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"Set Jetting" Growing As Vacation Trend

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) - There's a new trend in vacations and it centers around the traveler's favorite television shows and movies.

You've heard of jet-setting, but how about set-jetting?

That's when you travel to the set of beloved movies, TV shows, or even book settings. This kind of travel has exploded in recent years, with people covering the globe to see destinations previously featured on the big screen, or "as seen on TV." Tour companies are built around it and customized trips are offered to get you on set, if you're willing to pay the price.

Traveling to England specifically to visit film locations from Harry Potter movies didn't seem extreme at all to Kymri Wilt.

"The books came out when I was pregnant with my daughter and my husband and I were reading them through pregnancy and she grew up with the books and the movies," said Wilt.

It turned out to be the trip of a lifetime for her daughter, Zuri.

"Being able to explore those places was very exciting," she said.

"Everyone dreams of waking up in the middle of a film, you know, whether it's the glamour of James Bond or the magic of Harry Potter, and so travelers these days are doing just that-they're booking trips to destinations where their favorite TV shows and movies were filmed," said Colleen Clark with Jetsetter.com.

Professor Roger Riley studies film-induced tourism and explained the appeal.

"Primarily, it's the attractiveness of the land itself. One might think of the hills-capes in Lord of the Rings in the south island of New Zealand. One might think of the blue mountains of the Man of Snowy River in Australia," Riley said.

But there are other motives for movie travel.

"It can be the relationship between characters, or a specific character, and they want to see where they met, or they want to see where it was that they were doing it," he explained.

This kind of travel can get expensive, especially with sets in other countries.

"You're kind of investing in that, you know, insider access you wouldn't normally get if you planned it on your own," Clark said.

Clark said there are different ways of doing movie set escapes, like self-led tours or guided ones.

"Self-led is great because you can kind of immerse yourself in the experience and see the destinations that are important to you, but if you want the sort of insider experiences you should really go with a company that can hook you up with these sort of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities," she said.

But Dr. Riley cautions that things may not always appear as they did before movie magic.

"Sometimes the destination doesn't look like it was on the movie set, but oftentimes you can see yourself in the movie with that visitation, the completion of the circle I think is what it is, I experienced it myself," Riley said.

For travelers, like Wilt, reality was almost as good as fiction.

"They seemed magical because something special happened there and whether the films were using special effects or we were fans of the actors or what have you, it, it brought a lot more to the experience," she said.

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