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Boris Johnson wants Harry Potter theme park in London

Image: The Harry Potter theme park. Boris Johnson has expressed his "jealous irritation" at the fact that Orlando is about to become the "official place of pilgrimage for every Harry Potter fan on earth".

The Mayor of London went on urge Harry Potter fans to lobby JK Rowling for a London theme park to rival the 20-acre site that is about to open in Florida.

"I appeal to the children of this country and to their Potter-fiend parents to write to Warner Bros and Universal, and perhaps, even, to the great JK herself. Bring Harry home to Britain – and if you want a site with less rainfall than Rome, with excellent public transport, and strong connections to Harry Potter, I have just the place," said Johnson in his weekly newspaper column.

“But I cannot conceal my feelings; and the more I think of those millions of beaming kids waving their wands and scampering the Styrofoam turrets of Hogwarts, and the more I think of those millions of poor put-upon parents who must now pay to fly to Orlando and pay to buy wizard hats and wizard cloaks and wizard burgers washed down with wizard mead, the more I grind my teeth in jealous irritation. Because the fact is that Harry Potter is not American. He is British. Where is Diagon Alley, where they buy wands and stuff? It is in London, and if you want to get into the Ministry of Magic you disappear down a London telephone box. The train for Hogwarts goes from King’s Cross, not Grand Central Station, and what is Harry Potter all about? It is about the ritual and intrigue and dorm-feast excitement of a British boarding school of a kind that you just don’t find in America,” the London Mayor continued.

"If a business came up with serious plans for a similar theme park for London, the mayor would be interested to hear them."

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