Point taken. But here’s the thing: I work freelance, and the very the nature of my work (or perhaps just my client) is so very last minute that it’s impossible to say when a quiet spell will be upon me. This makes it hard to forecast my schedule for the next day, never mind six months ahead like most people seem to be able to manage for this experience.
The other thing is that my lads are still small. The oldest has nightmares about Willy Wonka, while the youngest hides under the sofa cushions while Dobby the house elf is on screen. With this in mind, I figured there was a distinct chance that they might take the gloss off the experience.
As such, we waited about as long as we could before booking our visit, in the hope that they might man up a little. However, we never made it past the Chamber of Secrets DVD.
Not to be beaten, we thought we’d make the trip as exciting as possible by staying nearby, so that we could arrive first thing, without the stress of driving across country. I will confess that the experience of driving to the spa break I won a few months previously still loomed large in my mind, and I was anxious not to involve the RAC in our lives any more than strictly necessary.
So far so good. What I didn’t budget for was the four year-old going on a rampage and refusing to sleep till 10. The other one wasn’t much better. As I sat in a dark Travelodge room, drinking whisky from a mug while my wife snored, I reflected on how I’d envisaged the evening going differently.
The next morning, as you might have guessed, the youngest lad was so exhausted that his monstrous screaming fits appeared with the tedious inevitability of January's credit card bill. Given also that I was a few weeks into the stress and blues of a heinous work bender, the day ahead was never going to be easy.
Getting to Warner Bros Studios was a piece of cake. Getting inside was something else.
First we queued to get the tickets. This queue was short but painfully slow, as the dispensing machine was woefully inept. It was also a waste of time as I was unable to provide the telephone number that the promoter had used when booking the tickets, so the machine refused to recognise me.
As such, I joined the longer queue so I could chat with the counter staff. By this point, the antisocial behaviour of my eldest was at peak malevolence, so my wife removed both children from my line of sight.
After this queue, we joined the queue for bag checks. Finally, we joined the queue to get in.
Let’s just say it was a very British experience.
Nevertheless, we were now IN, and the excitement could begin…
[This enormous post continues tomorrow!]
if you struggled with your kids - i would happily swap mine with you for a day and you'll be begging for your own kids after that! J in particular never does queues very well at all and as much as we all love Harry potter I have feared how busy it may be to actually get around to going there. We've also experienced the sleeplessness in a travelodge room - we stayed peak summer heatwave and the windows would only open a fraction for health and safety reasons so we went to the shop and bought a big fan but it was still too hot to sleep so J lay in the empty bath in his pants to cool down! Miss T wouldn't sleep because we didn't put her in her usual sleeping bag because it was way too hot. So i really feel your pain!
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