LA Day 2 | Warner Bros. Studio Tour

This is the second of my posts all about my trip to LA. This was my first full day in LA and this was the day we did the Warner Bros. Studio Tour! You can check out the first post from the series here.

Saturday 3rd March 2018

This was an incredible day! We met everyone downstairs outside of the hostel at 10am ready for a jam packed day of fun a Warner Bros. Obviously, I couldn’t just show up at 10, so we had to get there at least 10 minutes early, so we got done there for about 9:45. Alex walks out of the hostel and comes up to me and says ‘we’ve just met Matt Damon’. I mean, I kind of hated him at this moment, but I mean that is pretty awesome!

We got onto the bus and headed towards Burbank which is where the studios are, however, before we got there we stopped off at some locations. This trip was with my college and it was a film studies trip, so the locations we stopped off at were from TV shows and films. The first location we stopped at was the house that was used in the first season of American Horror Story. I have never seen AHS, but I was super excited about seeing the house and stopping off here. I think its probably because it was the first location, and I was super excited to go to Warner Bros. Studio Tour.

We stopped off at another location which was right next to the studios, which was the Smokehouse. This, I think, was the best location we did that day and I was super excited to be in there. The exterior of the Smokehouse is not used in the film, however, the interior was used in La La Land. It’s the restaurant where Ryan Gosling plays the piano and plays Mia and Seb’s theme for the first time. It was honestly, beautiful. One day, I would like to go for a meal in there (I think its pretty expensive though!), but one day I will do it! I mean, I have too! Ryan Gosling was in there!

After completely fan-girling about La La Land we headed onto the studio tour. This was awesome as we got to see loafs of different sets from different TV and film shows. We saw the houses from Pretty Little Liars, Gilmore Girls (they use the same ones! Spencer’s house is Lorelai Gilmore’s house!), Casablanca, La La Land and so many more!

What was awesome was that we could go inside a few of them! We went inside one of the houses and found out that it was used on both Friends (the prom scene. It’s where Monica and Rachel are getting ready for prom, however Rachel doesn’t have a date. We were standing in the actual Geller household!) and Pretty Little Liars (Emily’s House).

It was awesome to see some of the houses, I mean Suki’s house in Gilmore Girls opens out onto the street, however if you walk through Suki’s house, the exterior then becomes Lorelei and Rory’s house, which means that technically Suki and Lorelei live together, however because of movie magic, you would have no idea! Also, in the front garden of Lorelei’s house is Spencer’s barn that stated Pretty Little Liars off! How cool!

At one point, there was a little stop off where we could get out of the carts and have a look round at some of the costumes that were used in films such as Batman, Wonder Woman and  upstairs there were also bits from the Harry Potter films. This was awesome! There was loads of stuff about Wonder Woman as I think it is one of the more recent superhero films by Warner Bros. The amount of costumes that they had from the film was unreal! We also got to see all the bike that Chris Pine rode in the film and Wonder Woman’s sword!

Upstairs, was all of the Harry Potter stuff. They didn’t have too much as most of it is over here in the UK in the Warner Bros. making Harry Potter studio tour. One of the main attractions of the upstairs is that you can sit under the sorting hat and it will sort you into your Hogwarts House. I obviously got my house, Gryffindor! I was so happy with this, I thought I was going to get Slytherin and I was thinking ‘not Slytherin, not Slytherin!’. They have a few costumes from the films too, and some of the Quidditch props. I was also quite excited about seeing Robbert Patinson’s Quidditch uniform. Yes, I was a twi-hard back in the day so I do still have a little bit of feeling for him!

We explored more streets and backlots on the tour and then we went to some of the soundstage. We drove past stage 24 which is also known as the Friends stage. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go in this one, but it would have been awesome to go in there (even though the Friends set wouldn’t be there 😂). However, we were really lucky enough to go into Stage 11 where they currently film Lucifer. However in there, they have filmed previously 42nd Street, Casablanca, My Fair Lady, Batman Returns and ER. It was awesome to think that I was stood where some of my favourite actors would have stood, such as  Audrey Hepburn and George Clooney!

After this, we headed to a room that was full of Batman cars. I wasn’t in my friend Alice’s group, but I knew that she would be obsessed with this part as she LOVES Batman. I saw her when she was on the end of her little tour of the place and she told me that as soon as she walked in she squealed! That day she was wearing a Batman t-shirt so she was at home in the Batman car garage! There were so many different bat mobiles and different cars from the movies! It was Alice’s heaven!

After this, we headed into Soundstage 25. This is where they film The Big Bang Theory. I could not believe it! I was walking where Sheldon had walked. Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take photos of this, which I am gutted about. I would have loved a photo of me sitting in Sheldon’s spot! However, I was lucky enough to be able to see it. The sets are much smaller than they seem on the TV. Penny’s apartment was tiny. I don’t know how they make it seem so big on the telly. Did you know, that when they go up and down the stairs in the corridor of the apartments, that they actually only have one staircase. How they make it look different is that they change the number on the apartment doors, they may change the hazard tape, they may add plants, and they just fit it together with a bit of TV magic.

The last thing we did was head into Soundstage 48. At this point, we had to say goodbye to our tour guide Lexie. (Lexie, if you are reading, thank you for the great tour!) In Stage 48, there are props and costumes from different films and TV shows. There were costumes from Pretty Little Liars such as A’s red coat and also My Fair Lady. I was freaking out over these, I absolutely love My Fair Lady! It is such a good musical! They had the costumes of when Audrey Hepburn was Eliza walking through the streets of London and they also had the costumes from the ‘Ascot opening day’ scene. The dresses were beautiful in these and I was in shock that they were there, as like I said, I love this film!

I think the absolute peak of this part of the Warner Bros. Studio tour was going onto the Central Perk set from Friends. This was insane, and I nearly cried, but I kept my cool in front of my friends. What is great is that they have coffee mugs there that you can use as props in the photos so it looks like you are actually there having a coffee in Central Perk. I will honestly treasure these photos as I am so happy in them! I bloody love Friends!

We came to the end of our tour and it was incredible. I wish I lived round the corner, so I could visit again as I really want to do it all again! However, we headed into a cafe, which was called Central Perk! I had a strawberry and banana smoothie, and I also halved a cupcake with Anna that had Central Perk on! It was so cute, and I didn’t need it, but I really could not leave it there! Anna also had a cup of tea, but they gave her two cups. She kindly gave me one of the cups which meant that I could take it home and display my Central Perk coffee cup with pride!

We all headed back onto the bus ready to come home, as we were all starting to get a bit tired by this point, however, Alex pushed us onto more film locations! We went to locations from Psycho, Pulp Fiction, Back to the Future, The Office (USA) and a few more!

After Alex had tired us out we headed to dinner at a restaurant called Bucca di Beppos. It is an Italian restaurant and according to Mike it is a chain, but I have never heard of it before. We had what is called a ‘family style’ dining, where they bring out massive bowls of pasta and a plate of chicken and you help yourself. We had two bowls of pasta, one had a cheese sauce, the other had a tomato sauce. There was also chicken parmesan, which was yummy!

If you would like to see this day in vlog form you can check it out here.

The Warner Bros. Studio Tour was insane and so was everything else we did! I had the best day and can’t wait to share more of my adventures with you!