I just thought I would share with your our little Harry Potter trip reveal for our kids. We have decided to take them to The Making of Harry Potter at Warner Brothers Studios near London.

We booked the trip a few days ago but we wanted to find a way to tell them about it.

A couple of years ago we went to Disneyland Paris and we did a treasure hunt around the house. Each time they found a clue they received a letter. Once they had all the letters they could rearrange them to tell them where we were going.

And that is how we got to two confused children asking what Sidney Land was. I kid you not!!

Treasure hunt

Not fully put off by that first trip reveal,we decided to go for it again. This time though, we stepped it up a gear and did an outdoor treasure hunt. We put together a set of 8 clues and stuck them around the area we live it. Then we got the kids to put their shoes on and gave them clue 1. So they had a lovely 15 minute walk around the local parks and cafe to collect their clues.

I was a bit worried that people might move them in the time between putting them out and finding them. One clue was stuck to the underside of a climbing frame in the park. I was aware that I was being watched by a group of teenagers, so I was fully prepared for it to have been removed. To their credit they just stuck it to a different part of the park but it did mean we were all searching for that clue!!

The final clue told them to go back into the house and upstairs for their surprise. You can imagine how delighted they were that the treasure hunt led back to where they started!

The reveal

So with the fresh air and exercise out of the way we could get to the actual reveal.

I decorated some white balloons as Hedwigs using permanent markers. I took a sheet of brown corrugated paper, cut it in half and rolled each half up into a scroll. Then I used some glue dots to stick the balloons to the scrolls.

I had made personalised invites for each of the children so i put these inside the scrolls with the end just showing for them to see.

I wondered if they would guess straight away from the balloons but they didn’t. They found the invites straight away and at least this time there was no confusion about where we are going!

Create your own Harry Potter trip reveal

If you want to recreate your own Harry Potter trip reveal you can. Start by planning a treasure hunt – it doesn’t have to be outdoors like ours. Give them a starting clue and then hide the others around.

I have discovered a secret enjoyment for writing rhyming clues. You don’t have to get too fancy though – just make sure your clues are hard enough to give them a challenge but not so hard they can’t solve them.

The treasure hunt is clearly not vital to the reveal but we did it because it prolonged the whole reveal and made more of an event of it.

To recreate our reveal just blow up some white balloons and use a sharpie to draw on eyes, then draw on some feathers and little feet.

You can get your copy of my personalised invite for free below. The sections for the date and child’s name are blank so you can simply open the image in word and add in text boxes with your info in.

If you need some help on how to edit your invite you can download some instructions here:

Enjoy your trip! I will report back once we have had our visit.