Practice, Learn, and Familiarize

Now that I have my first assignment as a professional tour director on my schedule, the next challenge is to be prepared like any good boy scout (or, in this case, girl scout). Although I have taken my own students on New York theater tours, we always had a motor coach at our disposal; I have never taken students on the subway. However, I have also never had the luxury of a step-on guide for a student tour; the student tour company provides a local, licensed tour. My job is to escort the group around New York, but I still want to be as knowledgeable as I can, so I spent the last two days familiarizing myself with the itinerary.


I started the day by locating the hotel. This proved to be more of a challenge than I thought. It seems in the last day the name of the hotel changed. The hotel was recently renovated and truly elegant, not the usual student hotel, at least on my student tours. When I inquired about the group, the desk manager couldn't find the reservation, but I also didn't know under whose name the reservation was made, so I sent a quick e-mail to the company who confirmed that, indeed, this was our hotel. The students are in for a very pleasant experience. Its location close to the United Nations and not far from Fifth Avenue and Bryant Park add to its charm.

I love to walk. When I don't walk in the city, I take a cab. I never learned the subway system, but it was clear from the itinerary that on at least one of the two days that we do not have a bus, the students are going to need to take the subway: it is just too far to walk. Therefore, my main purpose of running through the itinerary was to make sure I know where to get the subway, which train to take, where to exit the station, and in what direction to walk once we make our way out. I surprised myself and found it easier than I thought. All those wasted dollars on taxis on my past trips!

On day three the students will begin their day with shopping on Fifth Avenue before heading to Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building. I had the sense that the walk from the hotel to shopping would offer a better perspective of the city than a subway ride, so I walked up 42nd Street to Fifth Avenue, discovering (as native New Yorkers already know) the magnificent Bryant Park along the way. Directly in front of Bryant Park is the New York Public Library. Since Project Runway is very popular among high school students, I assume most of them will have heard of Bryant Park. All kids know the lions in front of the New York Public Library from the popular Ghostbusters, so I have decided that a picture stop at the library followed by a few minutes walk around Bryant Park will be a good way to start the morning before letting the students loose on Fifth Avenue.

On the second day, after seeing a production of Wicked, the students are participating in a class with cast members from the show. With an early morning call, I decided the subway will definitely be the best way to go. Notoriously bad at numbers (including remembering as well as adding them), I walked out of the subway and to Eighth Avenue confident that I was looking for 800; by the time I got to 52nd Street and couldn't find an 800 building, I decided to recheck the address. This reinforced the importance of previewing the trip; I should have been looking for 500 -- about 17 blocks away. Better to walk the blocks myself than with 20 high school students!

After locating the building and checking procedures with the security guide, I located the closest subway station right outside the door and headed to the students' next destination: South Street Seaport, a great place to hang out, shop, and take pictures of the great view of the Brooklyn Bridge. At this point in our trip we will be joined by a licensed step-in guide who will take us across the bridge, through the financial district, St. Paul's, and Ground Zero. Our itinerary also says that the student will experience Chinatown and have dinner in Little Italy, so I decided to a familiarize myself with the two adjoining neighborhoods.

Chinatown was a quick walk from South Street Seaport. The second largest Chinatown in the states (San Francisco is the largest) adjoins Little Italy where the students will be enjoying dinner. I learned that the best subway line to get back to Times Square for the group's evening performance was the R at the end of Canal which takes you straight up Broadway where we can walk to our performance of Mary Poppins. I have discovered that my greatest tool for this job is my iPhone! I downloaded the HopStop app, and now all I need to do to get anywhere is put in the location and destination and I am on my way. And, if I ever do get lost, all I need is to click on Google Maps, and I am on my way.

I didn't feel the need to preview the tour to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, or the Empire State Building; I have done all of those previously, and we have a bus to the ferry for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I previously found a walking tour of the theater district on Goldstar that I booked for the next morning; adding to my knowledge is always a good thing. Even though I majored in theater and took a fabulous course on American Musical Theater, that was 35 years ago!

The tour, which started in Times Square and walked us around to the various theaters, was a walking history of American theater using the physical buildings as the focal points. Much of the tour served as a reminder of past history and details learned and much forgotten as well as a new sense of modern theater history. I wish I had thought of taking notes, but with what I picked up and some reading I plan to do in the next week or so, I feel I have a lot more to offer the students. I asked our tour guide, Nathan, for his card; I thought that this might make a nice addition to any tour for high school theater students.

My first professional assignment is in three days: I am taking a family on a private tour of DC for a few hours that they have between a college tour in Virginia and taking off for more from National. I consider it great practice for everything I have learned in preparation for the DC tour guide license test. My second professional assignment is the New York tour, and I am feeling a lot better about that now that I have had a chance to walk through the itinerary. I am also coming up the day before the tour and will have some additional time with the final technical to be sure that someone with a bad sense of direction doesn't take 22 high school students down the wrong street!