Lights, Camera, Action: Top NYC Television and Movie Sites

A unique type of student travel is available In New York City, where groups can learn about the world of television and movies with visits to sites made famous on both the big and small screens.

In the 1990s, Georgette Blau moved into an apartment on the East Side of Manhattan, only to discover that she lived near what had been the Jefferson apartment in the long-running situational comedy, The Jeffersons. This gave Blau an idea to create tours that allow people to straddle fiction and reality by passing the doorsteps of television and movie characters and real-life celebrities. As a result of Blau's imaginative idea, student tours can shop, eat, drink, and dance at the New York sites that have been featured in movies and on television, including visits to some of the hotspots featured in such shows as The Sopranos, Spider-Man, Friends, and Cosby.

The New York TV and Movie Sites tour is a three-hour motorcoach tour that covers more than 40 sites featured in over 60 television shows and movies. Tourists head to locations from The Devil Wears Prada, The Interpreter, and The Apprentice. From the bus, students also catch a glimpse of the restaurant used in Spider-Man. After so many years seeing it on the television screen, students visit the familiar apartment building where Monica, Chandler, and the other Friends live. Great photo ops are available on the steps of the Cosby townhouse, the Ghostbusters firehouse, and to the diner used in Men in Black and Woody Allen's Manhattan.

Tours can also be combined with a visit to the historic NBC Studio. An NBC Page serves as a guide for student tours as they visit the television operating center and NBC/Sharp History Theater. The tour also includes a visit to a couple of NBC's most famous studios, including Saturday Night Live, Today Show, and others. In the make-up room, students see prosthetic pieces built for Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

The two-hour Central Park Movie Sites Tour walks student through some of the famous park's movie sites, including the Boathouse Café used in When Harry Met Sally and the park's Bandshell from Breakfast at Tiffany's and Kramer vs. Kramer. Groups also take a water break at Bethesda Fountain, used in Ransom and One Fine Day. There are great photo-ops at the famous Tavern on the Green, used in Ghostbusters and Wollman Rink, featured in movies like Love Story and Serendipity. In all, the tour covers more than 40 movie and television locations.

Sopranoland has never been more alive than it is now with a four-hour bus tour of sites made famous in the smash-hit The Sopranos. More than 40 location sites on the tour include Father Phil's Parrish and the high school where A.J. dumped pizza boxes into the pond. Tours also see Pizzland, the Muffler Man, and other sites from the opening credits. Memorable photo-ops are taken at the restaurant booth where Tony sat in the final scene of the series and on the steps of the diner where Chris met his untimely end.

For those student tours visiting Washington, D.C., tours are also available of the Capitol city's television and movie sites. The three-hour bus tour features more than 30 locations from 50 movies and television shows on this guided tour.

Student tours enjoy shopping at the mall where No Way Out and True Lies was filmed, followed by a chance to stand on the steps of the house used in The Exorcist. The tour also visits locations from Wedding Crashers, West Wing, X-Files, Independence Day, and Forrest Gump. Along the way, student tours also take in some of the Capitol's most important and famous government sites. From classic films of the 1970s such as The Godfather II to the recent Mission Impossible III, the tour of Washington, D.C., movie and television sites takes student tours on a journey of the timeline of filming in D.C. Tours are led by local Washington, D.C., actors.