Chose to go during a weekday morning/slightly past noon last week to beat the crowds. But ended up sidetracking and watching the filming process of Poetic Justice. So went in the afternoon. Crowd was still ok, there were some secondary school kids coming in when we were almost done with the exhibition.
The exhibition!
The exhibition is on from 2 June to 30 September 2012 at the
ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Singaporeans get a cheaper price
for this haha $20 compared to foreigners' $24, so must remember to show
your pink IC. The website says its timed entry and that admission time is strictly observed. We misunderstood and thought that it meant that we can only spend a limited amount of time inside. But nope, it meant that the ticket is valid for entry for a period of time (1 hour intervals, e.g. 2-2:59pm) and then we can spend any amount of time we want inside. But honestly, we spent slightly less than 1.5 hours only, and we were already really taking our time.
We are not allowed to take pictures inside the exhibition, so the photos are limited =(
Just on the other side of the life exit is the entrance to the exhibition and they sell some special "guidebook" that has all the pictures of exhibits found inside. And that's why we cannot take any peektures...and the book costs $60 if I remember correctly. Eeks.
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| $60 exhibition guide book |
Just beside the table/counter where there were salesgirls sitting trying to sell you the book, there is this Ford Anglia hanging above.
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| getting nearer to the real entrance where you can no longer take pictures after you pass it |
Just slightly beyond this point, there is a photo-taking place where they simply wrap Hogwarts scarves around you and then give you a ticket that you can use to view and buy your photos as a souvenir at the end. We didn't even bother to go view the photo XD
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| ticket and "voucher" to buy photo taken at the start |
Warning not to take pictures. After we do get in, we are warned again by the lady minding the Sorting Hat that any offenders will be put through detention with Umbridge. I wonder why we will not be sent straight to Azkaban hahaha
We were kept in a space where they hung all the posters from all the movies until we had a sizable number to form a group to go through the Sorting Hat section. Between this space and the land beyond where no cameras or camcorders were allowed, there's this cool mist with light shining on it to form a sort of veil that is sorta see-through.
See the little yellow noticeboard? Beside it is the REAL entrance and the Sorting Hat section is first.
The lady would ask for volunteers so do raise your hand and volunteer, cuz only two are chosen. She isn't going to feed you to the Death-eaters or anything. But people are generally wary when asked to volunteer HAHA.
Anyway, she would first ask the volunteer if they have a house of their choice. I volunteered and chose Slytherin just to try and people were O.o cmon what's the big deal. Slytherin isn't all evil. The lady was also taken aback (or pretended to) and made comments that yes, I do look cunning and shrewd (nicer forms of sly and evil I guess, but in line with what Slytherin house stands for) and pressed some button inside the hat so that the Hat said almost the same stuff as her: "Hmm, interesting...cunning..and shrewd! Your house is Slytherin!" something along that line.
If, however, you do not choose a house, like the volunteer after me, the lady simply chooses one for you, and I think that usually means any of the houses except for Slytherin. Similarly, she mentions about how you look and she can totally take over Professor Trelawney cuz I think she gets it right like a thousand times liaoz, 100% accuracy XD cuz she controls the buttons inside the Hat.
I think for hygiene purposes, they do not put the Hat fully down onto your head, which is good haha but might be disappointing for young kids (although I am not sure if she will do the same for little kids since the volunteers for our slot were not that young). Oh, and the Hat doesn't really mutter, it's a Dolby Surround sound
system haha if the Hat really moved, I would be WOW. And feel creeped
out at the same time when it is above my head.
Since there are no pictures from the exhibition, I can only paste the promo video to help remind myself =-=
Well, erm basically everything interactive is already inside the video =-= There is the
mandrake pulling that is pretty lame, in the
"Hogwarts classes" section, then there's the
quaffle throwing (very similar to the arcade basketball) in the
"Quidditch" section and that's it. I don't really consider the mechatronic magical creatures or shaking cabinets "interactive"...
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| found in "The Exhibition" tab in website |
This can be found on the website itself and yeah, the exhibition has 9 sections in total, starting from the "Hogwarts' arrival" to "Great Hall". So the main question, is the Harry Potter exhibition worth it? Erm well, if you read the description on the website, as well as see the 9 photos on this page (
http://www.artsciencemuseum.com.sg/harrypotter/gallery.php), they pretty much cover the things you should expect and you can imagine what else they have.
But of course, the exhibition definitely has more than this. And it is more interesting to see the artefacts up close, rather than through pictures. But sadly, we could not touch or feel them, understandable though. I liked the entire feel I got from walking through all the stuff I have seen in the movies. There is some background music that they do put on in each of the sections, although I didn't really pay attention to the music. The quaffle throwing was pretty ok, but it was sort of dangerous because when you don't even use a lot of force, it rebounds like woah, and if it bounces a bit higher than the short barrier in front of you, it can hit you in the chest or stomach or if you are really short or the ball rebounds with such force..., your FACE. There should have been someone standing there supervising and all, cuz there are bound to be kids in the afternoon, coming after school or maybe simply not Singaporeans and thus on holiday when school here has obviously started.
To make it more worth the money, I guess you could really spend longer in there and scrutinise the artefacts cuz they are really quite detailed. For example,
take note of Umbridge's decrees that were plastered all over the wall before we officially enter the "Great Hall" which was the last section/room of the exhibition. I found that the decrees (as were all other artefacts containing text) was detailed and well thought of, but the last sentence that was in the smallest font size was simply "Blah bla bla blah Blah bla". Something like that, you get the idea. Serious. Was WTH-ing and LMAO-ing. Was disappointed with the Weasley twins' Puking Pastilles and all the other treats though...not detailed and looks disgusting. Also, some of the clothings looked dubious, as in the size and the height of the person for which it was prepared for, didn't seem to fit, so we were wondering if these were the originals.
Then the gift shop OMG. Really expensive = no souvenirs T.T
The only thing we were really "ahhh we want...very beautiful" was the
$40 pens. Ravenclaw's was the most beautiful imo. But it's really not worth it, it's those ballpoint pens, whereby you can replace with another pen's ink thingy after the original runs out. It is really only the design that is nice. The pen is heavy, hard to use in daily school life too, and I guess weird too haha cuz it's not the small classy designs that usual expensive pens (ballpoint or ink), the design is "bulky" and very obvious haha but it might not strike others immediately as a Hogwarts-related object at first glance unless you own all four pens and lay them all out? =-=
The Hogwarts scarves (same ones used in the photo booth) were all pretty normal, there's no big HOGWARTS or GRYFFINDOR words across it so even if you use it, people cannot really tell. Plus we are in Singapore. When the hell to use sia? These cost $40 if I remember correctly, totally not worth either =( Same goes for the ties, they look pretty much normal and thus not worth the price - $27 I think. There were other stuff like mugs that says "Muggle", bookmarks, soft toys etc, the more standard souvenir type of things.
And then there were WANDS. Of different wizards. There's a set of 5 or 6 super ex, Harry's plus other major characters'. Bellatrix's was a separate item altogether and it's nice, very ergonomic hahaha cuz it's bent and you can totally act evil trying to cast the killing curse with a eagle's talon pose, but ex too, and pretty useless though people can obviously tell you are holding a wand. Talking about wands, the professors' wands are very nice!
The wands' detailed carvings cannot be seen clearly in the movies, so it's definitely one of the things to look out for in the exhibition. I remember a smaller scale exhibition of the wands and clothes (totally free exhibition) in Iluma last year I think, they were further from the display glass and the display glass was so reflective it was hard to take pictures too. And not all the wands were shown.
Other notable stuff that differentiates from the usual souvenirs were (as much as I can remember):
- broomsticks (short, more for children)
- necklaces (HP themed like Hermione's Timeturner etc but doesn't look like they are of high quality)
- Bertie Botts every flavour beans (actually it's very normal jelly beans and they cost $6, cheapest there but totally not worth it cuz it's small, and the packaging isn't like the bigger and nicer one we saw in the exhibition and movies, it was a ricola lozenges kinda box)
- Chocolate frogs (with collectible cards just like in the movies but packaged differently from what I remember in the movie - in the movie it was a pentagon shaped hard cover box)
- feather quill and ink bottle (not sure if really can use or not though O.o)
- books (they had the full HP collection, also some behind the scenes movie production books with more pictures and anecdotes etc, they cost a bomb each, like one was $120, another $100 *faints* I flipped to a page that shared a story of how Emma Watsons' pet hamster died a few days into filming of Chamber I think, then the crew knew how much she adored it and made it a hamster-sized coffin, with velvet lining, like OMG, that hamster has a good life even when it is dead.
Super long post and took a super long time and it's super past my bedtime, gonna die trying to wake up in time tmr zzz
