Road Trip Day 12 - NYC

Road Trip, Day 12 

We had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel - they provided a great variety of fruit, yogurt, cereal, breads, oatmeal and Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches along with juice, tea and coffee. J.J. was so sleepy this morning, I just tucked him back into bed. Some of the kids hadn't gotten their homework finished and had to stay at the hotel and catch up, so I'm glad he was able to stay and rest and recover from his cold. I hooked up with an awesome group whose goal was to get 1/2 price Broadway tickets (Skylar, Ethan M., Claire and Elise) and we got ready to go. Then Kevin told us that earlier this morning he had talked with the gal at SilverCup Studios (across the street) and got the OK for a tour since Skylar was interested in videography and had inquired about the studio.

So we headed over to the studio and office manager Gina (with her Jersey accent) led us around the sound stages where Ugly Betty and Fringe are filmed. It was really fun to see the sets and props and backdrops. They had just finished filming for the year, so some things were being packed up, and the Fringe sets were all being loaded into train cars to be shipped to Canada where production was being moved to. Gina gave us the inside scoop on what it's like to be famous and working with stars ("They're just ordinary people like you and me," she said "but they work really long hours and they go through lots of rejection").

We took the Metro (subway) to Times Square to the TKTS discount ticket place and got there a little early. So we ducked into the Toys-R-Us store nearby which had a Ferris Wheel inside and girls with cameras at the entrance to take everyone's pictures. We hung out with the hackey-sack demo guy for awhile and then went upstairs to see the giant Barbie castle and Animatronic T-Rex (Jurassic Park display). They also had the Empire State building, Statue of Liberty and Chrysler building built out of Legos - pretty cool!

We sat and ate our sack lunches while waiting for the ticket office to open. Once it did, we didn't have to wait long to get tickets, but found that many theaters aren't open on Mondays. Phantom of the Opera was playing, though, so the kids got tics for that. I chose not to, but Shelle and another group were going to the same show, so it turned out fine and after going back to the hotel to dress up, they met up with Shelle for dinner and the show. I wasn't feeling super hot, so I was glad to go back to the hotel and rest that evening. Katherine went to see Phantom, though, and LOVED it!

I shared some take-out Chinese food with Katarina, J.J. and Kevin for dinner. I was so tired that I fell asleep while J.J. watched Mythbusters in my room. I woke up and put J.J. to bed, then headed back to my hotel room (for some reason, we were all on different floors - 9 rooms spread out over the 10 floors of the hotel). Journey to the Center of the Earth was on, so I watched a bit of that before falling back asleep.