Author: january89
Date: 09/03/2006, 09:07 pm
Has anyone been to a taping of Ellen? Have tickets to the Ellen show late October. Told to arrive by 8:30a.m. to get ticket number for 4pm taping. When they run out of numbers you are out of luck. Wondering how early we should really arrive to make sure we get into the afternoon taping. Also wondering if it's better to fly into/stay in Burbank and drive to L.A./Hollywood, etc or better to fly/stay L.A. and drive to Burbank. Thanks for your help.

january, please accept a word of friendly advice for using this board. You just posted this question 14 minutes before you copied it. Please allow a little more time for a response and do not re-post it on another thread.

If it sinks too low without a response, (like on the next page) then click your name, hit post a reply, then type in TTT (to the top) and your thread will come up again.

Good luck, I hope you will get the info you need. If there are no answers by tomorrow morning, I'll post ttt for you and bring you to the top.

I meant to move it to California. I did not mean to repost it in U.S. twice.

OK, now I see where you are coming from, but actually it all goes into the US forum. The system is a little confusing, but the people on this board are great and if anyone can help you, I'm sure they will.

I saw Ellen last season. Then, the tickets were given out at 1 pm and the show seating started at 3pm. People lined up starting at 9 am. We got there at 11 am and didn't get seats in the audience because they ran out of numbers. Anyone who waited was given the opportunity to be in the "riff raff room" - an overflow room behind the stage where you watch on monitors. We stayed and it was fun anyway, but we didn't fly in to see the show.
Now that they want you there in the morning, I don't know when people will start to show up, but I would bet it is EARLY cuz Ellen has some dedicated fans.

topping for january89

Thanks for the reply. That is our fear that we are makingthis long trip and if we don't get there early enough it will be a waste. I've heard that even now some folks get turned away from the Riff Raff room because of the crowd size. Confusing since they give out tickets. anyway thanks for your help.

TTT

Ok well my best guess, if it is really important to you, is to get there as early as you would be comfortable. So if I were you, I would stay in Burbank since that is where the studio is, and get up and out by 6 am with coffee and blankets and lawn chairs if you have them. One person could go and place hold with a blanket or chair, and the rest of the group can join up at 8 am for when the tickets are given. The studio is in a pretty good area but I wouldn't want to hang out too much before 6 am and I think I would prefer at least 2 people waiting, not 1. If you are there by 6am, I am fairly certain you will get into the audience. Good luck and maybe I will see you there since I have reservations again too.

P.S. if you still have the number to the assistant who made your reservation, you might try getting the "inside scoop" by playing the flying in Just to See Ellen card. And I would Definitely make sure the assistant who is passing out the tickets knows so you at least get in the Riff Raff Room. If I go, my reservations are for Sept so I will try to post any additional info afterwards.

Good advice. Thanks again for your reply(s). That would be great if you share more after your trip.

ttt

OK, january89, I spoke with a show assistant and she said she knows of no occasion where someone was turned away from the Riff Raff room so you will at least get in there if you are in line on time. And speaking from experience, you are watching the monitors which is as much as you see on many show tapings. So go as early as you can, stay and get signed in, and you should have a good time, hopefully in the audience but at least in the Riff Raff room. I had to reschedule and wont be going until Oct but if I find out anything else, I'll let you know.

Usually shows have special tickets for out-of-towners that all-but guarantee them a seat. I would investigate further via the website, and also check with tvtix.com to see if they handle this show.

Avoid LAX if possible. Even if it means a connecting flight, choose Burbank airport.

How many days do you have? Universal Hilton is a good place to stay, you can subway down to Hollywood in a flash...and you can take the CityBus to Ellen. Burbank Best Western is walking distance to Ellen (long five or six blocks) and there are restaurants etc nearby...but I wouldn't stay there if you have more than 3 or 4 days in the area, kinda dull.
Ellen is walking distance to WB tour, or NBC tour...so after you pick up your 9am tickets you could schedule a 10:30am tour to pass the day while you wait for Ellen. I believe they pass out tickets early but then you can leave and return later on like for Jay Leno...but I could be wrong.

there are a few shows (jay leno for example) that i'd love to see BUT, i would have a hard time justifying wasting an entire day in california to stand in line. i hope you have fun.

I scoured the internet for info on this topic and this Fodor's site had more than I found anywhere else, but still left me feeling pretty confused. Well . . . I just returned from LA where I had 4th row aisle seats for Ellen Degeneres's 49th birthday show. For me, it was totally worth the huge amount of waiting because I am a long time Ellen fan and was not in LA for a vacation where each day is so precious (this IS an all-day experience). Here, for those of you wanting to be in the audience of an Ellen show taping is my experience:

You start off by going to the Network, Ellen website and finding the "get tickets" section. They have a calendar with dates a month or two out and a few of the days are marked either "no tickets avail" or "tickets avail". I checked that site over and over for a month until the day I wanted, popped up and I clicked on it. About 2 weeks later, someone from the show called me to see if I was still interested in that date. They mailed me a letter which would get me 2 seats (you can request up to 4). The letter stated that I would be at a 6pm taping, would need to arrive at the studio at 4pm, but should exchange the letter for 2 show tickets in the morning. It said they would begin to give those tickets out at 9:30am but that people sometimes line up earlier because it's first come first served. The first people in line are seated in the audience first, the last people are put in the riff raff room (where you only watch a monitor - not the live taping). The letter said that the Burbank police would not allow anyone to line up before 7am. I quizzed the person who called me on the phone and she was very vague about how early I should line up, but suggested 6:30am
I live 5 hours from Burbank and had booked a hotel the night before, so my feeling was that if I was making this much effort to see her show - I really, really did not want to end up in the Riff Raff Room. I figured that I would arrive at 6am and be ready to jump in line at 6:30 or 7:00 when people started to arrive. Although my hotel was a 20 minute drive, the bell man suggested that I allow 45 minutes on a weekday morning - gotta love LA traffic. I left my hotel at 5:10am. They say that you cannot bring chairs, but I did bring a blanket so that I could sit on it (or at least keep warm in the dark). Lo and behold, I made it to Burbank by 5:30am. Figuring that I was waaaaay early, I decided to drive by to locate where the line would be forming and them planned to swing by a Starbucks for a coffee and restroom stop (no restrooms in line). But at 5:30am there was already a substantial line - 73 people! You must also keep in mind with that number, that only one person from each party needs to line up for the tickets, so theoretically each of those people "could" have been getting 4 tickets which would have made me #292. They don't tell you how many people are in the audience, but my guess is around 150-200. The first people in line told me that they arrived at 3:15am!!!! Yuck! Other than the very few lucky people who were in line next to the planter box, which you could sit on as a bench, the rest of us stood in very tight quarters for HOURS. The good part was that Ellen fans are great people and everyone was chatty, friendly, orderly and willing to hold spots in line for those who needed to make the trek to the hospital down the road to use the restroom. Do know; you will be able to leave after you get your ticket, go home or back to your hotel and get dressed for the show. I felt awful for the ladies who came at 5am in high heels, full make-up and dressed to be on TV while the rest of us were in comfy sweats and tennies. So in talking to the people at the taping later in the day, it seemed that the last people to get into the audience came around 7:45. Being first doesn't guarantee that you will be in the front row either. I don't know if they place you by height, clothing coloring or what - but they start with #1 and place them "somewhere close to the front" and so on . . . Okay - now here's the kicker that unfortunately makes my experience a bit different than what you will encounter:
It was Thursday and so they were taping two shows, which means that there were twice as many of us for twice as many seats

One of the shows was rumored to be her birthday show which has an extra big draw because celebs have dropped by in the past and she serves refreshments and even gave us a gift! A totally cool, $250 watch. Because it was her birthday show, they had held back quite a few VIP seats so there were less tickets avail too.

The thing about this last part, which you must keep in mind, is that you really won't know exactly who the guests are until you've stood in line (even then, if it's a 2-show day - they told us ALL of the guests, but wouldn't say which were going to be on which taping). Because her shows usually broadcast the day after they are taped, you can check an AOL website that lists who the guests are about a month in advance. With 2 shows on Thurs, most of us in line assumed that the 3pm taping would be the Friday birthday show and the 6pm taping would be the Monday show. My main goal was to get into the REAL audience and see Ellen - I didn't care which show, but I have to say . . . after 5 hours of hearing about past birthday shows and the excitement of the people who thought that they were going to be in that audience, I did get caught up in it and feel sort of sad that I wasn't going to get to go to the birthday show too. You can imagine our elation (and I am sure - their disappointment) when it was revealed when we came back at 4pm and ran into the 3pm audience exiting the studio - that the 6pm show was in fact the birthday show.
So in the end:
5 hour drive to LA
5 hour wait in line in the dark & cold
2 hour wait to begin taping
Celebrating Ellen Degeneres birthday on TV (and they even showed our faces a few times!) - PRICELESS

I learned so much about how this process works, which I wish that I had known ahead of time, if anyone is thinking of going and has questions, I would be more than happy to answer them and save you the second-guessing that I went thru. Feel free to e-mail me: [email protected]

http://tvshows.aol.com/show/the-elle...00000/upcoming

this is the link to the AOL iste that lists future shows, the Ellen website only lists one week at a time

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/tickets/

and this is the link to Ellen's website that you go to in order to request tickets

Very interesting story....one big letdown would be for the rule-conscious person who heeds the warning in the letter stating that theBurbank police enforce no lining up before 7:00am.... as those "obedient" people would be screwed for following rules....

How right you are! And in a way, it would be nice if the Burbank police were there enforcing so that we could really believe the information in the letter. I did feel bad for the people who followed the instructions and showed up at 7am - my guess is that they probably all did get into a taping since there were 2 shows, but you could tell how surprised they were to arrive and find such a long line ahead of them. I'm sure it made their 3 hour wait in line a lot more tense than mine, because they really were close to the cut-off point for the Riff Raff room. One additional piece of info:at about 5:45am (NOT 7am), someone from the studio came out, unlocked the gate and led us into the on-property holding area, so that we were at that point "legal" - so much for "don't show up before 7am".