My Amazing Race ... Final Day

Not much left.  Mary and I slept in a bit on Monday, and didn't really get moving in an out-the-door direction until about 10:30.

Mary was not yet Movie Studio'd Out, and wanted to go the "VIP Tour" at Warner Bros.

(This time, she was doing the driving.)

We got to Warner around 11:15, and they signed us up for the noon tour.  There was time to walk down the street and grab lunch at a nearby fast-food joint.

OK, it was a Taco Bell.  At this point, I recalled that the snack on our Disney tour had been tacos, and remarked on the fact that we were having tacos on the two days of Mary's trip that we were not in Mexico!

We then walked back to the Warner Studio tour.  Notable for being our first Metal Detector of the trip.  They take things seriously at Warner.

I have very few photos from the Warner Studio tour.  This is because they kept taking our cameras away from us and locking them up.  We got them back a few times, but mostly, Warner is a Photo Free Environment.  The one exception is the following:

Recognize it?  That's the "Central Perk" set from Friends.  As our tour guide explained, even though Friends isn't filming anymore, it is still airing all over the world, and many guests to Warner are disappointed that they don't get to see the Friends stuff anymore.  So, Warner found a spare room in the prop building and re-installed "Central Perk."  Then they got "special permission" from the set decorator to let tour guests take photos (as normally we weren't allowed to photograph any decorated set).

I duly ooh'd and ahh'd and snapped my photo, but, to tell you the truth, I was a little disappointed that we weren't allowed to sit on the couch for our photos.  I mean really, it isn't like they're using the set anymore.  And when you compared with Foxploration where you could damn near sit on a deck chair from Titanic, it was a bit of a let-down.

But Warner did have a load of cool things to look at.  They have a museum of costumes and props -- which always has different stuff on display.  This time, the whole bottom floor was devoted to Television, and the whole upper floor was devoted to Harry Potter.  Totally dug this.  Saw Ron's wand, and Hermione's time-turner, and a BIG ol' spider and the incredible wax model they'd used for frozen-Hermione, and and and....  (And full marks to whoever it was at the museum who decided to display Professor Trelawney's costume and props right next to those of Gilderoy Lockhart.  Heh.) 

It was kinda funny as most of the docents at the museum are retired Warner employees, so they know all about the old Warner Bros. cartoons and the early days of Warner films -- and were totally out of their depth on exhibits about The O.C. and even Harry Potter.  (Says the eldery man explaining the Weasleys' clock to me... "It isn't a clock.  When someone in the family leaves the house, they turn the hand to where they're going."  And I try really hard not to roll my eyes and say, "Um, no.  It's magic.") 

... And that was pretty much it.  The tour was a couple hours long, then Mary & I went to the mall, where I returned all those clothes I'd bought on the internet that didn't fit. 

It was definitely a fun-filled three-day weekend.  As opposed to today, where I slept till 11:00 and am spending the whole day sitting on my butt in front of the computer.  Also fun-filled, but in a different way.