{"id":1359,"date":"2011-08-27T12:30:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-27T02:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/?p=1359"},"modified":"2012-02-01T22:37:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-01T12:37:56","slug":"los-angeles-2011-part-9-hollywood-sight-seeing-with-orbic-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/?p=1359","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles 2011 part #9 – Hollywood sight seeing with Orbic Air"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greetings!<\/p><\/div>\n

It was our last day in LA so we thought we’d see it off in style… from the sky!<\/p>\n

Orbic Air<\/a> is a helicopter tour company running out of Van Nuys<\/strong> airport – one of the biggest airports for private aircraft in the states so you may even catch a glimpse of a celeb stumbling out of a fictional “G6” clutching a bottle of Don P. dregs \ud83d\ude09 There is a wide range of tours to suit any budgets and interests with selected scenic spots like the Getty Museum<\/a> or LA Live<\/a> arenas or you can go all out with an “ultimate” tour which covers all the major highlights. There are also dinner packages which include meal vouchers at the luxury restaurants in and around the airport. That said, there was really only one thing we wanted to see and that was what makes LA, LA…. Hollywood!<\/p>\n

The process is very straight forward. After arriving, you get to wait in very nice waiting room before a short brief then a golf buggy ride out to the runway. Our pilot was very friendly and explained everything clearly and simply.<\/p>\n

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Los Angeles - its flat<\/p><\/div>\n

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LA Freeways<\/p><\/div>\n

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LA Valley college<\/p><\/div>\n

The tour obviously focused mostly on Hollywood however you could easily see the downtown area and further. It begins with a view of some of the many snaking freeways that spaghetti the LA landscape. As the pilot said, if only he could take the helicopter home to avoid that infamous LA traffic! Universal studio city was next which looked like a permanent circus from above if it wasn’t for the War of the Worlds<\/a> jumbo jet wreck and drive in movie screen sized blue screens.<\/p>\n

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Universal City<\/p><\/div>\n

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Universal City back lot + War of the Worlds plane crash<\/p><\/div>\n

Next is the iconic Hollywood sign, you thought it was pretty cool looking up at it from Canyon Lake<\/strong> road? Its nothing compared to looking at it front on from about 50 metres away.<\/p>\n

The postcard at the start of this entry was taken @30mm on FF, yep, THAT close!<\/p>\n

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Hollywood Blvd, downtown LA in the distance<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hollywood walk of fame, Mann's Chinese Theatre, Hollywood and Highland<\/p><\/div>\n

It was cool to fly over the main tourist spot of Hollywood Blvd<\/strong> and be able to pick buildings that we had visited earlier. Being the focus of the tour, you get a nice slow circle of this area before heading over to Beverly Park<\/strong> (Beverly Hills, Bel Air and Hollywood hills are also covered) where hundreds of the most famous and disgustingly rich celebs are out admiring their gold plated shark tanks or are building a guest house for their guest house or simply tearing down the original house and building a new one – I’d probably do the same if it was previously occupied by one of the Kardashians<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Beverly Park<\/p><\/div>\n

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Beverly Park<\/p><\/div>\n

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Beverly Park<\/p><\/div>\n

Overall it was an amazing experience (more so if you’ve never flown in a helicopter before) made even better by the very friendly and professional staff. Special thanks to Merlinda<\/strong> for making the booking and admin process a breeze.<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this Merlinda, hoping you kept that (modest) tip for yourself! We all know those pilots already get paid too much \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Photo tip: if you’re quick on the lens changes, take a long lens to pick off sites on the horizon. Generally I would recommend a wide to mid-range zoom to capture the vastness as well as zooming in on some of the luxury homes, cool movie back lots and landmarks.<\/em><\/p>\n

Los Angeles 2011 part #1 – Arrival, Melrose Trading Post<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #2 – West Hollywood shopping, Mulholland Drive<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #3 – Downtown shopping – Fashion District<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #4 – Downtown shopping – Japantown<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #5 – Steel Panther @ The House of Blues 17\/5\/11<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #6 – Hollywood sign, Farmer’s Market<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #7 – Peterson Automotive Museum<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #8 – Greater LA area shopping<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #9 – Hollywood sight seeing with Orbic Air<\/a>
\nLos Angeles 2011 part #10 – Driving in Los Angeles\/California<\/a><\/p>\n

Complete Los Angeles 2011 photo gallery here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was our last day in LA so we thought we’d see it off in style… from the sky! Orbic Air is a helicopter tour company running out of Van Nuys airport – one of the biggest airports for private aircraft in the states so you may even catch a glimpse of a celeb stumbling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[574,388],"tags":[576,1254,1262,1259,1264,1258,1249,1248,400,594,1229,1261,626,592,1252,2777,1263,1260,1250,50,1256,488,770,925,391,1253,1251,1265,1255,1257],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1854,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soulbridgemedia.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}