I hope you like them.
On the way to the Ka'a'awa Valley (where a big portion of the 5 hour tour is held) you pass by a few locations that you don't really have time to stop at. For example, we quickly drove by The Searcher (Penny's boat), the hotel that Locke is pushed out of, and the convention centre that the airport scenes are filmed at, and the street corner where Nadia is struck by a car. You don't really stop at these locations, so you've got to catch a shot as you're passing by.
In this picture you can see where they filmed the Oxford University scenes between Faraday and Desmond.
You also stop along the way to see where Anthony Cooper's residence was, and almost right across the street was where they filmed Eko's death scene / where Jacob's Cabin was filmed, too. They're both on an old road connecting one side of Oahu with the other. In the Cooper shot there's some guy gardening or repairing something, and that's all it is. It's not the Lost crew prepping for another shoot.
Then, not far up the road from there is the location where Sayid was working with Habitat for Humanity. It appears to be a little spot where someone has a boat trailer or something. There's another location on private property along this road as well, where the remains of the actual airframe they used in the pilot is stored. The Lost crew was at that location as we drove by setting up for a shoot. It appeared like they were prepping for an interior shot, they weren't using the airframe for the shot - it's under a big tarp just sitting in storage.
There are a few more stops before you make it out to the Ka'a'awa Valley - which includes the Waikane Pier (where they film some of the submarine, Pala Ferry and Jin's fishing village scenes) but the pictures are dull and require a lot of imagination to transform them into anything you'd recognize from the show.
Some interior scenes are filmed out there, too, where Eko murders some drug dealers (which is also the same location as where Sun is filmed in Korea. There's a window in the background of the scenes that you can recognize in both scenes.
At the Ka'a'awa Valley you basically tour through a long circuit around the interior of the valley, and lots of Lost scenes and movies are filmed in there. I first felt that the Hummer was a bit of a novelty that the tours used to attract people - you know, like a specialty vehicle to add excitement to the trip - but some of the places you drive around in this valley require a big four-wheel drive vehicle.
So once you're driving around the valley, the first thing you notice is how vast and awesome it is. It's very cool being out on the track seeing the scenery - its awesome even without the Lost locations on it. There are horseback tours and some ATV tours you can take out back there, too.
One of the first stops once you get back in there is where Goodwin and Anna Lucia have their fatal chitchat in The Other 48 Days. Those two logs are still sitting right there.
This is also the very same location where Ellie Hawkins and Daniel Faraday have their chat on the way to the Jughead Bomb. You get an opportunity to re-enact the scene if you're with someone - our guide Aaron provided the rifle, I don't travel with one.
The next stop is the scene when Hurley's entourage pushes the VW van down the hill to jump-start it. It would have been quite a chore to get that van all the way out there for filming, let me tell you. Anyhow, once again, Aaron appears from the back of the Hummer with a toy VW Van. With a little trick photography, you can re-enact pushing it down the hill, too.
Then, just around the corner from that scene there are two more spots. One was the infamous old bridge that Hurley and Charlie cross in Season 1 and the other was from season 1 as well, when Boone and Shannon are scaling a mountain-side ridge. Basically, they were both filmed at the exact same spot with the camera in different angles. Pretty neat. There were a few shots like this in the valley.
Here you can see a shot from Season 3 when Ben intercepts Jack and company on their way to the radio tower. The establishing shot for the valley is located down below as our guide is holding the picture. Then, the scene where Jack beats Ben up for a while, that's filmed in this exact same location - they just took all the other people out of the shot for it, even though it looked like Jack took Ben aside.
The next stop is the Jughead bomb structure which is still standing. Normally these things would be taken down, but for some reason, the crew has left it up. Do they still need it for season 6? I have no idea.
A little further around the valley is Hurley's golf course, which you'd never recognize, I don't think. Then the tour guide, Aaron, pulls Todd McFarlane's Hurley figure out of the back of the Hummer and you get to have your picture with him. More trick photography ;) In some instances these pictures turn out so well that you can fool your friends, having them believe that you actually met a character out of Lost. I would imagine that if you actually met Jorge Garcia, he likely wouldn't pull out a golf pin with boxer shorts on it just for your picture, though.
What you didn't know about Hurley's golf course is this: it's filmed on the same location as the Gallimimus stampede in Jurassic Park. The log that Tim, Dr. Grant and Lex hide behind while the stampede is going on is still there on the grounds. You can get your picture with it, as well.
More trick photography, we didn't actually hide from a tyrannosaurus. Although, in real life, I'd sacrifice myself to the dinosaur instead of feeding it my wife. Probably.
If you turn around from that very same location, there are three or four big Godzilla footprints from the Mathew Broderick film. They're big - apparently they used to be like 7 feet deep, but horses and cattle fell into them, so they were back-filled before PETA found out. (I'm only guessing about that part about PETA).
The next thing you find up the road is where the 1950's military other's camp is located when Locke meets Richard Alpert for the "first time" chronologically. The tents were all set up amongst those coconut trees. After Locke flashes away to another time, he's literally standing in the same location he was in - but they tore the set down between takes. That was impressive to me, considering all they had to do was point the camera 20 degrees in any direction and you wouldn't be able to tell (and it would have saved hours in tear-down time). But they filmed it right at very same spot, which looks awesome.
Then, on your way out of the valley, you pass by an old military battery. The Ka'a'awa Valley park is privately owned and (if I recall correctly) is like 4,000 acres or something like that. The military back in the old days commandeered about 1,000 of those acres and used the location as an air strip and a way to shoot boats off the coast. All of that is in the past, but the battery is the site of the Tempest Station from Season 4. Inside there are a bunch of posters and autographed stuff to look at.
The next day, on the way to the airport I had a brief opportunity to take a shot of The Searcher, which was Penny's boat in the Season 4 finale. I think they filmed the Season 5 stuff of the Oceanic 6 (+ Desmond and Lapidus) on there, as well. I wish the shot was a bit better, but we were in a shuttle taking us back to the airport - there wasn't really time to stop. The Searcher is the boat on the right, if you zoom in you can see its name on the hull.
This was the second last day of our honeymoon. We didn't see any cast members or crew while we were on the tour BUT we totally bumped into Terry O'Quinn while at the airport the next evening. He was super nice.
We were scanning our carryons through the x-ray machines when my wife spotted him. He was singing to himself, carrying a piece of carry-on luggage and his little guitar. You can't see it, but he was wearing a hat. He was nice enough to stop and let us take a picture. He said they didn't need him for the episode they were filming, so he got a little extra time off. We didn't get to chat much more after that because another couple interjected so that they, too, could get a photo. Otherwise, I'm sure Terry and I would have been close friends.
He didn't ask if he could get a picture of us together on his camera - and I forgot to mention how much I enjoyed his performance in Old School, which I'm sure he would have appreciated ;)
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