets better and better.
The Characters are GREAT. The guy who plays Harry is a dead ringer for him! The sorting demonstration is a charm. The Defense Against the Dark Arts show is great. Decorations from all the stores are GREAT. There are SO many bakeries along Germantown Ave that all particpate in the Festival… from Butterbeer to Butterbeer cupcakes to Golden Snitches cake pops to Hogwarts cookies. you can’t get enough!
Longs do get alittle long, but it’s worth it. So many stores participate and have have Harry Potter Souvenirs. From Harry Potter mugs to Scarves to Hogwarts Acceptance Letters. LOVE.
And the local restaurants have Harry Potter related dishes and Drinks! Saturday is usually more fun for families, while Friday night is the Pub Crawl for adults. :)
Even little details are great: One of the bathrooms had Mourning Myrtle!!!
I can’t wait to see what new treasures come next year!

I think the concept is fun but the event is very confusing. It’s hard to know where to go for what. People had maps of the events but I couldn’t find one in the website. The event is also spread out across about 2 – 3 miles so there are huge gaps between events where you have to do lots of walking. They have a shuttle but there is only one bus and it takes 30 min to circulate so with the long lines, you are waiting almost an hour to get on the shuttle. Also, I kept asking people working the event about the details and no one seemed to know what was going on. Also, we did the Slytherin maze for 3 kids which was $ 20 which was high priced for what you got. It really wasn’t a maze but just a bunch of hay bales lying in a circle formation. We ended up leaving frustrated. This event could have been more organized. Such a disappointment.

So, this is a thing that exists, and it’s amazing!
I’ve had the pleasure of attending the Harry Potter Pub Crawl for two years in a row and it makes my friends and me so happy to geek out like this! The pub crawl is $ 15 if you want to get a T-​shirt and some drink specials, but this year they sold out so fast that none of my friends got tickets. I got one but was unable to pick up my shirt because we arrived too late, but I called the next day and they mailed me my shirt which was really nice.
Despite not having tickets, we were not gonna miss this, so we got intensely costumed (A Snitch, a Firebolt, Professor Umbridge, Tonks, and Bellatrix) and headed out! All the bars have signs renaming them for famous Harry Potter landmarks (The Three Broomsticks, Hog’s Head, etc) and serve up specials like butterbeer (spiked apple cider) or some other delicious drink we had involving butterscotch, root beer and whipped cream vodka. They even have Harry Potter mugs that you can buy that are really cute and say «I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.» Even though my friend dressed as a Firebolt was mistaken for a Nimbus 2000 (please, that’s almost as bad as asking if she was a CLEANSWEEP), we had an amazing time going from bar to bar, stopping to pose for pictures along the way!
The festival also includes a Quidditch Match and a conference and apparently a 5K, which I haven’t done, but I definitely recommend the pub crawl!