Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience is an outdoor, nighttime trail walk experience inspired by the iconic Forbidden Forest seen in the Harry Potter films. Guests will journey through an outdoor trail full of interactive surprises and illuminate some of their favourite Wizarding World moments as they come face to face with magical creatures and other enchanting forest wonders.
Thinkwell Group worked closely with Warner Bros. Themed Entertainment to bring this experience to life alongside UK partners, Unify, and ticketing/marketing partners, Fever.
The experience opened October 16th, 2021, and runs nightly on the grounds at Arley Hall & Gardens, a private estate in Cheshire, England.
Featuring more than 20 different moments of visitor engagement from classic scenes, creatures, and characters from the blockbuster Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts films, guests will explore the wooded trail for more than an hour of interactive enchantment.
Guests will:
- Encounter majestic Centaurs
- Cast a Patronus
- Pay their respects to a Hippogriff
- Cross paths with the infamous flying Anglia
- Discover a Niffler burrow
- And come across a variety of other surprises, from small to epic!
After their experience, guests can visit the Harry Potter: A Forbidden Forest Experience Village. There they can get savory, hearty British fare and sweets – including Butterbeer! – and warm up with house scarves, robes, wands and more in the Emporium.
Thinkwell designed and produced the all-new Welcome Center arrival and finale experiences at Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood. This new addition to the Tour reshapes the guest experience for both first-time and repeat visitors with all-new interactive, explorable zones.
Guests begin in the Storytelling Showcase, which welcomes and orients them to the Studio, its history, and its tremendous breadth of work in film and television. With an aerial view of the studio lot as a printed floor graphic and a replica of WB’s iconic water tower for a unique photo op, this space uses media, images, artifacts, and audio to highlight stories from the Warner family to Friends, and from animation to innovation. Guests then enjoy the tour’s signature preshow film in new state-of-the-art theaters before heading out to discover the secrets of the lot.
From the introduction of Warner Bros.’ history to then experiencing the scale of the lot and learning how the studio’s iconic shows and films are made, guests return for the new finale experience: Action and Magic Made Here. Divided into two major areas of Warner Bros.’ most popular film franchises—one dedicated to the heroes and villains of DC Comics and the other showcasing the magic of the Wizarding World—guests are immersed into iconic moments, sets, and artifacts from their favorite DC and Harry Potter films. From a recreation of Batman’s Batcave to vignettes of each Justice League member, the DC superheroes are brought to life with custom media and interactives, unique photo ops, and never-before-displayed film artifacts, including the Batwing. In the neighboring Wizarding World area, visitors can link their online accounts and be sorted into their house with the Sorting Hat, test their potion-making skills with interactive cauldrons, or explore Newt’s shed and the magical creatures from the Fantastic Beasts films.
From an arrival space that connects guests with Warner Bros. as the maker of their favorite IPs to a finale that lets them step fully into the action and magic of the movies, the new Studio Tour Welcome Center is a landmark addition to the world-class Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood experience. This was the first expansion to the Tour since Stage 48: From Script to Screen opened in 2015.
Thinkwell Studio Montréal was asked to design and create a series of travelling installations for The One Drop Foundation. The educational interactive installations were set up in public areas, to explain the global freshwater crisis.
Visitors triggered off-screen sequences as they operated a touch screen, while the screen sent out virtual water projections on their hands and arms, flowing freely between screen and body to illustrate the perpetual cycle of life through water.
This project was completed prior to Thinkwell’s acquisition of Réalisations-Montréal in 2019. Réalisations-Montréal is now Thinkwell Studio Montréal.
What began in the United Kingdom as a way to show support to NHS frontline workers, Thinkwell Group brought the effort to the United States, where we worked with over 400 venues, attractions, skylines and icons to weekly light their buildings in blue, take a photo and share to their social accounts with the hashtag, ‘#LightItBlue’. Through this effort, Thinkwell and dozens of volunteers all over the country reached over 700 million people online with this message of gratitude at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the pandemic began, Thinkwellians worked around the clock from their homes, while reaching out to any possible contact who would be willing to join the cause. The team was able to secure commitments from over 400 points of interest across 112 cities in 43 states to light up states, sports fields, buildings, civic icons and more every Thursday night at 8:00pm.
While navigating “shelter in place” procedures, Thinkwell and team worked with every venue to ensure social distancing was in place. Participating venues could either light their locations with blue hues remotely, or leverage already on-site staff to turn the lights on weekly. Once the program launched, iconic landmarks including One World Trade Center, Niagara Falls, the Seattle Space Needle, and more joined in.
The campaign didn’t stop in America, and was more than just buildings being lit in blue hues. Celebrities such as Janet Jackson and Kareem Abdul Jabar joined the campaign organically. Due to the outpouring of support, it grew and evolved into a global phenomenon, with icons such as the Tokyo Tower, London’s Tower Bridge, and the entire Singapore Skyline lit up in blue to show their support for healthcare workers. By the end of the campaign, Thinkwell and others had secured over 500 venues globally, while trending the campaign twice (once in Los Angeles, and again nationwide) on Twitter.