This New Year’s Kevin and I headed up to Burbank, a.k.a. the Valley. This was multi-purposeful as we had two destinations in mind. One was to watch Brett Favre’s last game at a Packer’s bar (previously mentioned in the Hollywood post) and to go on the Warner Bros VIP lot tour, this week’s new thing. In between we went to a great little lounge called the Blue Room to ring in the New Year. If you are ever in Burbank, I would highly suggest going to the Blue Room. The cocktails are cheap and the clientele are actually very friendly.
So the Warner Bros VIP tour…
First off, if you go on the tour I would recommend not going out for cheap cocktails to ring in the New Year the night before. That said, the Warner Bros tour was actually quite fun. A tour guide takes a group of no more than 12 people around the lot in a large golf cart. You get to see sound stages, prop rooms, fake-front sets, etc. Normally people would be working on the lot so the chance of seeing a show being filmed or Charlie Sheen picking his nose in between takes is quite high. Unfortunately it was a holiday so the lot was a ghost town.
One of the very first places we were shown was the outside set of ER. They described how the set was made, how they film in different angles, and how they can fabricate the dreary Chicago weather in sunny California, all very interesting.
Part of the ER set
We then moved on to Stars Hollow, the Gilmore Girls town. I am (and should be embarrassed to admit it but I’m not) a huge Gilmore Girls fan. Show watcher I guess would be a better term as I couldn’t tell you the birth dates or favorite colors of the main actors characters and I am not the president of the Gilmore Girls fan club (ala Marsha Brady). Regardless, Kevin made fun of me for taking so many pictures.
Gilmore House and the town center. I had to stop myself from stealing the gnome.
After Stars Hollow came the museum. No pictures were allowed or else I would have given you a photo of myself hugging the big spider from Harry Potter. (Just because I’m a big dork.)
Car from the Harry Potter movie
From there we did the sound stage for Two and Half Men, the Gilmore Girls house, the prop room where they had the Friends Central Perk café set up, and a few other things I barely remember. The tour is two and a half hours so by the end the novelty of it all wears off a bit and you start to hope that they feed you lunch. They don’t by the way.
German tourists love 'Friends'
I will say this though, to be a tour guide there you must have to be a walking IMdb(.com). Our guide was throwing lines from movies like a 13-year boy who just saw Animal House.
All in all I would recommend checking it out. The ticket prices are a bit steep at $42 a person, but is a great tour and worth the price. I would suggest going on a ‘working’ day, as I feel a bit cheated in not seeing Charlie Sheen pick his nose.
Kevin sings 'Smelly Cat'
Again, Happy New Year everyone! See you next week.
