On the Road with Sara: Smore cones-Victorious

So the title isn't quite the musical mishmash. That would be because we had a chef instead of a musical act for the 2PM. The chef's are the most time intensive with the day of production as well as the pre-planning. There's the setting of the stage; we used a range and deep fryer today and tables for the stage. Plus shopping for all of the ingredients to make the recipes takes forever. They started prepping the ingredients several days ago and moved everything to the backstage this morning where they continued to do work on it. The thing with the cooking shows is it's just as much smoke and mirrors as the concerts. 99% of the work is done before they go on stage. So who was our chef guest today? The one and only, Guy Fieri! Let me tell you he is the best! He is totally personable, down to earth and went out of his way to thank everyone and tell them how great the day was. The staff here had such a great time joking around with him. Once I sat down for the first time at 6PM I realized how late it was and I hadn't accomplished hardly anything (well kinda). He ended up doing a longer show than he was supposed to and then did a 100+ person book signing. All while we were loading in the 8PM show.

Prepping for Guy Fieri's demo

Victoria Justice was in the 8PM slot. If you don't have young kids you probably have no clue who she is. Two words Disney..Channel. So it's tracks, with some dancing and a bunch of flashing lights. Unfortunately, the lights required so much smoke I couldn't see 5ft in front of me on the side of the stage and was choked out by it anyway. The tour manager asks me to review the timeline of the day and I see "Glam time" at 5PM. "Glam Time"? I ask. He laughs, rolls his eyes, and says "hair and makeup". 5PM for an 8PM show. So 7:45PM rolls around and I ask if we're looking good to start at 8P and am told that they need until 8:10P...she's not ready yet. Finally at 8:15 we started with the emcee, rolled into a trailer of her upcoming movie and she took the stage at 8:21. :( I'd cry if it took me 3 hours to get ready every day and honestly you couldn't tell. She's the sweetest little thing and you could tell she loves her fans. She ended up going out and signing in the afternoon for the crowd that was waiting for hours. They do a VIP meet and greet after the show. You purchase the meet and greet and get swag like a t-shirt, bag, laminate, etc. Each person coming back has to have one...parents included. If the parents didn't have one they sent the kids in by themselves. They sold over a 100 at $150 a pop. I'll let you do the math on that one. They normally do over 200! The crowd was crazy. We had an estimated 21,000! They were crammed in like sardines and completely throw off our numbers because they're little people. =) Twenty minutes after the show we're starting this meet and greet that ends up taking 1.5hr and she even goes back out to see the few remaining fans that stuck around to try and catch a glimpse. Now they're like any other kids, hanging out in the dressing room gossiping, taking photos to tweet and talking about their passports for Europe (that last part is normal for a 19 year old right?).