SP 13: The Other Side of LA - Pt 2

Moving onto the second part!

After an exhausting day the day before, Elda and I woke up groggily quite early in the morning. Okay, 7.30 am. Half an hour later than planned, but we were so darn tired. We still had plenty of places to go to. Apparently, we spent quite some time talking in front of the bathroom door for a couple of minutes. In the end, we took off from my apartment at around 10. Before heading to our first destination of the day, Warner Bros Entertainment, we dropped by at McD to get our breakfast. I had an egg muffin and so did Elda. I also needed to go to an auto service to get my car briefly checked, since the day before, the Maintenance Required light just flashed. Actually it wasn't as critical as I thought, but I was just afraid my car would break down in the middle of freeway. After a quick check, the staff told me nothing was critical.

Okay, let's head straight to the first destination of the day, Warner Bros Entertainment! When you think of a studio tour, you might think of Universal Studios, but this time, it's different. Warner Bros might not have a fancy theme park full of special effects. But the tour would be longer and more detailed as we would get to walk through some props and sets!

When we got there, it was already 11 am. We went directly to buy tickets for the tour. The friendly staff told us that we were lucky as there were two spots left at 11.15 am tour. However, I left my wallet and my glasses in the car while the tour visitors had already walked inside the theatre that would start our tour. I rushed to my car, grabbed my wallet, but I couldn't find my glasses (it fell somewhere, I knew it). So I was forced to wear my sunglasses throughout the entire tour.

The tour started inside the referred theatre with an introduction clip of Warner Bros and the work the company has done for years. Apparently, unlike Universal which mainly concentrated on movie industry, Warner Bros collaborated with several other studios and created many TV shows. After the movie ended, the tour – consisting of 10 people – boarded a small tram and started our VIP tour.

After exploring some famous sets, we made our first stop, which is at the museum. The museum is obviously located inside the studio complex and they have been home to costumes from famous TV shows and movies. I was mindblown myself when I first spotted a Batman armor, from the Dark Knight series, at the front entrance. Level two of the museum is dedicated only to Harry Potter franchise. Not only costumes did they have, but I also spotted some props from the movies! Since Harry Potter had been around for more than 10 years with the same actors, Elda and I could also observe the progression of height of the cast just by seeing the costumes. In the first four series, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint were in average height, but after the fifth series, their costumes were getting taller. Daniel's was apparently still about the same height, but what was even more surprising, Tom Felton's costume was probably the tallest even in the fourth or fifth installment.

Too bad that we couldn't take pictures inside the museum)

After spending 15 minutes of looking around, we returned to the tram and continued our studio tour. We visited some defunct stages, and one of the most recognized is Friends. The tour visitors were even given a chance to sit on one of the couches inside the set to be taken a picture.

We also got a glimpse of the prop stage (a stage that kept all defunct props) as well as the design studio! The design studio was in charge of designing the set and they even had a place for graphic designers to work!

Afterwards, we went to another special place in the studio complex. If the museum kept a huge collection of costumes, then one place we dropped by was more of a garage...that kept more than a dozen vehicles from movies. Thankfully we could take pictures here.

Other sets that we visited included Gilmore Girls and Pretty Little Liars, at which point I became completely clueless since I stopped following the shows. These stages were built inside sound stages with mattress-like materials attached to the walls. Wires, cameras, lights were hanging low above the ceiling. The mentioned show took place mostly in high schools, so we got to explore the “school” set. The indoor sets were apparently not permanent. The walls that divided the classrooms could be arranged and positioned in many different ways. The single classroom could be changed into a cafeteria by extending the walls, removing the classroom props, desks, and chairs, and adding some cafeteria attributes.

Another set that we visited was a sitcom set, which is The Big Bang Theory and learned how the sitcom shooting does. Apparently, the cast and writers had to come up with jokes on the set in order to make the audience laugh naturally. If the jokes didn't work, they had to reshoot the scene with a new joke until the audience could come out with natural laughter.

Well, I guess that concluded the 2 ½ hour tour! Before we left, Elda and I took a look at the studio store and not to mention, we purchased a photograph of us posing in front of the Hogwarts Express (digitally edited of course) for $5.00.

Before we left, of course we took some more pictures!

Next destination, Downtown Disney! So from Burbank, we headed south to Orange County, exactly to the gate of “The Happiest Place on Earth”. It took us about an hour to get there due to not only the distance but also the traffic. I was initially calm in response to Elda's suggestion to go there, but as soon as we approached Anaheim and saw Disneyland signs everywhere, I grew ecstatic. We even had a hard time looking for the entrance to the parking lot because I was too distracted with everything Disneyland all over the place.

Anyway, once we parked, we went straight to Rainforest Cafe for late lunch.

The cafe, once again, never failed to amaze me with its artificial forest atmosphere, and a “storm” that happened every 30 minutes. The concept is truly original!

 

After the late lunch, we strolled around some more, dropped by at Sephora to look at some perfumes, and went inside the World of Disney. World of Disney has always been my favorite place to look for Disney collection. Since Monsters University is coming up on June, they're now selling what looked like a legit university shirt, but with Monsters University text on it. Too bad they only had the large size, otherwise I would have bought it.

Look what we were having fun with!

Also, we dropped by at The Grand Californian Hotel. I know you'd say “But it's just a hotel! Why bother visiting?” The special thing about this hotel is, it's connected to Downtown Disney. So, lucky for people who got to stay there for nights and just needed to go down the elevator and walked a bit to Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure. I visited it back in 2009 and got to take a glimpse of its glorious lobby. So I was excited that I could go here again! Well, on the other hand, it was sweltering hot that day so going inside the cool, AC-ed lobby would help a lot.

Last but not least, we went to – literally – the gate of The Happiest Place on Earth. We successfully went through the security check to be able to just see the gates. It was around 5 pm and I saw some people were exiting through the turnstiles. I was just one step away from the place I had ever desired to go to since 2009.

Well, there was nothing much we could do there aside from taking pictures. So we left Downtown Disney as soon as possible to avoid traffic. Next up, we were going back to LA, but this time, we'd go to LA Downtown. Agnes planned to hang out with us in the evening. We were thinking whether it's best to watch The Great Gatsby in LA Live or just have a dinner. Unfortunately, since the only showing time we could catch would be at 10.20 pm, which was pretty late, we decided to skip the movie this time and just have a relaxing dinner.

So Elda and I picked up Agnes in her USC dorm near Downtown LA.

Agnes' initial reaction when the car door was opened for her

Then headed to a Oomasa, a Japanese dining in Little Tokyo. We goofed around a little after eating there.

After the dinner, Agnes grabbed a froyo right across the street before we took off to another place. It was a bit late at that time. We finished our dinner at around 9 and we still wanted to go to some places. As usual, Agnes requested that we went to Grand Park. Obviously, since I've been there for many times, no need to describe it. However, our visit to Grand Park was more special than ever. The highlight was, we got to walk in the shallow pool near the fountain. I know it sounded like we broke the rules, but no one was watching! So we were free to roam around.

Elda was desperately waiting until the fountain's color turned blue. While I was sitting next to Agnes, with our backs facing the fountain, and Elda took our picture, she suddenly freaked out because the fountain – after we waited for a long time – turned blue.

Before heading back to the car, Elda said that she wanted to take a quick look of Walt Disney Concert Hall. Too bad it was late at night, so we could barely see the magnificent architecture :)

Well, that was fun. It was getting late but we still had one more destination to go, and this will be the last one for Elda before she needed to head back to Michigan the next day. So this time, we were going to get LA's famous milk tea! Instead going to the one that I always go to, which is in Alhambra, I decided that we went to the one in San Gabriel, as it was more reachable and closer from Downtown LA.

After getting our bobas, we headed back to Agnes' apartment as it was already very late (almost midnight or so). I could tell that everyone right now was tired, especially Elda, because she had to struggle with her jetlag for the past two days and we'd been going out continuously. So when we got home, we slept immediately.

A few hours later – 6 hours later to be exact – I woke up and prepared myself to go to take Elda to LAX. She needs to catch up with her 10 am flight. Good thing there was no traffic on Sunday morning so it took us like half an hour to get there. There was a bit of a problem though: Elda's flight would be boarding from Terminal 1, but I parked my car in Terminal 2, so we had to walk a bit to the other terminal. Why doesn't LA have a freaking monorail that connects terminals??

Well anyway, I stayed in the Departure Hall with Elda until 8.30 am before she went in.

Phew there I was, wishing Elda a safe flight before heading back to my car. I drove back home afterwards, but not before I went to Toyota near Pasadena to get my car briefly checked. Since it was Sunday, the showroom and the maintenance service were closed. So I had to set up an appointment and come back another day.

Wow, so much for the spring break! Well, that finally concludes my spring break! Not the story though. I might come up with bits of story and picture from my Bay Area visit when I have time. As for the spring break, yeah, that was officially the last day of my spring break. I went back home and took a nap, while my roommate would be coming back in the afternoon.

Have a nice day, peeps!