Yesterday, I was invited to Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California for a tour by an acquaintance who works as a software engineer in the an­i­ma­tion department of the company. Unfortunately, a lot of it was private so I wasn’t able to take my photographs, but I was able to capture some of the more public areas.

Our tour started in the museum area. I don’t really watch movies or television shows, so a lot of this didn’t really have much meaning to me.

The tour continued outdoors.

These large tan buildings are where movie sets are created and scenes are filmed.

These facilities used to be on-site housing for actors, but now they’re just offices. Apparently that golf cart is manufactured by Cadillac and is owned by someone famous, but I didn’t really recognize the name so I don’t remember whose it is.

Apparently there’s a new Ghostbusters movie coming out. They had the Ghostbusters car parked outside.

We were then led through an outdoor set.

I don’t remember the significance of this building, but there were some awards sitting inside (which I was not permitted to photograph).

After a tour of that campus, I met up with my acquaintance, who had finished working, and we got a tour of her work area. An overwhelming majority of it was confidential, so the only photograph I have of it is this Spider-Man mural.

As part of our tour, there was a photo opportunity where my friend Doug Wreden and I were supposed to stand in front of a green screen and we would be chromakeyed into an episode of Jeopardy. The prompt was to act like we had won, but while I was thinking about how I would react if I won Jeop­ard­y, the photographer already captured the shot.

As someone who is not really a fan of movies, this wasn’t really the best tour for me. Sony also has a music division, and I discovered throughout the tour by way of random posters that some of my favorite artists are signed to Sony Music, but the tour itself focused almost entirely on film and not on music. I am a lot more interested in music than film and television, so if there was a more music-oriented tour, I think I would have enjoyed that a lot more.

The highlight of my visit was, by sheer luck and coincidence because that was just the walking route we happened to take, overhearing Olivia Rodrigo in one of those tan buildings rehearsing for her performance at Coachella 2024. My second favorite part of the visit was eating a free Rice Krispy Treat. I think that might put into perspective how disinterested I am in movies and movie stars.

With that being said, if you are a big movie nut, this could potentially be a good tour for you to take. You don’t need a special invitation to go on it like I did—apparently you can just go on Sony’s website and purchase tickets (at least for the first portion on the main campus, though it wouldn’t grant access to the animations building). If you like celebrities, you might even see some famous people during the tour.

On the same day that I went to Dinos Alive, I also went to Bubble World Los Angeles, which is in the same building—the Los Angeles Exhibition Hub in Montebello, California. Bubble World was actually the main reason we went to the Exhibition Hub at all, but I had such a positive experience here that I figured I would save the best for last on my blog so it would have the most prime real estate at the top before I go on my next chain of adventures.

Bubble World is an interesting place. It’s difficult to describe succinctly apart from just calling it an interactive art experience.

I’m not sure if you even noticed because I am so good at blending in with the arches, but believe it or not, I am actually in this next photograph:

Down the hall and to the right was the balloon room. This was a dimly lit room with extra large white balloons that looked like they were color-shifting because of the lighting. There were fans on one side keeping the balloons contained, and they would regularly pile as tall as the average person’s chest at the highest points. This was deceptively difficult to navigate through without popping the balloons (and we did come across a kid who was a bit too rough and caused one to burst).

After escaping the balloons, we were led to a mirror room with a light show.

The next major interactive area was a huge ball pit.

Partway through the experience was a wall with the “Bubble World” logo printed on it, and I figured it would make sense to take a photo in front of the sign that shows where I am.

On the way to the next area was a small bridge with a net full of balloons and a 360° screen on all four walls and the floor.

Next up were the sets. There were various little rooms set up and decorated in unique ways so people could take photos.

One of the final areas of Bubble World was a light show room. There were thousands upon thousands of light-up orbs hanging in columns from the ceil­ing, and a tiny path was left vacant so people could walk through and get a 360° light show experience.

The photo below was captured at the perfect moment when most of the bulbs were illuminated white, but these would all turn on and off in a pattern and change colors in a way that was not only mesmerizing but also created a kind of depth-warping optical illusion.

Right before the exit and gift shop, there was a station where you could stand on a platform and pull a string to raise what is the equivalent of just the circular part of a bubble wand a­round your body to encase yourself in a huge bubble. Unfortunately, it was a lot trickier than it seemed, and instead of wrapping myself in a huge bubble, I just got soap all over my hands and pants.

There isn’t actually anything to truly do while in Bubble World except for just look at things, but the things to look at are very unique, interesting, and visually appealing. If you consider this to be comparable to an art museum, Bubble World is actually great—instead of just staring at art pieces hung up on walls that are externally deemed to be expensive and arbitrarily assigned value, Bubble World lets you immerse yourself and be a part of the art.

I also enjoyed the fact that this functionally ended up like a selfie museum, but didn’t feel like it. Selfie museums tend to cater specifically towards people who want interesting photos to post on Instagram, and their sets are designed solely for photo op­por­tu­ni­ties. On the contrary, I liked that Bubble World focused more on creating in­ter­est­ing exhibits and con­forming to a theme, but still achieved that same objective—i.e., peo­ple take photos here be­cause they think “this is cool,” not necessarily be­cause “I am sup­posed to take a photo here.”

We paid $36.90 per person for general admission without any premium add-ons, and it took a little bit over an hour to get through everything. That is a little bit pricey compared to other places I’ve been, but probably not too bad considering that it’s in Los Angeles.

On that note, it might be useful to point out that it’s in Los Angeles County and not the City of Los Angeles. The Exhibition Hub is set up at the site of an old Costco, and it’s about ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles. In my opinion, that makes it better—there’s plenty of parking, there’s much less con­gestion getting there, and the ticket prices aren’t hyperinflated to account for downtown city expenses. With that being said, if you’re visiting LA and pri­ma­ri­ly staying downtown, you’ll need some form of vehicular transportation if you want to visit the Exhibition Hub.

Although I probably wouldn’t personally visit again, I did enjoy my experience and would recommend checking out if your circumstances align with what Bubble World offers. I also like the fact that I now have a lot of photos for the people who ask me why I only ever post pictures of stuff around me, and not of myself.

I’m in Southern California again for another quick week-long trip to visit a friend from out-of-state while she’s in town. Earlier today, we went to the Los Angeles Exhibition Hub and explored some of the attractions, one of which was Dinos Alive.

The premise of the exhibit was to show animated models of various different dinosaurs, some of which were built life-sized. Each animatronic had a little placard in front of it explaining its specie and other background information about the dinosaur. This place is definitely geared towards children, but it was still neat to walk around and check it out. There was some wild lighting so a lot of my photos look a bit strange; below are some of the pictures that came out the best.