Universal Studios

Getting to Universal Studios by public transport was a cinch.You need to get on the Red Line train. If you’re staying up near Hollywood Boulevard this won’t be a problem as you can get on at one of the stops along Hollywood Boulevard and it will only be a few stops to Universal City (towards North Hollywood). Instead, we stayed near The Grove and Beverly Boulevard, and caught the #14 bus over to Vermont/Beverly to hop on the red line train. We walked up from Beverly Boulevard to Hollywood Boulevard once, but it was uphill and pretty brutal in the sun.

At Universal City you’ll emerge from the train station and diagonally across the road (where the Universal Studios signage is) is the waiting area for the Universal Studios tram. This tram will take you up the for a couple of minutes and drop you off at Universal Studios.

Universal Studios was the easiest attraction to get to via public transport, and loads of people were doing it.

Warner Bros. Studios

We signed up for the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Burbank. It’s a great experience being on the working studios, quite different from a day at Universal Studios. To get there we again relied on the Red Line train.

Make your way to the nearest Red Line station and head towards North Hollywood, disembarking at the Universal City stop. To the left of the Universal Hollywood Drive is the Lankershim/Universal Hollywood bus stop where you will catch the #155 bus. This trip takes about 8 – 13 minutes (this trip on Trip Planner), and you’ll get off at the Riverside Drive/Hollywood Way stop. From there it’s about a 5-10 minute walk to the Avon St building where the Studio Tours commence. You can catch the same trip in reverse at the end of your tour.

If you get yourself a tap card and use daily passes, this whole journey can be made

Disneyland and California Adventure

Now here’s the challenge. The first day we went to Disneyland we used one of the local tour operators. The service wasn’t great (we were almost an hour late to depart) and the scheduled return meant that we had to miss the evening events in Disneyland. We also had to endure the back of the minivan whilst almost every other passenger was off-loaded at their hotel.

Be warned that getting to Disneyland from Hollywood is not without effort, but it’s pretty cheap and if you’ve got the time, not all that unpleasant. Here’s how:

Again the red line train is your friend. Make your way to the nearest red line station and head towards Union Station, which is where you’ll disembark. The next leg of the journey is on the Amtrak, specifically the Pacific Surfliner route towards San Diego. You’ll more than likely want to get off at Fullerton station, not Anaheim. It’s a station earlier (so it’s cheaper) and apparently better serviced by buses. This journey is just short of 30 minutes, and was a pleasure due to the huge comfortable seats, free wifi and the joy of above land train travel. Be warned that the ticketing is more like a flight than a usual service train, so you’ll need to allow time to get your ticket and board. It should only cost around $11 each way per person, but you’ll need to be across the times to ensure you have a way of getting home.

Once you arrive at Fullerton station, make your way to the bus stops right outside the station and catch the next #43 bus heading south along S Harbor Boulevard. This will take 17-25 minutes and drop you off at the Disneyland employees’ entrance. You’ll likely be on the bus with people in Disneyland uniforms, so you can just get off where they do (though it’s fairly clear when you see it due to all the Disneyland buses). It’s called the employees’ entrance, but it’s definitely open to the public as it’s a standard bus route stop.

1. Seeing the city in the distance from the back of the cab. Once we got onto Manhattan Island, I was noticed how close everything was. It seemed like one hole in the wall shop grew out of another, sort of like a fungus that grows on a slightly bigger fungus.
2. Stepping out into Times Square at around 7.30pm on a Saturday night, at low temperatures that were new to me and feeling like every direction was against the stream.
3. After doing nothing but sit and eat for 24 hours, I ordered what I had hoped would be a small sandwich in a diner. It was not. That corned beef sandwich had roughly a week’s worth of meat on it, and nothing else. This would be the norm for the next month.

Some days you catch the Mr. Whippy van.

Some days you are in the Mr. Whippy van.

It turns out the biggest culprit was my Apple Mail folder, bloating out at over 11GB. I only sync two gmail accounts with Mail, my personal and Repertwa accounts, and they don’t exceed 4GB of Gmail usage together.

I discovered that the All Mail folder causes Apple Mail to download another copy of every message in my inbox, causing unnecessary disk space usage. After digging around for an answer, the solution is quite simple:

1. In Gmail (webmail), go to Mail Settings, and the “Labels” tab.
2. Under “System Labels”, find the All Mail label and uncheck “Show in IMAP.”
3. In Apple Mail, select your Gmail account under Mailbox menu > Synchronise.

The caveat here is that if you have any mail in your “All Mail” folder that you haven’t labeled somehow else (ie. it’s not in your inbox, sent mail or with another label), you’ll not get access to it in Apple Mail. That works just fine for me, since I leave mail in my inbox until I it’s irrelevant, and then move it to All Mail. You also set up a “Keep” label/folder, and move your useful mail from the inbox to “Keep”. The benefit is that Apple Mail will only keep one version of it (in “Keep”), and won’t include duplicate copies of the sent and inboxes.

It took a while to get my Apple Mail in line with the changes, but after a few minutes, my mail folder had dropped to just 4 gigs.

Dennis

The gentle gentleman. Dennis joined the theatre group shortly after I did and it’s hard to remember a show without Dennis in the chorus, backstage or out the front in his usher blacks. He was our chief carpenter, achieving incredible things on non-existent budgets (including a rain curtain for Little Shop of Horrors). Eternally overcommitted, Dennis would be learning his lines, building sets and generally spending every waking minute at the theatre. He’d often find himself emotional come opening night, so proud of his set, the show and the group.

He’d often say that we (the young ones) were so lucky, having this outlet and community as young adults, but he never missed out. He was always one of the boys backstage and got his fair share of the spotlight out front. He masterfully played drunk, and could be relied upon to brings tears of laughter to my face whenever he’d do a bit of character schtick.

We loved swapping stories, usually toilet-related. Once, while we were onstage (behind the curtain) awaiting the start of the show, he told a long and involved story about the time he went for a jog through the suburbs when he was struck with an impending urgency. With each inaccessible toilet he told, he demonstrated his newly frustrated run. Whilst trying to be silent, the whole cast was in hysterics and the curtain opened to a cast all very red in the face.

Ultimately, and most importantly, he will be remembered as the kind, generous man he was. On several occasions he’d put his hand on my shoulder and say “If you need something, get on the phone to Patto.” He had no limit of time for anyone, and we had no limit of time for Dennis.

Next time I step into that theatre I will miss his friendly face and our cheerful chat. It will be a different place without him.

Kevin

I met Kevin simultaneously in 2004 through his community radio show, ‘ShowBiz!‘ and when I was playing in the band for Nunsense 2: The Second Coming which he was directing. He came over during our sitzprobe and said “He makes all those sounds with that keyboard!” I played in the band for his production of 70, Girls, 70 and he eventually asked me to musically direct You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown for him. From there I working with him again on Nuncrackers, and occasionally collaborated with him on his radio show.

Kevin’s passion was the art of musical theatre. A lifelong theatre goer, there was little he didn’t know about any show. We had countless wonderful conversations where we’d share information and he’d tell me stories about productions he’d seen. He taught me a great deal about theatre history, and loved to share his favourite shows.

Our collaborations were always fun. The shows we worked on together were small cast shows, and we always had a terrifically fun environment. He was the perfect director for these shows. He loved watching performers perform, and had a special skill of moulding the whole show into a unified piece.

He loved to share his knowledge with his radio audience whom were very faithful to him. On the occasions that I filled in for him in his absence, the radio listeners always called to ask where ‘Kevin’ was and if he would be back for the following week. We presented a few shows together, including one in which we discussed and played, track by track, Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns. He always invited me for his annual christmas episode, in which we discussed the year’s theatre and played silly christmas related tracks.

The amateur musical theatre scene can be a bitchy, scary place, but everyone loved working with Kevin, and had great respect from his peers. Theatre was everything to Kevin (that was clear whenever his face lit up in rehearsals), and he fed that passion into others. It was after the final performance of his latest production, Dames at Sea, that he passed away. It’s tremendously sad, but somehow fitting that Kevin took his final bow along with his cast and crew.

Here’s to two lives made all the better by theatre, and to the theatre they both gave us.

… and some bad.