LA Studio Tours

The whole reason we even thought of visiting Los Angles with our camper is because Jesse’s cousin Mike & wife Kitty live here. Both work with residuals(finance) for different studios here, Mike is with CBS and Kitty is with Sony. We visited Mike on Tuesday for lunch at the CBS studios in Studio City. As the boys were eating lunch, they had a view of an outdoor taping of American Housewife. They could see all the cameras, tons of personnel helping with the taping and got a good view of the little girl from the show.

Walking around the studio, we saw where they taped other CBS shows, where they made different sets, and where writers and producers have their offices. We saw a whole bunch of audience members leaving The Talk talk show with goodie bags from the day. I even got a glimpse of Joey from Friends- Matt LaBlanc. He has a show called Man with a Plan!

Kitty arranged for us to see a taping of Wheel of Fortune, a gameshow taped at Sony Studios. She walked us around the studio grounds for a bit too, we saw the dad(Murry) from the show The Goldbergs which was super neat. We also saw the ghostbusters cars, the race car from Ricky Bobby and the camper from Breaking Bad. They had a neat little museum where we saw the living room set up from Seinfeld, more props and costumes from different shows and movies, and we got to hold actual Grammy’s and an Oscar!

We had VIP seats for the Wheel of Fortune which came with fun goodies bags! We were also able to meet the announcer of the show, Jim Thornton. He had such a great sounding voice!

The theme for the tapings was “Best Friends” and we got to watch 3 shows being taped. We had to clap a TON – haha, our hands were all worn out! We were excited for all the contestants. One person was from Sioux Falls so we totally cheered her on. We even saw a team win 2 Mini Cooper cars! During the last show’s taping, one of the teams had tried to answer the board after their time was up. They immediately made the teams turn around while they double checked to see if the answer was legit. It turned out that it wasn’t, but in fair play they decided to restart that round with a different puzzle. All of that was very interesting, from them editing that part to seeing who would finally win! The shows will air April 23-25.

Between shows, we were invited to come down to the stage and spin the wheel ourselves. How totally exciting and fun! It will be a memory we’ll have forever!

Vanna White and Pat Sajak were truly as awesome in person as they are on the show. He does such an easy banter with the contestants, and their banter with each other at the end of the shows is hilarious. Vanna had spoken with the audience between takes and she was lovely as well. They have both been hosting this gig for more than 30 years!

After the tapings were finished, the announcer came down to Woody and asked him if he would want to do a vlog post with him by the stage. Whoa-yes please! So happy to have his voice on camera, Woody loved chatting with him! The lighting wasn’t great for us, obviously it was fantastic for the show though, but you’ll still hear woody’s excitement in his voice!

It’s been 7 years since we’ve been to California, so the boys didn’t remember much. This time around, they will remember these experiences for their lifetime! It’s been fun to take a break from visiting natural wonders to seeing celebrities and iconic movie sets. But with the traffic we’ve been in and seen, we’ll take our memories and skedaddle out of here gladly!