San Francisco to Los Angeles...

[Jylly18]

Hi, my husband and I are going to San Francisco for our honeymoon August 12-17. My husband mentioned that he really would like to take a day and go to LA to see the Price is Right being taped. We are trying to figure out if this is a feasible option. Looking on yahoo driving directions it looks like the driving time if we rent a car is about 5 hrs, does anyone know if that is correct? Also, how much additional time should be planned for traffic? We are from Wisconsin, the biggest city we have ever drivin in is Milwaukee, so driving in LA makes me nervous...is the drive easy? Does anyone know of another reasonable option besides renting a car? Amtrak was expensive and the trip was like 12 hrs, my travel agent said if we wanted to do this the best thing would be to rent a car, but I thought I would get some other opinions. Has anyone on here been to the Price is Right before? Do you have any advice?
Thanks for any help you can give me on this topic!

[Midwest Michael]

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

I think you'll probably want to skip LA for this trip. Considering your timeframe, its a really long drive for just one thing - and its really not something you can do in just a day.

I think 6-7 hours is a much more likely time frame for the SF-LA trip if you stick to I-5. But if you are really going to do this, then you should make it worth your while and take 2 days and drive along the coast.

I haven't been to the Price is Right, but I do have a friend who went there - and even made it on stage and won a bedroom set or something like that - and the report I got was that there was a lot of waiting, it was very hot, and the whole thing ended up taking most of a day. Personally, if I had the time I'd still like to try going at some point since I've been watching the show since I was a kid, but I wouldn't do it on a Honeymoon, and I certainly wouldn't go all the way from SF to LA just to do it.

Now having said that, if your husband is really insistant on doing this, I'd look into flying down to LA. I'd bet you could find flights on Southwest or another discount carrier for around $100 each for a round trip.

[AZBuck]

Welcome aboard the RoadTrip America forum.

It's nearly 400 miles one way between San Francisco and LA. That Yahoo tells you that that's going to take a little over 5 hours borders on the insane. It is just not possible. Seven and a half would be more like it. Then you'd have to stand in line for quite a while before being admitted to the sound stage, sit for another fair bit while they got things set up, and possibly sit through 5 or so shows. Typically game shows are taped back to back in a single session and they start relatively early in the morning. And finally you'd have to make that killer drive back to San Francisco. I've been through the process for Jeopardy! many years ago and while it was fun, I did it while I was in LA. I really wouldn't want to think about doing it as a day trip from northern California on my honeymoon. At a minimum, you'd need to book a room in LA for the night before you had tickets for the show.

AZBuck

[Mark Sedenquist]

My husband mentioned that he really would like to take a day and go to LA to see the Price is Right being taped.

Like AZBuck and Midwest Michael have indicated, it would require two full days to drive down, sit for the taping and drive back. Casual drivers will find that the time between San Francisco and LA is much closer to eight hours once you factor in the traffic at both ends. The only practical way you could do this in a day would be to fly very early in the morning and return to San Francisco very late that night.

Mark