Diagon Alley

Diagon Alley

When the kids arrived at my house, we had Diagon Alley set up on my driveway, which extends along the side of my house all the way to the back, although Diagon Alley didn't go all the way to the back, only along the side of the house. Lined up on both sides of the driveway were 5 shops and Gringott's Wizarding Bank at the end.

Gringott's

The bank was a plastic play castle from my backyard. Inside stood a volunteer "goblin" who took each camper's vault key when they came up to the bank and checked the number tied to the key. There were as many silver spray-painted shoe boxes in the bank as kids, each numbered to match their vault keys. Inside the boxes were equal numbers of Galleons (plastic coins we got on Amazon) for the kids to purchase supplies with. The supplies were priced so that everyone had about 20 Galleons left for a later expedition to Hogsmeade.

Madam Malkin's

One card table was Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, which had everyone's t-shirts on them (without the House crests ironed on the back yet). The kids stopped here, Madam Malkin pretended to measure them with a tape measure, and then gave them the size they had asked for when they turned in their registration paperwork.

Potage's

The cauldron shop had stacks of plastic cauldrons and for the second session, glass phials. I would have liked to have an apothecary stop, but we pretty much ended up buying the potions ingredients the day before potions class so it didn't work out.

Flourish and Blott's

This shop was set up in a little castle play tent that I got on Amazon. Inside were quill pens (gel pens with large colorful feathers glued on), stacks of parchment tied up with yarn, required textbooks, and cheap binders. The binders were meant for amassing papers from classes throughout camp, but that didn't work out very well in terms of hole-punching logistics and the organizational abilities of small children. I think folders would work much better, or even file folders. Keeping papers organized was a serious issue both sessions of camp.

Magical Menagerie

This table was covered in small stuffed animals that kids could choose from to be their pets at Hogwarts. I ordered them from StuffedSafari.com, which has a great range of creatures and pretty good prices, but I ordered a bit late and there was an issue where a couple animals were out of stock at the last minute which almost caused none of them to arrive in time! The owls were on the expensive side, so we had a large variety of creatures including owls, toads, and cats but also frogs, mice, bats and turtles.

Ollivander's

At this table we used an extra cauldron and put all the wands in it. I really wanted to use lights in the cauldron to make it look like the wand chose the wizard, but we didn't get it hooked up in time for the first session so we used a blindfold. For the second session, we did use lights, but they were very hard to see because it was light out, and there was so much going on in Diagon Alley that the kids didn't completely understand that they couldn't just pick a wand, especially the ones who hadn't read the books. They also got a chance to see all the wands an potentially feel disappointed with the one that "picked" them, so overall I think the blindfold was actually better in practice.
We also sold two types of brooms at Ollivander's because we didn't have a sign for the broom shop. Technically first years cant have their own brooms and we didn't even end up sending the brooms home with them (they were just old mop handles my dad had lying around), but it kind of served a purpose for our storyline for camp, but I will get to that later.

As an additional note, the signs for all the shops were designed and colored by hand by my lovely sisters, and they turned out soo well!