Remember taking those museum tours when you were little? Like, kind of, right? Now imagine if those tours had been embedded with reference upon reference of The Boy Who Lived. Yep - this museum tour brings Harry Potter into the real world. Okay, fine, "Muggle" world. Whatever. And yes, it's open to adults, too. They don't cap it at fourth grade.
Run by Evan Levy and her handful of trained tour guides, the new Griffins, Goblets, and Gold Walk takes folks through the most Harry-Potter-esque details of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. "The Met is a big stone building with lots of corridors and secret rooms," Levy told DNAinfo New York. "There's part of a castle in The Met, and we can compare it to the castle in Harry Potter. There are balconies and staircases that are very similar — it's like Hogwarts when you walk in."
Those on the tour will be shown intimate details of The Met in a new light, one that involves, for example, seeking out Horcrux-like paintings, identifying mythical creatures hidden amongst the museum's architecture, and perhaps even engaging in a little Muggle magic. The tours, which last anywhere between 90 minutes and two hours, were organized in honor of the 20th anniversary of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (yes it really has been 20 years and no I don't want to talk about it).
The Harry Potter tour is the latest edition to the E.T.C. Custom Events wheelhouse, which offers literary-based, family-oriented walking tours throughout New York City. A tour that recreates the mischief of The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler? Yep, there's a tour for that. A children's book tour of Central Park? Heck yeah.
There's even an additional tour in the works for July, the month of both Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom's birth, which will spotlight Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, and take those on the tour from The Met to the Natural History Museum. Yeah, I squealed, too.
Interested? Of course you are. First step, get to New York. Second step, pay $35 for a public tour ($25 for kiddos), or $45 for a private one. Third step, have all of your childhood dreams come true and disappear from true and complete contentment.
