The Warner Bros. backlot is home to some of the biggest and best history in all of movies and TV. They’ve seen films like Casablanca and The Goonies and TV shows like Friends and The Big Bang Theory. It’s a functioning studio lot that you can tour. The newest cross-section of that tour is the Turner Classic Movies tour. For fans of classic Hollywood, it’s a dream come true. You get a more intimate, smaller group to tour with and guides that are exceptionally knowledgeable about WB movies. For the normal tour, it’s more of a TV-focused experience that takes you to several filming locations, but for the TCM tour, you get to go to more classic Hollywood places.
The tour starts off very similar, except you get a special video presentation about the history of Warner Bros. from the Turner Classic Movies team. After that, you board your tram, and you’re off. Once on the tour, you zig-zag through the backlot, getting trivia and information about various movies and locations like the lagoon, their jungle set, and the residential area of the backlot. Even for a seasoned movie fan who has a repository of endless movie knowledge that took over the space reserved in my brain for the Pythagorean theorem, I was learning things. Depending on the day you go, it could mean that you end up in various parts of the backlot, but the highlight was the prop house.
We only had a short guided tour of the prop house, but you could get lost for hours looking at props. It’s a jam-packed section of the tour that might have too much sensory overload for some guests. There are iconic and massive props everywhere, including Agent Smith from The Matrix movies, an Iron Throne made for Conan O’Brien, light fixtures from classic movies, a replica of the original Maltese Falcon, and more. This was easily the best part of the tour, and it really helps to have a guide that can sort of wrangle the excessive amount of props you can look at by moving the tour at a nice pace.
From there, you head to other locations on the lot, including the WWII memorial, Jack Warner’s old office space, a place where Debbie Reynolds ate lunch, and other history on the lot. It’s a whirlwind of emotions and information that’ll heighten your love of Warner Bros. history and its movies.
From the end of that guided tour, it’s the same experience as the regular tour with a stop at the Production section that goes through the filmmaking process and some of the VFX experiences. After that the tour goes to the DC, Harry Potter, and Game of Thrones costumes/experiences section. These sections are interesting if you’ve never been on the tour before and seeing some of the DC costumes up close is a really awesome experience.
If you or someone you know is a fan of classic Hollywood, the TCM tour on the WB backlot is a must-try experience. Get tickets online from the WB Tour website.
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