Saturday Night Live: The Exhibition NYC

I've been a Saturday Night Live fan for years, and have went back and watched pretty much every season and special from when the show started, so when I saw the SNL Exhibition was going to be opening in NYC I was super excited.  Finally after saying for ages that we were going to go, we headed in to the city after Josh got home from work a couple weeks ago.  I have to say I was most pumped to see the sets of Wayne's World and Celebrity Jeopardy, two of the most famous SNL sketches.  

The tour starts out by entering are entering a room where you watch a short video of clips and interviews, then a sliding door opens to walk down a hallway filled with posters of SNL Alumni in some of their most famous sketches, leading to a replica of the stage.

You round the corner into Lorne Michael's office, with notes from Steve Martin and Buck Henry from the early days of the show.

Then you head in to the first room filled with memorabilia, the Killer Bee's outfit from the very start of the show is the first costume you see.

Me playing the original piano from the show.

Another video playing of various sketches throughout the year.

The Land Shark and Eddie Murphy's Buckwheat costume.

The next stop is learning about what goes on in the writing room and how the show get's put together each week.  There are video's of some SNL stars like Seth Meyer's talking about sitting around all night trying to come up with ideas.

A scale replica of the set. The seats were actually being made for Yankee Stadium and hey were the fastest seating that SNL could get for the show.

One of my favorite things ever, the Celebrity Jeopardy set, and of course Turd Ferguson.

Josh and I on the Wayne's World set!  Schwing!  Pretty epic you can sit down on everything.

And Wayne and Garth's costumes.

Next was the makeup design display featuring the Coneheads etc.  The video is of how Taran Killam got transformed into Gollum in the Hobbit Office sketch.  really crazy how much work they put into these 5 or 10 minute sketches.

Some of the props used on the show from years gone by, including Colon Blow cereal, a disturbing but classic sketch.

Then to the costume department including JT and Andy Samberg's Dick in a Box constumes. 

And all these.... a couple of my faves, Hans and Franz and Adam Sandler's Opera Man.

Steve martin's King Tut, and Chris Farley's Matt Foley.  There are also dressing stalls where the stars change in between skits.

Some classic cue cards.

We then got to go into the mock Control Room.  You can sit at the monitors and they show what it is like to actually be in the control room during a show.  I think it would be stressful and confusing.

From there you go into a replica of the entire theater.  We were told to take a seat and a screen came out across the stage and a short show, hosted by Tina Fey, began.  There were a couple sketches, some history and a Weekend Update.  To the right of us there was a clip of Celebrity Jeopardy and to the left was a montage of tons of different musical guests doing their songs from the beginning up to more recent guests.

Afterword we had a chance to have our photo taken on the Weekend Update set, which would have been cool, but I am sure it probably cost about $30 that we didn't want to spend.  And that is it, we had a chance to look around the gift shop, which had some awesome stuff... actually that reminds me, I was planning on going back to grab a couple things. This is a great thing to check out if you are an SNL fan and in NYC.  It took us about an hour and a half to get through and is super easy to get to from most areas in the city.

 Once we were done, we were hungry, so we took a few minutes and found a restaurant that was awesome and close.  We decided on "Rare Bar and Grill" in the Murray Hill area of Manhattan.  It had great reviews and I had read about it on a couple "best of" lists.

I started with a drink that I wasn't sure about but just had to try, "The Bubbly Goat"- with Prosecco, port and grapes topped with a fried goat cheese and pickle ball.  Sounds crazy right?  It was pretty awesome, I just didn't put the ball in the drink!

I got the "Steak Au Poivre" for my entree and it was so tender I didn't need a knife and the Poivre sauce was delish.  *side note* for any steak lovers, don't worry, it actually wasn't well done!

And the finale, the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building at night <3

Saturday Night Live : The Exhibition info