Our trip to the Spider-Man 3 Premiere in New York City

Pictures from our trip are available in our GALLERY!

Oh jeez where to begin? About two weeks ago Graev was informed that he won a trip from MTV to see the Spider-Man 3 Premiere in New York. The trip included 5 days 4 nights in the DoubleTree Hotel in Time Square, $1,000 spending cash, a Playstation 3, a $500 gift certificate to Gamestop, a limo to and from the airport, and other things that I’ve likely forgotten by now. The trip feels like a blur in my memory now and we’re both so exhausted we can hardly think, but I’ll do my best to recount our experiences from the last few days.

Our trip began as we ventured forth from Southern California via Delta Airlines from Ontario Airport to Salt Lake City Airport. I would like to take this opportunity to thank MTV for providing us with so many fantastic prizes including coach class tickets with no leg room. Insert sarcasm. I’ll be blunt and negative because I have to be negative about something, right? The flight was horrible! Okay there I’ve got my negativity out. Including the layover in Salt Lake City and the trip to JFK our total travel time amounted to approx 14 hours, which includes airport security lines. I lied I have to be negative again. The baggage claim belt thingy broke and we had to wait over an hour for our luggage. At least we were off the plane!

So we met our Limo driver and departed JFK into the city. Passing through Queens was slow because of traffic but that was expected. The limo was very comfortable and we were able to enjoy ourselves as we spent about an hour to go 17.5 miles. Our driver, Amar from India, was surprisingly talkative.

We arrived outside our Hotel in Time Square at last! The DoubleTree Hotel was so cool! We’ve always stayed in hotels that are layed out or box-like in shape. This hotel was layed out in a very odd way. You entered through the rotating doors (a NY thing!) and found yourself in this tiny little room. And when I mean tiny I mean no more than 20 feet square. You immediately enter 1 of 3 elevators and ride to the 3rd floor – the Lobby. Once in the Lobby you check in, where they give you warm chocolate chip famous DoubleTree Cookies – we each had 2 – and head up to your floor. We were on the 27th floor which you would normally think is high up but not for this rocket powered elevator from hell that launched us to the top so fast we nearly ‘lost’ our free snack from the Delta flight all over the floor! You can see some amazing shots of Time Square from our hotel window in our gallery.

Our day began early the next morning! We awoke at 10am NY time because of the 3 hour time difference. That gave us only a little time before we had to head out to the premier. I honestly can’t remember what we did that day… we might have gone and looked at a few stores in Time Square but other than that we rested in preparation for the long night ahead. At about 4 in the afternoon we hailed our very first cab – okay I lied we had the door man do it because … because we could, I guess!

This cab ride was interesting to say the least. We found ourselves faced with a minor language barrier. We being from California and our friend Elebagelama Maged the Taxi Driver from somewhere else. Once we relayed that our destination was the Astoria Kaufman Stadium Theatre we were off! This was no mortal man my friends. Elebagelama Maged the Taxi Driver had super enhanced reflexes capable of avoiding pedestrians within inches – seriously inches. We weaved in and out of traffics, nearly clipped a tour bus, almost ran over a Traffic Attendant, almost hit a street light, and I could go on for hours. But the adventure had not even begun. Elebagelama Maged the Taxi Driver was on a mission. A mission of revenge or something. Before we knew what was going on we found ourselves driving right up next to another taxi. Elebage – let’s just call him Eleb – had reached out his window and flipped off the cab next to us. He began screaming “You are an IDEEEOTTT!” at the other driver. Swerving while screaming he repeated “IDEEEOTT!” somewhere near 15 times – Graev counted. Flipping eachother off and trying to run the other off the road they bickered while driving about using blinkers, staying in lanes, and other stuff.
I couldn’t stop laughing when he looked back at us and said “oooo I wish I were alone right now!”. Before I knew it we had ditched the other driver and headed towards Queens Bridge. Just when we thought we were in the clear the other driver swerves in front of us screaming some foul obscenities in his native tongue. His body language we understood quite clearly. Finally the vagabond was gone and Eleb took us to the premier. We stood behind probably 3,000 people as we worked our way to the entrance of the “Black Carpet” (clever for the movie). A marching band, jews for jesus <3 Spiderman, an old man in a spidey suit, and a few drunks later we entered the theater. I'll leave the movie review to Graev. It feels as though I have rambled on for hours in writing this. Fear not our faithful readers we are almost done. TRL, which I think stands for Total request live?, was pretty much the main reason MTV flew us all the way out there. We arrived at the studio and were taken to a holding room with comfortable seats and a huge LCD TV. Must have been 50 inches or so with a decent sound system. This is where the highlight of the trip was for me. The head producers and marketing people from Activision entered the room and we were given the honor of meeting them in person where they showed us everything about the new Spider-Man 3 game. We easily spent 2-3 hours with these guys playing the game and trying out missions. It wasn't too long before the MTV guys showed up and started the contest to see who could beat a certain mission with the fastest time. The remainder of our time in NYC we spent around the Rockefeller Plaza and Time Square areas. As huge Nintendo fans we spent a long time in the Nintendo World store and you can gain a fair bit of our experiences from the photos in our gallery. After the 12 hours it took to get home and the late nights we are definitely glad to be home in California. That's all that I could think of right now to write. If I remember more later I will add another entry.