Taylor has wanted to go to NYC for her birthday for the last few years, but since Hockey starts after Thanksgiving, we've never had a chance. So this year, we decided to go on the weekend before Thanksgiving. Mike and mom opted out of going on the trip since it meant two days of running all over the city like lunatics just before flying to Florida to see Keri and the kids for the week. So - Taylor and I headed out by ourselves on Friday night. We got to the city around 10:30pm and checked into our hotel to get ready for the long day ahead..
One of Taylor's favorite shows on TV is Saturday Night Live - unfortunately, it's apparently the hardest ticket to get in New York. You can't buy tickets since they are free, but you can enter a lottery in August in the hopes of getting tickets. We applied, along with 65,000 other people, but didn't get tickets. After checking online, we found out that they give away standby tickets at 7am outside of the studio on the day of the show. That seemed promising since you can get a ticket for either the live show at 11:30pm or the dress rehearsal at 8pm. So, with high hopes, we set our alarm for 4am and set out for NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center.
Here's Taylor waiting in line. It's pretty cold in NY in November at 4am!
We are behind all of these people.. Notice the tent and all the people sleeping in sleeping bags. We didn't find out until later in the day, but 20 of those people had been there since Wednesday! Given all the sleeping bags and cardboard on the ground, we decided they must be Occupy Wall Street people who moved over here just to have something different to do..
Finally, at 8:30pm, they started giving out tickets. Victorious! After waiting 4 hours in the freezing cold, we got a ticket for the dress rehearsal - we were number 164 and 165 on the standby list. We promptly took our frozen toes to Starbucks for warm coffee to start to thaw out.
Showered and ready to take on New York, we decided to take a tour of the NBC studios. We were able to see the Brian Williams news set, the Dr. Oz show set, and the Saturday Night Live studio. It was a great tour - and they were still painting the sets for SNL while we were there. It was fun to see how small the studios really are - they look so much bigger on TV! We had to go through a metal detector before going in. Luckily, we were first in line through security. While we were waiting for everyone else, we saw Seth Myers coming in to do the show! (He does the weekend update on SNL, and is one of Taylor's favorites) Taylor was thrilled to see someone famous in the building! We didn't think fast enough to ask for an autograph though..
Here is the inside of the lobby at Radio City Music Hall - it was gorgeous with all the Christmas decorations and chandeliers
Waiting for the show to start..
The show was so good! The costumes were beautiful and the dancers were amazing. I loved the dancing santas the best, but the wooden soldiers were pretty good too :) I had never seen the show before, but I'm so glad we decided to go - it definitely put us in the mood for Christmas!
Next we were off to shop on 5th Ave..
And pose for pictures with the mannequins...
By 7pm we had to head back to NBC studios to see if we would get in to SNL with our standby tickets. At least this time we could stand in line inside instead of freezing outside!
No luck - they only took 13 people from the standby line.. We were number 164 and 165! We clearly had no chance of getting in! So instead, we headed back to Times Square to sit on the stairs and watch people go by. And then bought cupcakes to drown our sorrows in!
Back at our hotel - time to call it a day - 4am was came really early! All in all, a pretty good first day though!
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