The Experiential Phenomenon That Is The Harry Potter Store
They're short on Hufflepuff sweaters, but that's pretty much the only problem.
Welcome back! As promised, in this few-days-late issue of the newsletter, I review the New York Harry Potter store. It wasn’t hard to review, since it’s a big building full of Harry Potter stuff…but still, there’s some nuance. Take a look, and if you enjoy, subscribe!
The Harry Potter Store, on 22nd Street in Manhattan, it smaller than you might expect. It’s smaller than I expected, anyway, and I’d had a countdown running for the previous two months or so and had watched a 30-minute video of a guy walking through the store, which — trust me — is not something I would normally do, and I was still just a bit surprised at how small the place was. Not that it’s a broom cupboard, but rather than being about six floors jam-packed with Harry Potter merchandise, it’s one main floor and a cellar. There’s apparently an upstairs, but that’s devoted to one of the store’s Virtual Reality adventures, so us commoners without VR tickets can’t see it.
Speaking of which: we wanted to take a virtual reality adventure, so we stopped by the counter. The website said something about sporadic tickets becoming available through cancellations.
“We’re hoping to go on one of these, but we don’t have tickets,” Emily said.
“Let me see...” the woman working the counter responded. “We’re sold out this month...I think we have a few tickets available in September!”
So yes: in addition to being not that big, the store is also hugely popular, as evidence by the hour-plus wait to get in once you join the “virtual queue,” which, when I got on, consisted of 180 people ahead of me. It’s not uncomfortably crowded, but at the very least, it’s clear that you’re in some serious Harry Potter company.
Here’s the thing about the Harry Potter store: I wish there was more. More new designs. More new experiences that didn’t require tickets months in advance. More of anything that hadn’t been previously available. Above all, more Hufflepuff stuff.
That’s right: despite the opening of a flagship store, the Harry Potter world still suffers from a serious shortage of Hufflepuff gear. The other houses have house-colored sweatshirts; Hufflepuff has gray. The other houses have two different kinds of house sweaters available; Hufflepuff only has one, a truly beautiful yellow zip-up cardigan that I was happy to buy. It doesn’t help that Cedric Diggory is the store’s lone Hufflepuff represented. Sure his death was tragic, but my goodness — justice for Ernie MacMillan, I beg you.
Although I’ve sounded strangely negative so far, let me reassure you: the store is fantastic. It’s hard to mess up a building full of Harry Potter stuff, and Warner Brothers didn’t: it’s not quite the Harry Potter megastore that I’d like to see, but it’s pretty close. For the Harry Potter fans among us (and if that’s not you, you’ve come to the wrong place), it’s well worth a visit. They have to restock that Hufflepuff section eventually.
Getting there
I started a countdown in June. Watched the days tick by; planned out the trip; figured out where to go, and when. Realized I’d set the countdown a day too early, so waited a few extra hours. Woke up in the morning ready to sprint a marathon. Walked outside and learned that the New York heat wave hadn’t abated, and determined that we’d have to take the local train to 23rd street and walk a few blocks across town. Got out of the subway; still hot. Walked along 22nd street until we got to the back side of the Flatiron Building.
There’s a banner at the front entrance to the store with a QR code on it, that, once you scan it, puts you in the virtual queue. There were 180 tickets in line ahead of me, which seemed like a lot, but they were moving fairly fast. It would be an hour, I thought; maybe two.
Here’s the thing: apparently, those numbers don’t actually matter. After an hour or so, I checked my place in the virtual line and saw 100 people ahead of me; a minute later, I got a text that said “it will be your turn soon;” a minute after that, it was my turn to go in. So don’t do what I did, and do some back-of-the-envelope amateur calculus on the virtual queue to figure out when you might get in. Just stay close and stay ready. Constant Vigilance, as they say.
Green virtual ticket in hand, we made our way back to the entrance, past the crowds outside who were either waiting or had already gone in. We cruised through the line, into the store and out of the heat, feeling like Harry bursting for the first time onto Platform Nine and Three Quarters.
The main floor
They have some fancy name for it: “the gallery” or “the atrium” or something. I forget which is which. Either way, the first room when you enter the store is a sort of meta-retail experience: it’s not Harry Potter gear per se, but “Harry Potter New York” gear. Heavy on the gold glitter, of which I steered clear. I grabbed a Chocolate Frog from a bin (the pentagonal kind, not the rectangle; this stuff is legit), and almost bought a Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) winter hat, but let’s face it: when in the world am I going to wear a MACUSA winter hat?
From the start, I was hemmed in by the fact that I didn’t really need anything. I have plenty of winter hats, my closet is clogged up with sweatshirts, and I’ve built up quite a t-shirt repertoire over a lifetime of Mets games and Billy Joel concerts. So I wasn’t going to go crazy. A few items, maybe a fun treat or two, but I wasn’t out to remake a wardrobe. Maybe I would have been if I hadn’t been accompanied by someone more sensible than I.
The first room, the New York/MACUSA/etc room, opened to the right into the House Pride room, which is where I learned that Hufflepuff had fewer sweater options than the other houses. Still, though, the house room is one of the cooler rooms in the store. I’m now the proud owner of a thick Hufflepuff cardigan and a t-shirt; I almost bought a Cedric Diggory shirsey (there’s a deep cut), but didn’t when I decided it looked sort of ridiculous. I was also looking for a soccer-style house quidditch jersey; no dice. I probably would have bought Newt’s scarf or a Hufflepuff hat, except I already have both. I looked excitedly at what seemed to be a pile of Hufflepuff sweatpants, until I realized they were actually shorts.
We left the house room into the center of the store, where a giant rotating statue of Fawkes sits at the center of the stairs to the cellar. Most of this main space is taken up by the wand area, which, as wand areas go, isn’t bad. I tried out Luna Lovegood’s wand, and sampled the store exclusive Hufflepuff Badger and Golden Snitch wands, before settling on Hufflepuff hero Newt Scamander’s. There’s a big display next to the wands, a horizontal round screen with 14 wands anchored around the edge: each wand belongs to a character, and when you grab it, it shows you something or other. A movie scene, a fun fact, the wand information, something like that. There’s apparently some secret trick this display can pull when you grab all 14 wands, or two directly opposite each other, but there was only one of me, so I don’t know anything more about that.
I grabbed another chocolate frog, this one the deluxe model with five cards, in the Honeydukes room, off the main area. I also picked up a four-pack of butterbeer, which, as of this writing, I can’t wait to try. I didn’t buy anything from the Magical Creatures/miscellaneous area nearby, although I toyed with the idea of buying a quaffle just to have a quaffle to throw around. I might have bought a small stuffed Hedwig too, if I hadn’t already bought a knockoff one years ago from the Central Park Zoo. There’s also an area of higher-end purses and bags and things like that, and a shelf of nicer home décor from the Pottery Barn Teen collection; as nice as it was, and as much as I eyed the golden snitch bedside clock, I ultimately left it untouched.
As for the last room on the ground floor, I’m not quite sure what I think of it. It houses a more modern, everyday collection; the theme of the room is basically “what the characters would wear if Harry Potter was remade as a contemporary American high-school drama.” House varsity jackets, baseball caps, block-letter sweatshirts...I bought a pen. It’s a nice pen, heavy and firm in a calm Hufflepuff yellow, but still, I’m not sure the concept of this room works beyond the pen level. Maybe someone could pull it off; maybe I could even pull it off. I’m just not particularly interested in dressing like I’m on “Hogwarts — Thursdays on The CW.”
The Cellar
We went down the stairs after the modern room and found a slightly more subdued space, and yes, I did just steal that phrasing from J.K. Rowling’s description of the back room of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Our first stop was the MinaLima room, which sells prints and drawings of movie art; if I’d been looking for wall art, I might have stayed all afternoon, but I wasn’t. We passed the VR adventures — tickets available in September! — and the jewelry wall, and came to the personalization counter.
There’s a lot the store can personalize: wands, robes, sweaters, shirts, Hogwarts trunks (I didn’t buy one, but I thought hard about it). I did pick up a Hufflepuff Triwizard Tournament jersey, the black and yellow blocked one from the fourth movie, but didn’t get it personalized, because...well, just because. We moved on to a Dark Arts area behind personalization, which is tiled in reflective green and has an enormous snake, mouth open wide, descending from the ceiling. I’ve never been a fan of the dark arts — who wants to be a Slytherin? — so this spot wasn’t for me either.
Over on the other side of the room was the book area. This is a familiar story by now, but this spot would have been perfect for me if I didn’t already have copies of all the books, and several different editions of most of them. The store sells the common American editions, the illustrated editions, and the companion books: Quidditch Through The Ages, Fantastic Beasts, etc. They also sell a nice prop replica of Tom Riddle’s diary; I don’t think they sell it with a basilisk fang sticking out (although the original movie prop is in a glass box right there), but it’s a cool one nonetheless. The book room is beautifully decorated, with open books hanging from the ceiling face down, covers on display. I didn’t buy any books, but again, it’s nice to know that you can.
The last room in the cellar is a sort of sleep room, with pillows and pajamas and things like that, behind the books. I bought a “Hogwarts Railways” long-sleeve t-shirt that I’m told might be a pajama shirt, but it fits perfectly, and if I can’t tell, neither can anyone else. Suddenly, that was that. I gathered my purchases, took one last look around, and walked up to the checkout. Then I did about three more laps of the store, because I wasn’t ready to leave quite yet. But I had to leave eventually.
Moving on
In the butterbeer bar after paying, with butterbeers and a cup of butterbeer ice cream, I tried to get my thoughts on the store in order.
On balance, of course, it’s good. That’s almost a given. A Harry Potter store in the middle of New York, with some of the best selection anywhere and a beautiful setting? Two new VR adventures that I still need to try, whenever tickets become available in 2027? For Harry Potter fans, including readers of this newsletter, it’s close to a dream come true.
Sure, there are improvements to be made. More space devoted to Quidditch. More cool interactive stuff (here’s an easy one: make the phone booth do something if you go in and dial 62442. Although I’ve never dialed a rotary phone before; maybe I did it wrong, although I don’t think I did). And by God, a better Hufflepuff selection. Even if it’s just a single sweater that I’m missing.
Still...even the Hufflepuff sweater that I did end up with is absolutely wonderful. It’s a zip-up cardigan with a big collar, Hufflepuff yellow with a black stripe. It’s not a gimmick or a prop; it’s just a nice piece of clothing. Embroidered on the hem, so that Hufflepuffs never forget where we came from, is part of our house credo: “unafraid of toil.”
Before we went to the store, when I was joking around with Emily about how many different things I was going to buy, she looked at me and said, half-jokingly, “you know magic isn’t real, right?” I looked back and responded “yeah...in a way.” Newt’s wand may not make objects fly, and we may need VR to experience Hogwarts...but wearing my new sweater, I think of Hufflepuff house, and I know exactly what I meant.