Before my husband, Bobby, and I took our trip to New York City, I tried to figure out things we could do that wouldn’t break the bank. This meant a lot of surfing the Internet. I checked out Groupon to see what deals I could find. That’s how I stumbled across the Midtown Manhattan Movie Tours.
I really like movies, so the idea of getting to see the filmed locations of over 50 different movies was just about the most exciting thing regarding our trip to New York. After a few scheduling issues were resolved, we finally were able to arrange our tour. We met our tour guide, Roni, at Columbus Circle, very near Central Park. Although there was supposed to be another family of four on the tour, they decided to not go. It had been extremely hot that day and I imagine the idea of walking the 1 1/2 miles was too much for them to take. So Bobby and I actually had a private tour!
As an aside, while we were waiting to meet Roni, we noticed a camera crew setting up near the fountain. Roni asked one of the workers what was going on, turns out that it was a Australian film crewing shooting a movie scene. Since they didn’t have a permit, they couldn’t tell anyone to stay away from the scene. Which is how Bobby was able to get his pictures.
We got to see the locations of many different movies, including Sweet Home Alabama, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Home Alone 2, The Godfather, Superman, The Amazing Spiderman and one of my favorites, Serendipity. Roni had tons of movie information and trivia. She made the tour very interesting. She even asked us some trivia questions about movies. Bobby actually won the game, but that is only because some of the movies she referred to, I hadn’t seen (and probably wouldn’t). Turns out Roni is not only the owner and creator of Midtown Manhattan Movie Tours, but also a writer, director and producer of a show on YouTube, titled Tough Love. (I’ve not had a chance to check it out yet, but still very cool.)
I really liked the fact that not only did she have a binder with pictures of the different movie scenes, but also carried around a tablet with the different video clips of the movies. This made it possible for us to not only see the location of the movie scene, but see the actual scene in the movie. It made it even more magical to do so.
One interesting, non-movie bit of information she gave us, was that she pointed out Patsy’s. It is an Italian Restaurant that had been one of Frank Sinatra’s favorites. He would visit it whenever he was in the city. I guess several other actors and singers go there as well.
Due to the fact we were the only ones on the tour with her at that time, she rearranged things so that we could wrap up our walk at the Waldorf-Astoria, our hotel. That was great, because after the day we had, plus a 90 minute walk around Manhattan, we were ready to rest for a little bit. Of course, in the city that never sleeps, we still had things to do before we ended our day. But that’s a story for another post.
