Walking Dead Tour

On Saturday, Greg and I went to Atlanta for a Walking Dead tour. We spent the night with my parents on Friday night and then Greg and I got up about 5:45 and left at 6:15 for our 9:30 tour in Atlanta. My parents kept the boys for the whole day for us.(they are saints!!) We ended up getting to our tour a 8:30, but I'd much rather be there early than late.

 

Greg with the Rick cut out at the tour office before we left. It was a sold out tour. We went through a company called Atlanta Movie tours. They do a Catching Fire tour (since the trilogy was/is filmed in Atlanta) a Atlanta movie tour, where they go to a ton of locations from several movies like Anchorman 2, Hall Pass, Gone with the Wind, What to Expect when Expecting, etc. and they do two Walking Dead tours. One tours Atlanta and is from the first season and the do one near Newnan that goes to the places from season 2, like Woodberry, etc. We did the first season tour of Atlanta.

The tour office is right across the street from this area, we passed it walking to our tour bus. A lot of scenes were filmed here, this is where they park the truck when they go back for Merle on the roof. It's where Rick and Glenn are going to steal the van when they leave the department store.

I got several pictures online of Walking Dead scenes that we got to see. This is roof of the department store on the show.

And this is the "department store" that they were on in season one.

Some scenes from the show.

This is where Rick is riding into town on his horse.

Scene from Walking Dead

These are the doors that the zombies were pounding on.

It was never a department store and they added these words "Bradbury's" just for the show.

This is the parking lot that Glenn steals the car from at the beginning of season one.

This is the street that Rick gets in the tank.

This is all I could find online, but you can see the building in this scene.

Another thing I loved about this tour was seeing downtown Atlanta. We've been a million times, but you can't look when you're driving, so it was so nice to have somebody else driving us around and we could look at everything.

This is the alley that Rick and Glenn go down and climb up the fire escape to get into the department store.

After touring the main downtown locations, we went to a goat farm that was featured in the show. The goat farm is where the Vatos set up camp and where they held Glenn when they kidnapped him. Here's some scenes from the show that were filmed here.

It was such a neat place to go. It's actually an artist compound where people live and work. It's been in a lot of movies and was just a really cool place to walk around. I took a ton of pictures.

It was also used in Catching Fire/Hunger Games. It's where they do the name drawing and Katniss is called to be in the games again. It's district 12, so they actually brought in all this coal to make it look like a coal mining district. (this is a picture from the movie)

We actually spent a lot of time here, they let us walk around and explore.

They used this in some scenes, but I can't remember which ones.

They had props for us to use to take pictures with. Greg's always such a trooper.

Another picture from Catching Fire

A scene from Catching Fire, you can see how they built up the set

I'm glad I got some pictures of this because that's what I recognize from the Catching Fire scenes.

Another scene from Catching Fire that was filmed in this same location.

They had a coffee shop in there and a little sitting area set up, so that was fun to walk around. They were actually setting up for filming later in the day, but we don't know what they were going to be filming there.

Our tour guide has been in over 40 films and was a zombie on Walking Dead several times. His last appearance was considered "a featured zombie" so he can't do it anymore. He was the zombie that Rick and Darryl found when they were looking for Sophie and they could tell he had just ate, so they cut up his stomach to see if there were bits of Sophie in there. It was fun hearing the stories from behind the scenes.

We went by the place that they used for the King County sheriff's department, you can see it in the right corner of this scene.

There's actually no King County in Georgia, they named it that after one of their favorite icons--Stephen King.

This was actually their production studio and they filmed some scenes inside for different shots.

 

We went to the "hospital" that Rick wakes up in. This is what it looked like in the scene where he leaves the hospital.

 

This is not a hospital but a children's shelter. It was really neat to see it in person. On the show, they added a couple of stories, digitally, to make it look bigger.

The door he comes out of when he leaves the hospital.

He goes across the street and sees the helicopter and military set up.

This is where that was filmed.

Our tour guide actually had an action figure made after the zombie he played.

We went to the "CDC" that was featured in the show. This is the scene where they come up on the CDC.

It's actually the Cobb Energy performing arts center. It's prettier and easier to get permits to film here than it is with the CDC, so they used this.

This was a neat place to go, just because it was so pretty. This was in Cobb county, the county Greg and I lived in back when we lived in Atlanta (2004-2007) and we've been down this way a ton and to buildings right next to this, but never to this.

 

Next, we went to the Jackson Street bridge. The scene from the bridge is used in the opening credits, but it's been altered. They took a picture and then added lanes and stuff to make it look like he was going up I-75. They actually took the picture of him next to the train track that the tour office was next to and put that on the scene of him going into town.

 

I was so excited to go to this. I would love to go there with my good camera (and somebody who knows how to use my good camera ;) and take some pictures of sunset or night time. I just love this view of the city.

I took a million pictures. I'm only putting like, 1/3 of the pictures I took on this post. I just love Atlanta and Georgia and I love having pictures of the scenic parts.

Rick going over the bridge in the show.

 

After our tour was over, we went out to lunch and sat down and enjoyed our meal. We went to Los Mas, a cute little Mexican restaurant right around the corner from where our tour took off from. It was good and the weather was so beautiful that we got to sit outside.

We had such a great time, even the drive was nice because we were able to talk and listen to music and didn't have to worry about stopping for potty breaks for anybody that couldn't hold it. It was an amazing day date for us, but I was definitely happy to see my little boys when I got back. They didn't miss us at all, they had such a great time spending the day with Mamaw and Papaw.

You can see Carter's poor eyes are swollen from the allergies. Me and him have been taking lots of Benadryl lately. I'm going to call his allergist tomorrow and see what else we can be doing. We change their clothes when they've come in for the morning and give them a shower and fresh clothes. I've been giving them a spoonful of local honey on a regular basis. I'm giving them children's zrytec and it doesn't seem to be doing much. I can't make him stay inside until spring and all the pollen has passed. He just looks so pitiful to me there. I feel like my allergies are going to kill me, but I'd take his allergies with mine if it meant he wouldn't have them anymore. I can handle it, give me some Benadryl and lots and lots of coffee and I can push through. I'd much rather be miserable than have either of the boys be miserable.

I was gone all day and they had Mamaw and Papaw all to themselves. And do they want to sit in my lap and cuddle after me being gone all day? No--I'm chop liver. :)

So, not only did my parents watch the boys the entire day, but they also cooked supper for us when we got back to their house. Best day ever!! We get back from having a great time, get free food cooked for us and the boys and then all we have to do is go home and bathe the boys and put them to bed--easy peasy. The boys had to set up so they could watch Papaw grilling. They wanted to be first in line to "taste test" anything that might need testing. Just so happens, a couple of hot dogs needed a little taste testing and the boys stepped up and got the job done.

 

 

 I don't think anybody reads this blog but my family, but if somebody else happens to find this post and have questions about the walking dead tour, you can email me Samantha (dot) westover (at) Hotmail (dot) (com) and I can try and answer any questions you have. I highly recommend doing this tour though. If you're not into Walking Dead, I'd still consider doing the movie tour, it's such a fun way to get to see the city. We've done one in New York and two in LA and it was such a fun way to see the city.