We, however, had to get in line for the Big Bang Theory taping. So we headed out to find an In N Out. Of course, we got lost and spent so much time driving around that we should have just ate at the Smokehouse. We got our food to go and got lost trying to find the parking garage. We had to
stop and ask a WB security guard at one of the many WB lot gates.
I liked this street name
I wanted a certain picture of a carsland billboard, and it took Brian 3 times before he finally caught the right one (it was a rotating billboard)
There he is!! my darling little Guido!! sooooo cute.
It was too early to park in the garage for our show, so I dropped Brian off to save us a spot in line and parked on the street by the parking garage. Brian was in line at 12:10. We would not be let into the show until 5:30 pm. Getting there at noon is necessary for this show.
I will not bore anyone with these next few hours. We sat on benches in a parking garage and were chilly and bored. It kind of sucked, but it was a nice rest for our feet from Disney madness.
There were 3 types of tickets:
VIP: given out from cast and crew, they could give as many as they wanted and these people could show up at 5:30 and still be let in before us,
preferred tickets: a small allotment of these are given to the first so many people who apply for tickets online. Not sure how we missed these, we got our tickets 5 minutes after they were available, the site kept crashing and it was a mess since so many people were trying to get them,
Then you have the good old standby tickets. The standby tickets only were let in after all the VIPs and Preferred people got in.
So you can imagine our stress and sadness as VIPs continue to show up until well after 5 and were escorted right in, as we waited anxiously. They finally let about 10 standby people then cut us off. Brian and I were numbers 18 and 19. I figured we would get in no problem (haha, I had some misconceptions). We were finally let into the show at 5:45, and only 28/29 standby people made it in that day. There were maybe 150-200 people waiting. I felt so bad for the rest of the standbys. We were there at noon, I am sure the cut off happened at some point around 1 pm. So some poor people waited for over 4 hours and didn't get a seat.
Don't let this scare you off seeing a tv taping, none of them are this bad except for Big Bang. You can show up for most of the hours an hour and a half before seating and get a seat fine.
We were herded through security and walked to the studio. Once inside we walked up the bleachers and saw that most of the seats were full. Brian did some quick multiplication and we think there were about 260 seats. It was at this point I realized we were lucky to get in at all.
Most of our group was seated in the very back, but we got pulled from the group to go sit in some vacant VIP seats in the second row from the stage on the very left hand side.
I tried googling pictures of the set so I could show you (they take everyone's phone and camera and stuff) but they really do a good job, I can't really find anything except these 3:
Just a few notes:
They showed us last week's unaired episode to get us into the mood. It was a
Disneyland episode!!
Oh I wished we could have seen this one tape. It has aired by now, so if you watch the show its the one where the boys visit an elementary school and the girl's go to Disneyland to get princess makeovers.
After that, we are introduced to our host. He is a stand up comedian who entertains the audience in between takes.
Then they immediately start filming. There are only 3 sets that are in our line of sight.on the left hand side, right in front of us is Penny's apartment. Then you have the hallway, and the boy's apartment. Every other scene is filmed off to the left or the right hand sides, and the audience watches from tv monitors.
For our particular show they filmed in the laundry room and Howard and Bernadette's apartment, so we watched those on the screen.
It was neat seeing them film a stair scene. They film the actors walking up and down the stairs, then quickly switch out a plant or two and the apartment numbers and voila! they are on a different floor.
My favorite scene was the one they filmed in Penny's apartment, of course, because it was right in front of us.
Also, Kaley Cuoco, who plays Penny, is super hot in real life. I know she is pretty on the show, but it is hard to explain, the camera just takes something away.
We also had a DJ in the stands with us to play songs in between takes. He played Call Me Maybe while they were in Penny's apartment and Penny and Bernadette were dancing, which was cool. Then Amy joined in, but did the dance in character which was even funnier.
We were amazed at how well Jim Parsons (Sheldon) did his lines. You know how Sheldon speaks pretty quickly and has to say all these technical terms and such? He never made a mistake...not even once. Very professional. And he stayed in character the whole time, even between takes.
Most of the scenes they did 2 takes just to be sure they got it. Sometimes if they felt the audience wasn't laughing enough they would switch up the jokes and try something different.
A few hours into it we were fed a slice of pizza and a bottle of water.
It finally wrapped down and Penny and Leonard came up into the stands to thank us all for being fans.
I was very sad that I couldn't pick out my laugh when the episode actually aired, I have a fairly distinctive laugh but couldn't hear it.
I was upset when they were done, I had read on a blog online that a few of the actors will always stick around for autographs afterward, but no one stayed tonight!! I was pretty sad. We filed out, and when we got back to our car and had access to our phones we discovered that it was 11:30!!
Geez, I knew the taping was taking a while but I didn't know it was that long! We had planned on stopping for dinner afterwards, but it looked like that was out. I drove back to the hotel very sleepily and we crashed immediately.
Coming Up:
the DL hotel! and an EMH at Carsland!!
We also have a dinner reservation at Carnation Cafe.
I guess we just underestimate the traffic and don't feel like getting up any earlier. 
My older kids both exclaimed over the bottle house because we saw one at Knotts last summer.
And its actually the WB tour, wouldn't want you guys to go on the Universal one and then him to be upset that there was no Friends set haha.
