Our Anniversary Trip to New York City
PART 4
The morning after our anniversary dinner, we got up crazy early to head downtown to Soho to the new ABC/Disney studios in Hudson Square. We had tickets to see Live with Kelly and Mark for the first time! https://livewithkellyandmark.com/
We had seen Kelly with Regis twice and with Ryan Seacrest once, but those shows were in the old studio a couple of blocks north of Lincoln Center, at West 69th and Columbus. This experience was a whole new ballgame, as the new studios are not within walking distance of our hotel, so we took a cab. (subway is too crazy that time of the morning) The new studio is gorgeous and we were excited to be there about a month after they moved downtown.
The show is truly live, and starts at 9:00 a.m. You get your tickets for free from a website called 1Iota https://1iota.com/ It’s where you also get tickets to other daytime and nighttime talk shows, both in New York and Los Angeles. You just select the date you’d like to go (only about 2 weeks in advance for Kelly and Mark), click on “request tickets”, and away you go! The tickets live on your phone in the app. We arrived at the doors to the studio outside at 7:15 a.m. and were the first to arrive. It doesn’t take long for the line to form – both with people with tickets and those who are hoping to get in without them in case the audience isn’t full. We were there on a Tuesday, which means you’re there for the live show and then after a 20-minute break, they tape the Thursday show, since Kelly and Mark are only there Mondays to Wednesdays.
The chats in the lineups are always fun – this time I met a whole bunch of women who, like me, have been fans of Kelly since she started on All My Children in 1990. (and that’s where she met her husband, Mark Consuelos) The ladies and I mostly talked about General Hospital though, and the time flew by for me. (not so much for my traveling companion) At about 8 a.m., the doors opened, our bags were inspected, and in we went to another waiting area. You get into the studio at about 8:40.
Then my favourite part comes up – the audience warmup by the always funny Executive Producer, Michael Gelman. He instructs us about the hand signals we’ll see – when to be quiet, when to applaud, and how to applaud. Then the last-minute audition for the Trivia Dancer takes place – and this time I got the guts to put my hand up and was chosen for the final 4 for each day’s shows – I didn’t win, but it was fun anyway! The main guest for the live show was comedian Nate Bargatze, and actress Rebel Wilson for the Thursday show.
Here are a bunch of pics, including a quick one of handsome Mark as he visited our side of the audience during a commercial break. It’s always a fun experience to see live television being made.
The next morning, we walked over to Carnegie Hall for a guided tour – also booked in advance.
https://www.carnegiehall.org/Visit/Tour/Tours
This one cost $30 USD each, and our Docent was a lovely gentleman who is a New Yorker who had been giving the tours for a long time. We had taken the tour a long time ago, in 2006, but thought we needed a refresher, and we were right. The Docent told us so many things about the history of the Hall that neither of us could remember having heard before. One of the fun facts was about them having microphones over the audience to identify if there were issues going on there that someone would need to address. We were able to ask lots of questions about the technical nature of performances, etc. The tour ends in the Museum, then the Gift Shop. I’ve included 2 pics from the Museum of programmes for events that interest me. The amount of items they have archived is staggering.
Next week, we’ll talk about the concerts we went to!
I’d love to help you with your planning!
Happy Travels!