The tour was about $19 per person. It's nice to walk around the studio, but I think the price was a bit high. They took us to the SNL studios and a bunch of other daytime and MSNBC stuff. It's interesting to walk where famous people have walked, but we didn't get to see anyone famous. It was a bit of a disappointment.

What’s it like to be Brian Williams, sitting behind a news desk? Is the Saturday Night Live set a laugh-a-minute? How does a green screen work? If you’ve ever lost sleep pondering these questions, or even thought about it for a few minutes, this may be the tour for you.

We purchased a ticket to tour NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center for $19 each. They don’t, however, make it easy on you. The tour departs in the candy center of the NBC Studio Gift Shop (why there’s a big candy store in the middle of all the LA Law and Friends paraphernalia, I’ll never know.) It is, I’m sure, a ploy to make you spend money, and it’s crowded to boot. You also have to pick up your tickets there a half-hour before your tour leaves or you’ll be charged a late fee of $7.50. Not cool.

My other complaint about the tour is that there are WAY too many people on the tour to really get a good experience. There were over 30 of us on this tour, and if you weren’t quick enough to get to the front to peek through a window or tall enough to see over everyone else, you missed a lot of the details.

That said, there were some perks on this day. It was a Saturday, so rehearsals for Saturday Night Live were underway. As we were going through the security check, Rachel Dretch, one of the SNL cast members, walked past us with her blue coat and coffee in hand. Once on the tour, we stopped by the studio to watch a bit of the rehearsal. The host for that week was Alec Baldwin (whom I believe is one the top five most-SNL-hosted host), and they were doing a bowling alley skit.

We stopped in a studio that was set up for tour interaction, where they took a souvenir photo of you behind a news desk, and I got to volunteer to do a weather report in front of a green screen. That was fun, and it was hard to know which direction to point (where is Virginia?) when you’re looking at your TV image and trying to read a teleprompter as well.

This tour was fun, but there were good and bad points. Whether I’d recommend it or not would depend on how long you were in NYC and what other things you’d want to see. If you haven’t done the Statue of Liberty and the main attractions, I’d say to keep this one on the back burner.

It is really cool being able to see where some of the shows we watch are actually recorded. On our tour, one of the students got to pretend to be a weatherman, and it's not as easy as it seems--let's just say that.

Admission is $17.50 for adults. The most expensive tourist activity that I have ever paid for. When we bought tickets and paid that amount, we expected to get quite a tour. We were wrong. This is a 70-minute tour. You begin by going through security, which I must admit, was stricter than even the Statue of Liberty ferry! This takes approximately 15 minutes. Then you are loaded onto an elevator and whisked up to a room that houses three flat-screen TV's. It is here that you view a 10-minute video, which is hosted by Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on the studio's history. This is your first opportunity to watch clips of shows you have seen 100 times before! Next they take you to the Dateline studio. This isn't exactly an interesting studio and who watches that show anyway?? From here you board the elevator again (this by the way is what takes up the majority of the tour time) to the floor that houses the Saturday Night Live studio. Normally, the tour groups are given some background on the show and an explanation of how the sets work. However, we were lucky enough to watch a bit of a rehearsal for Saturday's show. Donald Trump was to be the host for that week and he was doing a scene with cast members Horatio Sanz and Maya Rudolph. I have to admit that I was pretty neat to see and was the only highlight of the whole tour!! Next, they send you into a mock-control room/news set where they take souvenir photos of everyone in front of a cheesy news desk. Then they ask for a volunteer to do a silly weather forecast in front of a green screen. We were lucky enough to be with a large group of drama club-high schoolers who were as obnoxious as could be. And to top it all off, your final activity is to watch supposedly HDTV clips of NBC shows (clips that you already saw in the first video) that make you nauseous on a wraparound screen.

At least go on a Friday afternoon when you might have a chance to see an SNL rehearsal.