1001 Things: #60: Stand on top of the Empire State Building

4/16/2009

NY Spring Break trip continued!
Of course when you are in New York, you HAVE to go to the Empire State Building.
I can remember watching "Sleepless in Seattle" with my parents for the first time, Jonah going alone to the top of the building, waiting for Annie...(sigh). Ever since then, I've always wanted to take the trip up myself. In the movie, he just runs on in, goes to the elevator and he is whisked upwards to the top. However, my experience was quite different than that. Sure, the movie was made in 1993 and obviously things have changed since then, but still, I thought we would walk in, pay, and then be whisked upwards just as Jonah had.

Here's how it went.
We finally arrive at the Empire State building. We are walking around the outside of the building, when this man in a flourescent orange jacket approaches us and starts talking about some NY Skyride deal.

We listen and after he's done pitching us his deal, we decide it would be fun. The guy gets paid, we get our tickets, and inside we go!

Sorry for the blurry picture. Anyways, we get inside, and there's a lot of people and a lot of scaffolding. They must have been repairing stuff, I'm not even sure.

We travel up a escalator and get to a room with a ton of red ropes that allow us to file into line in an orderly way.

After we get through security, we stand in line. Those people in the picture to the left are the last people in line. There was another room bigger than that room with people in line.
We stood in line for probably an hour or two...I can't remember. At the end of the line, we get to jump in front of a backdrop of the Empire State Building and get our picture taken. If we liked it, we could buy it for $20 or something around there. After your picture was taken, it would be displayed on monitors throughout the line and people could see them. It was a great way to be embarrassed if your picture wasn't too great.

So after filing down a hall, we get to this area which will begin as our NY Skyride adventure. There was a gift shop and random things you could take your picture next to like a miniature Statue of Liberty.

We wait a while longer and after we finally made it through (my ticket kept getting rejected!), we went into a dark industrial looking room with monitors hanging from the ceiling. We watched a short movie about the Empire State building, until we finally made our way to the virtual experience. The virtual experience was sitting on this platform that shifted and moved. We were "supposed" to be in a helicopter (Kevin Bacon was our guide), being flown around New York City, enjoying views of some of the most popular buildings and landmarks in the city. It was so much fun. At one point, the "helicopter" went underwater.

After that, we FINALLY get to go to the top! We waited in line for the next elevator...

...and got inside. They told us we could only go to floor 80 and from there, we had to hike it up stairs. I didn't think it would be that bad. However, I was wrong. I think we had to go maybe 4 or 5 floors and I almost died when we got to the top.

However, almost dying was totally worth it. Here are some picture of the time we spent on top.