Platform 9¾

Platform 9¾ at King's Cross Station in London is, by any honest measure, one of the stranger tourist phenomena of the past 25 years — a queue of hundreds of people waiting to be photographed pushing a luggage trolley into a painted brick wall, in a real working train station, because of a detail from a children's novel published in 1997. The fact that this works as an attraction, and that the queue regularly extends past the barriers and into the main concourse during peak periods, says something interesting about the sustained power of the Harry Potter franchise and about what happens when fictional geography gets retroactively assigned to real physical locations.

J.K. Rowling placed the Hogwarts Express departure at a platform between platforms nine and ten at King's Cross, a location that in the films is rendered as an actual column between two platforms that Harry passes through. The physical installation in the real station is a luggage trolley appearing to pass through the brick wall, positioned on a concourse between the main platforms. A Warner Bros.-licensed shop adjacent to the installation sells official Harry Potter merchandise and operates the photography service — staff assist with scarf positioning (school house scarves are provided as props) and throw the scarf dramatically as the photo is taken to create the impression of magical entry. The resulting photograph is available for purchase, and the merchandise shop is predictably and efficiently configured to capture post-photo spending.

The experience itself takes between five minutes and 45 minutes depending on queue length. Weekends and school holidays produce the longest lines; early mornings on weekdays are the most manageable. Photography by your own camera or phone is permitted after the official shot, so you're not obligated to purchase anything. The installation and shop are free to approach and photograph. The adjacent shop has pricing in line with official WB merchandise generally — reasonable for licensed goods, high by absolute standards, which describes most official franchise merchandise.

King's Cross Station itself is a genuine Victorian railway landmark, designed by Lewis Cubitt and opened in 1852, and the adjacent St. Pancras Station (which serves Eurostar trains to Paris and Brussels) is architecturally even more dramatic — its Gothic revival facade by Sir George Gilbert Scott makes it one of the most photographed train stations in Europe. The area around both stations has been significantly developed in the past decade, with new restaurants, bars, the British Library immediately adjacent to St. Pancras, and the Coal Drops Yard development (converted Victorian coal storage yards now housing independent shops and restaurants) five minutes north along the Regent's Canal towpath.

For Harry Potter completists doing London, the Platform 9¾ installation connects naturally to the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Watford (trains from King's Cross to Watford Junction run regularly), the Harry Potter walking tour of central London filming locations (various operators run these, or self-guided with published maps), and the visit to the real Alnwick Castle (used as Hogwarts exterior in films 1 and 2), which requires a full separate day in Northumberland and is for the genuinely committed. The London film locations tour typically covers Gringotts Bank (Australia House), the Millennium Bridge (destroyed in the opening of Half-Blood Prince), and several streets in Leadenhall Market and the City that stood in for Diagon Alley.