SeattleRedBear -- Pre-Trip/Day 1 Hollywood

[SeattleRedBear]

Summary: 4 days (Oct 29-Nov 1) at the Disneyland Resort and a day in Hollywood (Oct 28) to celebrate a friend's 50th birthday. Crowds weren't bad, weather was beautiful and California Screamin' was running (eventually).

Cast of characters:

SeattleRedBear: Mid-40s librarian Disney fan and planner of all trips
DisneyHusBear: Early 50s, delicate flower that only starts blossoming about 2:00 in the afternoon after copious amounts of coffee
Birthday Girl: The reason for the trip. It was her 50th birthday (yes, she was born the year that Disneyland opened) but she wore a tiara proclaiming herself to be 40! (De-Nial ain't just a river in Egypt!) AKA: Chatterbox.
Kid Doc: Early 50s best-friend pediatrician in Corvallis. Still a kid at heart who you can dare to do anything.

Pre-Trip Planning

Several months ago we were having dinner with BG and it turned out she had absolustely no plans for her 50th birthday. The Big 5-0 and she was doing NOTHING and actually wanted to ignore that nasty fact of life. Well, being the good friends that we are, we couldn't let that happen (instead we had to rub it in her face every chance we got). So the three of us decided to take her to Disneyland, where dreams really *do* come true (I'm 29, I'm 29, I'm 29, really, really, really). Because BirthdayGirl is a Halloween baby, we figured that would be the perfect time of year to go (50th anniversary and the summer crowds would be down). KidDoc had to do rounds on Friday, so it was decided that the three Seattlites would catch an early morning flight on Friday, arriving 10:30, get the rental car, drive up to Hollywood for a quick look at Grauman's (BirthdayGirl had never been to Hollywood), attend a studio taping and get back down to John Wayne by 10:30 to pick up KidDoc. We had originally reserved a room at the Howard Johnson's but by the time of the trip, a room at our affiliated timeshare (Dolphin's Cove) was available. I was looking forward to staying at the HoJo's because I've heard such positive things, but the one-bedroom unit with a kitchen was definitely going to give us more space and privacy. AAA Park Hoppers provided free parking and we were already planning on renting a car because of the Hollywood side trip so staying a 5-minute drive (rather than a 10-minute walk) worked just as well (and DelicateFlower was already complaining about that 10-minute walk at the end of the day). Now, the big question. What studio taping would we go to? We were limited to what was being filmed on Friday, so it was pretty slim pickins (as my dad used to say). We had already missed getting the tickets for a talk show (those are distributed pretty early) and the sit-coms being filmed that night were a pretty sorry lot. However...DelicateFlower is an avid Fran Drescher fan (I can hear the eyes rolling across the country as I type this). He's not a fanatic, but he does TiVo *every* episode of the Nanny. So it was decided, we were 'Living with Fran' for an evening. With plans in place we were ready to go.

 

[Judy from Boise]

now you have me hooked ! Will you finish ?

 

[SeattleRedBear]

Sorry Judy. I'm having difficulty adding a new thread for the first day (not sure what the problem has been) so I'll probably post day one as next message on this thread and then get the rest up.

 

[SeattleRedBear]

Day One: The Adrenaline Kicks In

Now Birthday Girl had nixed taking the 6 a.m. flight in favor of the more expensive 8 a.m. flight (What did it matter to her, she wasn't paying!). So working backwards, we had figured out she would arrive at our place between 6 & 6:30 and with a 30 minute drive to the airport, we would have plenty of time to get through security as I've already printed out our boarding passes. Unfortunately, when HusBear and I were figuring out what time we needed to get up, I miscalculated in my head (something I never do as I'm the one who figures out the tip in my head) and our alarm went off at 6:00 instead of the originally planned for 5:00. I only realized my mistake when Birthday Girl shows up while I'm still in the shower and HusBear is still in bed. We're OK (adrenaline kicks in), short showers and we'll be still be on time. Then ten minutes later when we're packing the car, Birthday Girl realizes she left her suitcase back at her house! ("I put it right in front of the door...I can't believe I stepped over it on the way out to the car!") She normally lives 15 minutes from our house but due to some warp in the space-time continuum (and some adrenaline influenced driving) we manage to cut it down to 10 each way. Adrenaline kicks up another notch.

We get back to our house, figuring we might still make it, and HusBear isn't ready yet! Even after he's had a shower, he's still fairly slow moving, but I've learned after 9 years that prodding and yelling don't help, so I stew in silence while I finish packing the car and by then he's ready to go. At this point, the flight leaves in 40 minutes. I'm driving the fastest I think I have ever driven in the U.S. (other than the time when I was 18 when I took the family car up to 100 just to see if I could...growing up in Eastern Washington such things were possible then). Since I'm not only driving like a race car driver, senses heightened, looking for cops, adrenaline has pretty much maxed out while Chatterbox is in the back seat of our Beetle ("Oh, I've never been in a Beetle, this is so cute. The headroom back here isn't as bad as you said it would be. I still can't believe I stepped over my bag on the way out the door. You know I wonder if we'll see any kids dressed for Halloween. How long does it usually take to tape a TV show? The last time we were at Disneyland for the barbershop quartet convention I think we stayed over by the convention center...."). And I'm repeating to myself over and over "We're going to miss the flight...we're going to miss it...I know we're going to miss it..."

About ten minutes from the airport, I turn to HusBear and say "You know, we're not going to make it if we park at the parking lot, but we just might make it if we park at the airport...shall we go for it??" "Yeah, let's try...it's only money." So we get to long-term parking, (after going up 8 floors of a tight circular ramp...if you've parked at SeaTac, you know what I'm referring to...we referred to it as our first ride of the trip) pull into the first spot and literally run/hobble with bags to the terminal ("We're not checking bags...we can gate check if we need to!"). Oh no, our flight's taking off out of the north satellite...a train ride!!! MVP status got us through first-class security fairly quickly. Down an escalator, and luckily train is arriving within two minutes. Off the train, up two escalators and I see the gate at the end of the concourse and the door is still open! YIPPEEE!

As we arrive, gate attendant asks us if we were on the incoming Spokane flight. "No, we've just had a bad morning." "Oh, well I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt." If it hadn't of been for a late flight from Spokane, I'm positive they would have left without us. They literally start the pre-flight drill as we're buckling in to our seats. Calm down...deep breath...drink some water...it's now 8:10 a.m., we're on the plane and now the vacation can begin. Slice of orange pound cake for breakfast. Very tasty but not filling.

After an uneventful flight, we collect bags, pick up rental car (Budget, $89/five days) and hit the road. We don't have to be at Sony Studios in Culver City until 5:30, so we decide to stop by the resort (Dolphin's Cove, on Orangewood just off of Harbor Blvd) to drop bags off. Turns out our unit was ready. Pleasant resort with standard amenities (pool, weight room, jacuzzi). Our 1-bedroom unit was a little on the small side as it was very tight with the sofa bed was pulled out. Ooops, you have to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom...Who dreamed up this layout? Oh, well, we'll live. At least it has a small, but serviceable, kitchen and seems to be very well-maintained.

And we hit the road...until we see Mimi's. You know it's noon and all we've had is a slice of pound cake. Like others on the board, I recommend Mimi's. Good food and HUGE portions. I had the cream cheese & marmalade stuffed french toast. Very tasty.

The drive up to Hollywood is generally fine with some occasional stop and go (gotta love LA) but when the highways open up, you're doing 80 just to keep up with traffic...I LOVE IT!!! After about an hour drive, we get to central Hollywood. Drive by the sights and end up parking in the shopping center around the Kodak Theatre as they have cheap parking with validation and the surrounding neighborhood streets are restricted parking. Window shop, sit down for gelato, put hand and feet in the prints at Grauman's Chinese and look at the names on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A couple dozen celebrity impersonators are around, begging you to take a picture with them. We even saw two Elvises (Elvi?), young virile gold lame jacket Elvis and older, gone to seed white jumpsuit and cape Elvis. The former was hanging out with Marilyn Monroe.

Time to get over to Culver City, but part of Santa Monica Blvd is torn up so we take a creative route to eventually get to Sony Studios. I think they're organizing a couple different audiences at the same time as there are about 50 people in the studio audience holding pen in the parking garage, but when we get our numbers, we're numbers 8,9 & 10 ("Make sure you don't lose those numbers and give them to the first person you see once you get in the studio"...I still haven't figured out why those numbers were so valuable). It turns out we are all waiting to see Fran, but the people with numbers have advance tickets while the others are drop-ins (except for one group of about 20 older women and their friends/family; we later find out this is a cancer survival group and the studio taping was part of a fund-raiser). Our wrangler arrives, lines us up, and escorts us past many sound stages ("Wow, look at all those porta-potties" "So, this is where they store all the star's make-up trailers") and into our freezing cold studio. In order to enter the studio, we go through security, where it was discovered that Birthday Girl had a camera in her steam trunk she calls a purse ("Rules are rules ma'am, please take it back to your car"). Turns out in the 20 minutes it takes for her to get to the car and return to the studio ("You know, no one escorted me...I could have done *anything* back there!") we are introduced to our stand-up host for the evening (whose job is to keep the studio audience entertained because a studio taping of a sit-com is really, really BORING after the first take). You see, every scene of a typical sit-com episode has at least three or four takes to get different angles, reaction shots, etc. But the job of the studio audience is to laugh as enthusiastically (if not more so) on the fourth take as on the first. The host entices you with door prizes, games, etc. to keep people involved, but after twenty minutes, it's very apparent that it will be a very long night (unless you're there for the prizes, in which case you have many opportunities to show how badly you want that Sony t-shirt or those free tickets to the Laugh Factory). It's sort of a cross between the Price is Right (a couple times the sound guy even played the music), Let's Make a Deal, a comedy club and a sit-com taping.

Neither birthday girl or I win any prizes (I've never been able to bring myself to beg for anything) but HusBear has better luck. One of the things I love about HusBear is his loud, infectious laugh. When he gets on a roll he just can't stop and at this very moment, I'm listening to him laugh at a Nanny episode that he's seen at least a dozen times. He was in his element. About an hour in, the host decides to give a prize to the person he thinks has laughed the best so far, and HusBear is asked to prance down the aisle to the Price is Right music to receive four free tickets to the Laugh Factory. He's made to jump up and down like a Price is Right contestant and is interviewed by the host (where we discover that HusBear bought a puka shell necklace at the shopping center by the Kodak Theatre...my man has proudly never left the 70's).

All this hilarity would be enjoyable if it went on for two, three, or maybe even four hours. But even having guest stars of Hal Linden and Lanie Kazan (who are both holding up amazingly well) could not relieve the unending agony of a six-hour (yes, SIX-HOUR studio taping). Muffins, candy & soda was distributed after four hours (to invigorate those lagging laughs and to keep us from collapsing). The taping started at 6:30 and ended at 12:30! But there was a silver lining. If you hung on to the bitter end (only about half of our original 60 person audience were survivors) you had the possibility of some sort of cool prizes. The woman who could juggle scarves and make a noise like a bicycle horn (I'm not making this up, her entire family could do it) received an autographed copy of Fran Drescher's latest book. As for my HusBear, his consistent belly laughs got him a copy of that evening's script signed by all the stars (including Hal Linden and Lanie Kazan!). For him, it was worth it. For the rest of us, it was a much too long glimpse into the making of a sit-com. Sort of like sausage, you don't really want to know how it's made. But we at least have a framed copy of a real television episode script on the wall.

So what, may you ask, has happened to Kid Doc?? When we last left her, her flight was to have arrived into Orange County at 10:30. Where were her friends who were to pick her up?? They were racing down I-405, 90 miles an hour at 1:00 Friday night hoping that she would still be at the airport and hadn't completely abandoned us. She didn't bring her cell phone ("I won't need it, I'll just wait at the airport for you") and ours were turned off until 12:30 (when we saw we had several missed calls). About ten minutes from the airport, she calls us from a payphone to confirm that we haven't been in an accident or in the hospital and that we really are picking her up. A stop at an IHOP (we're all starved) and a mini-mart for milk and fruit and we are in bed by 3:00. An adraneline-filled day! And it's only the first!

 

[Judy from Boise]

Very funny.....
If you don't mind i will edit your title to let people know day 1 is included.

 

[lulubelle]

Geez...what a looonnng day!
What the heck, it's vacation Great start, thanks for posting.
Looking forward to DL/DCA and the birthday celebrations.