Adding Diagon Alley Onto Our December Trip!

Very cool .will be getting to our HP section of our trip report soonish

How awesome! I love Diagon Alley!

Definitely ride the Hogwarts Express, it's the best attraction there. Beyond that, just go everywhere. Poke into every shop, peek into every corner. If you don't want to buy an interactive wand, just stand nearby and watch other people use theirs Try the Earl Grey lavender ice cream, it's awesome. Go to Ollivanders and, if they're playing, catch the storytellers and Celestina Warbeck. Peek inside the Leaky Cauldron if you can. Get creeped out in Knockturn Alley. Even if you can't do everything, you'll love everything you do see.

I am so jealous! This sounds like an awesome experience!!!

That sounds so exciting!!

There are lots of interactive windows and areas for the wands. If you purchase a wand you'll get a map with all of the stops on it. Visiting all the shops is lots of fun and knockturn alley has interactive stops too. Yes, i bought a wand

edit: i prefer the non-frozen butterbeer, we had a couple of real beers as well.

Hot butterbeer is our favorite of them all

This is SO Awesome!!!! I am so excited for you, and more than a little envious , that you get
To experience DA with so few people. We've been to Hogsmeade many times and we loved it because we're huge HP fans. But DA is on a completely different level. It is spectacular!

As far as getting a wand, we never wanted one before either but they have many new ones now and some of them are really cool. DH picked out the one he wanted and it happened to be interactive. He tried it a few times, but there were always kid's waiting behind him and he felt bad making them wait. So we just watched people from then on. All I cared about was seeing what the wand made the object do, I didn't care about doing it myself!
This was our only souvenir so I didn't mind the $45. I'm putting it in a shadow box in our living room beside the sorting hat and Hedwig

One thing I recommend is going into the muggle money exchange building. Go at the beginning of the night so you can spend the money or save it and it can make a cool souvenir. There is one Goblin in this building. DH an I were The only ones in there when we went in so we were talking in line about how much to get. The goblin looked up once and then the second time he looked up he actually yelled something about holding up the line and get moving!!! It was cool!

If you look at Number 12 Grimwald Place before you go into DA, be sure to stay there for a few minutes and look at the window above the door. The Night Bus is outside beside Number 12 and it's neat to see too.

I'm sure you'll have an amazing time. Just walking into the lobby of Gringott's to get to the ride was absolutely amazing! They did a wonderful job in the entire area.