New York Day 3: The Rock

This day turned out to be one of our very favorites!  We pretty much spent the whole day at Rockefeller Plaza.  We started out with the NBC Studios tour.  We weren't allowed to take pictures, so you'll have to imagine how awesome it was.  We got to see the studios for the Dr. Oz show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live.  The tour guides were really funny, and it was fun to see some "behind the scenes" type stuff.

Next, we went on the Rockefeller Center Tour.  For this tour we wore headphone sets and the tour guide spoke into a microphone.  We went all over Rockefeller Center (several different buildings) and learned about John D. Rockefeller, his wife, and a lot of the artwork they put on and in their buildings.  As boring as that sounds, it was actually extremely interesting!

This day was also Columbus Day.  They have a huge parade that goes down the street between Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral.  It's a good thing we had our headphones because we never would have heard our tour guide will all the noise and people!

As part of this tour we got a shortcut to the Top of the Rock.  We liked Top of the Rock more than the Empire State Building.  It has 3 different levels to look out over, and you can see the Empire State Building, along with other famous NYC skyline buildings.  It's also got a great view of Central Park.  It was also less crowded than the Empire State Building.  

Next we went to Magnolia Bakery.  The cupcakes weren't bad, the frosting was amazing!  We took them back to the NBC lounge where we were waiting to get in line for tickets to Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

Then we got in line for tickets to Jimmy Fallon.  We were 4th in line!  They give you a blue wristband and a card that says what number in line you are, and how many people were in your group.  Then they tell you to come back at 4 p.m. (no earlier! they are strict about that) and get in line.  

We went and got lunch and took a short nap (at a table in a big food court) and came back to get in line.  We were standing there for a while, there were people helping everyone get in their spot in line.  There were also some people walking up and down the line pulling people out of line and taking them somewhere else.  All of a sudden they came up to us and asked us if we'd be willing to help out with something!  They took us over to someone else and told us they wanted us to sit in the "band seats."  This means that we would sit on special benches during the show, but when the guest performer came out we would get to go on stage and sit behind them in the "band seats."  They switched out our blue wristbands for green wristbands and took us to a separate line.  We were pretty excited to get to go on stage!  We had no idea who the performer was, but we were all about it!  They told us to act excited and move to the music.  "No standing there with your mouth open like a zombie!"

The show was hilarious!  Ben Affleck was one of the guests, and Connie Britton, Ceasar the dog whisperer, and the singer.  A guy that was from the band Sun Kill Moon (still not sure who that is...).  

When we went to get set up in the "band seats" they put us right behind the band, instead of on one of the sides!!  We had told some of our family that we were going to be on, so my sister recorded it and sent us a picture of a screen shot with us and Jimmy!

See us behind Jimmy?

We should have just gone to dinner and called it a night at this point.  It was only around 6:30 when we got done, so we decided we had to time to go to another show!  Most shows don't run on Monday's so we didn't have a lot of options.  We chose Evita.  Worst decision ever!  We had a hard time following what was going on, the lead actress couldn't sing the high notes (it was so screechy!!), and most of the music was strange.  Worst musical I've ever seen!

See our disappointed faces.

It was dinner time again (10 pm) and we needed to find something that was open.  We took a little time walking up and down the Times Square area, and ended up at the Hard Rock Cafe....so lame again!!

Even though we didn't end the day on a high note, it was still one of the best days of our trip!