Alas, due to some new rule hosted by the Today Show that we knew not of, we were herded like cattle to the rear of the crowd. So very not cool. We did, however, manage to have a wonderful time in the city.
We arrived after a bit of a delay within 5.5 hours at around 8:30pm at Penn Station. We walked straight through the glowing lights of Times Square and, upon seeing what appeared to be no line whatsoever, decided to find some dinner. We walked up to 60th street and found a quaint little diner and had pancakes and coffee and then marched over to Serendipity 3 for their famous Frozen Hot Chocolate.
Delicious.
We arrived back at Rockefeller Plaza at midnight and discovered we had been searching in the wrong place for the line (even though we had done this before 3 years prior) and there were already 50 people in line. While we were upset we quickly got over it and still thought we'd be in good shape. We began work on our sign with took about 3 hours and then came the home stretch. Around 4:30 am they served us free coffee and bagels and around 5:30 we discovered that there was in fact a V.I.P. line that was just as long as our own. No. Freaking. Way.
By the time we got in we were far into the back of the crowd behind a separate barrier. All those who go in the future, be warned, get this said fan pass, otherwise you wait overnight to get as good a view as you could have from down the street. The people that were first in the regular line (our line) had been there since 3:30 that afternoon and the V.I.P people showed up at 6am looking fresh and smelling like roses and got to the front. Somehow I don't think that makes sense. And, this is some new thing, as I said, because 3 years ago we saw Maroon 5 on the Today Show and it was ONE line and ONE huge fenced in area. Just saying. None the less I got some pics with my fabulous camera.
By 8:30 we were exhausted and irritated. We ended up finding food and a restroom and decided to visit the New York Public Library before we caught our bus back to D.C. The library was beautiful!
We got back to D.C. around 5:30pm on Friday and Jessie's wonderful Aunt Beth fed us and housed us and we finally fell into bed, 38 hours since we woke up excited and naive. But, it was an incredible experience. And now I can say I spent the night on the street in NYC :)
