This article examines the visitor experience of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (WWOHP) theme park at Universal Studios Orlando. The park is hugely popular and has been embraced by the series’ devoted but critical fanbase. Prior research on theme parks has generally focused on critiques of their form, leading to a limited understanding of their appeal. This article asks how fan-visitors interpret this simulated environment, and what leads them to embrace it. It does this with an ethnographic approach, utilizing in-depth interviews with 15 visitors combined with participant observation. We show how WWOHP is understood by its visitors as an adaptation of the series into physical space, via the medium of the theme park, and how the visitor’s experience is shaped through use of ironic imagination. In doing so, we present a new understanding of the immersive media experience of theme parks.

This article investigates the potential role and use of place in longterm fandom, via a case study of fans of The Prisoner and its main filming location of Portmeirion in North Wales. Much research on film tourism focuses on one-time encounters, but fans of The Prisoner have been visiting and revisiting Portmeirion regularly for over 50 years, potentially developing a different sort of relationship with it. Based on interviews with 16 long-term fans of The Prisoner and participatory observation on site, we develop the concept of the "fan homecoming," a return visit to a familiar fandom-related place, and show how this relationship with place can shape long-term fandom. In facilitating repeated and ritualized practices, being able to regularly gather with other fans, and providing a "safe vault" for the fandom and its memories, place is shown to have an integral role.

Fandom and the collecting of objects are interwoven phenomena. The insights of museum studies may be brought to bear on the study of fan objects to provide a better understanding of fan collections and fan collecting. A museum studies focus assesses the meanings and interpretations of material objects as well as the workings and dynamics of collections, collectors, and collecting. With science fiction fan collections used as examples, we highlight object and museum theory, demonstrating how this theory and its conceptual tools can be used to analyze fan culture. We then apply these tools to a case study: the EMP Museum in Seattle, Washington, a museum in the United States largely dedicated to the genre of science fiction. When fan collections enter the realm of museums, fandom becomes a world that involves touching, smelling, collecting, and controlling objects.

This research note introduces the design of a recently launched research project at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The topic of this new research project is media tourism, the phenomenon of people traveling to places because of an association with a film, television series, novel, song, or other media product. Recently significant growth has been detected in this form of tourism, with far-reaching consequences for the locations concerned. The aim of this project is to discover why and under what circumstances popular media products give rise to new tourism flows, and which variations can be found based on the specific characteristics of the medium, the tourist, and the location involved. Media tourism has received a growing amount of attention from scholars in various academic disciplines. However, the existing knowledge about this phenomenon is still highly fragmented. This project aims to be the first in which interdisciplinary research will be conducted, involving an analysis and comparison of literary, cinematic, and musical examples of media tourism. By investigating commonalities and differences, we intend to highlight how literature, film, and music, each in their own way, stimulate the geographical imagination and literally "move" their audiences. The research is based on a combination of qualitative content analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and experimental methods.

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