Warner Bros Studio Tour, Los Angeles

They say in the blurb to get your tickets early, but I arrived at 11.00am and got on the 12am tour. After you've purchased your ticket(s), (from Gate 3, a parking lot), you will be escorted to the Warner Bros. lot, where your bag will be searched. You then head to a building 5 mins away by buggy. This houses a store, with a very LIMITED range of things to purchase - and this is the only store you will come across on the tour!! They tell you there's a much better range of goods at the warnerbros.com store. Here you wait for your tour to start, which is inside a small movie theatre (30 seats) in this building. But they don't tell you that. I waited outside with some people only to rush in. Be inside the building 5 MINS BEFORE your tour starts. You watch a short montage about Warners then head on a buggy/big golf cart, to the Warner Bros. museum. Huge collection of Harry Potter items from Prisoner of Azkaban - clothes, props, etc. Also, Audrey Hepburn's hat, the time machine from the remake with G. Pearce, old scripts. Then you tour the lots.

NOTE: YOUR TOUR MUCH DEPENDS ON YOUR GUIDE. We had an old-ish guy who was trying to speak French to the Parisians on our tour for the entire 2 1/2 hours. They were annoyed, so was I. It wasted our tour time!

We saw outside sets from 'Friends', 'ER', and movies, and indoor sets from 'Miss Congeniality 2', 'Joey' (where they filmed Friends) and 'Gilmore Girls'.

This was a relaxing tour, but I left feeling I should have seen more. At $35 it's not cheap, so if there's something you want to see in particular, let them know. We saw the Gilmore Girls sets because someone requested it. And if you want to see CELEBS -don't go on a holiday. I went July 5th and no-one was there!! September is the best time to go, acc. to our guide. And you can watch a show being filmed. www.tv-audiences.com.

Park your car in GATE 3 down Olive Ave. The ticket office is there.

Take a tour of the Warner Brothers lot, for a glimpse behind the scenes. If you're lucky, you'll pass by a scene in progress.
During my visit, however, while cameras were allowed, and digital still cameras were okay, the fact that my Sony Mavica could take a tiny, short video, made it a no-no on the lot, despite my objections that I wasn't able to bring out the studio's innermost secrets with a 15-second video.

Forget about Universal Studios (unless you have young children) and go take a tour of an actual studio. My favorite is the Warner Bros. tour. You'll watch a film about the studio's history, and then be driven around the lot on a cart and shown various elements of a working studio. Depending on what is shooting at the time, you'll usually be able to peek at a film or TV show in production. In summer, TV shows tend to be on hiatus, so you might just get to wander around the dark set. At the conclusion of the tour, you can walk through the Warner Bros. Musuem and see some amazing bits of film history (including James Dean's motorcycle).

This was a totally awesome tour and not many people know about it. If you are in L.A., I highly recommend that you go on this tour, it's worth the money. Only a handful of Hollywood movie studios offer tours, fortunately Warner Bros is one of them - and it may well be the best overall studio tour available to the general public. Unlike the Universal Studios tour, guests here aren't herded aboard monster trams by the thousands, and driven through theme park rides.

At Warner Bros, the VIP tours are far more personal, limited to small groups of fewer than twelve people. And the studio back lot that you see is the real thing. However, the tour is also one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets. Where Universal processes millions of tourists each year, only about 120 people a day discover the Warner Bros tour. You and your tour guide ramble about in a small tram resembling a golf cart; you are allowed to stop and get out of the tram to inspect many of the sets up-close, and your guide is always nearby to answer any questions you might have.

The tour is much more extensive and authentic than the superficial, indoor tour at NBC Studios. And although the WB tours last two full hours, you don't have to spend all of that time on your feet, as you do during the Paramount Studio walking tour. The Warner's back lot is also a lot more colorful than the Paramount property. The drawback, however, is the cost, Warner Bros charges a whopping $33 each for this special VIP tour (compared with $15 for Paramount, and $7 for NBC).

I'm not a huge fan of films/dvds as a media...so have no idea what films these sets were used for...

This tour lasts about 2 hours or so. At first you are driven, by golfcart, around these massive studio's...by a guide, who shows you varios sets that have used in horrors, westerns...all sorts!