Back from LA!

We just returned from a wonderful, if hurried, trip to Los Angeles.  Here's the details:

The Trip

• We paid a total of 50 cents for the hubby and I to go round trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles due to a promo price.  Some people paid $5 each way for the trip, some $10, some $20 each way.
• The Megabus is speedy because it goes from one city to the other with no additional stops.
• I thought taking an over night bus would be great because we could sleep on the bus and wake up refreshed in LA.  Overnight buses in Japan are super comfy and recline fully so you can actually sleep on them, not so these buses which are much like city buses so we arrived having had a couple of cat naps and were pretty tired.
• It was nice that the bus had plug ins at each seat to keep my cell charged.  They were also supposed to have free wi fi which didn't work (apparently their wi fi never works according to reviews).
• We paid $6 each for 24 hour bus passes once we got to LA.  These passes allowed us to ride the buses and trains everywhere including right to the front door of our destination which was the Sunset Bronson Studios.  The bus/train service in LA is awesome!  We also hopped off in Koreatown for lunch.
• The bus arrived an hour early so we ended up in LA at 5am so we had breakfast at Denny's which was across from the station in order to kill time.  Plus lunch, we spent about $20 on food.  We also brought snacks and water with us but since Phad Thai looked better than a cold sandwich hubby gave his sandwich to a homeless guy, and we ate Thai food in Koreatown.

The Show

• We got free tickets to the Jeff Probst Show via their website.  I LOVE this show and it is on my goal list so this was a win win all the way around.
• Our line to get into the show was right next to the line to get into the "Let's Make a Deal" show.  Our line didn't have costumes on and theirs did...funny.  
• There were only about 20 or so people like us in line for the show.  The rest were paid actors from a service to fill in audience space (we heard this is common for new shows that haven't developed an audience yet).  All of those people looked beautiful and peppy.  Most of us regular people looked like we just rolled off an all-night bus.
• We were in the "party room" for about an hour before the show where hubby used the massage chair, we took photos in the photo booth, some people played Wii, and we got free food from the snack bar (water, granola bars, etc).
• In the audience they arranged us, surprisingly, by what color we were wearing (they want a nice look to the audience and having ten people in blue sitting together would look weird I guess).  At least the hubby and I got to sit together because we weren't wearing different colors.
• The girl that kept the audience entertained before the show was really funny and entertaining.  She had some people stand up and dance, had us practice cheering, etc.
• The show itself had six segments and went by really fast.  Jeff Probst is as sincere and energetic as he appears on TV and his guest was Sanjay Gupta who was interesting.
• Because the show was about Sanjay Gupta's new project, a TV series, everyone in the audience got a free copy of his book on which the show is based.  One of the actors from the new series was also on the show (the one on the far right on the cover of the book).
• At the end of the show, the producers wanted some audience shots which are edited into the show I assume so they filmed us laughing, cheering, looking surprised, looking shocked, etc.  At which point I decided I would NOT make a good actress (my only reaction was looking at all of the actor types making the appropriate expressions and cracking up).

And an added bonus: when I told hubby we were going to the Jeff Probst Show he said "I like Ellen why didn't you get tickets for her show?"  So I went online and reserved tickets for the last week of filming for the season and surprisingly I got a call yesterday as we were leaving Jeff's show to ask if we still wanted the tickets for Ellen's show during the first week of April.  I said OF COURSE!  So we will go back to LA in April and be in the audience of the Ellen Show!!