“Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it.” – Monica Geller
In our life, Stephen and I can find a Friends quote for just about everything. We LOVE the TV show Friends. I can’t even count how many times we’ve watched the series through, not to mention how often we see episodes on repeat on TV.
I know that not everything about Friends hits the same way it did in the 90s and 00s, but for the most part we still find it fun and funny. So, when the opportunity came up to go to The Friends Experience: The One in Detroit we thought that, like gum, would be perfection.
The Start Of The Friends Experience
It was in a mall in Auburn Hills about 40 minutes north of Detroit, MI and we went while in the Lansing/Detroit area for 10 days. I hadn’t expected it to be in the mall, but it was the perfect space with lots of room for the silliness, and we do enjoy the silliness.
Please consult images from the opening credits, those umbrellas are correct, thank you very much. Honestly, being in the Friends Experience was like constantly taking a test of our knowledge. And, since tests make us all better learners, we were up for the challenge.
The infamous door is where you start your journey as you watch a video about The Friends Experience with the rules and information about what to expect. We booked the photo package ahead of time, so we were able to take as many official pictures as we wanted. It slid right open after the video ended which made complete sense since the door hasn’t been locked in five years.
When we first walked into this space, I’ll admit I was a little bit disappointed. It felt a little cheesy and I wasn’t sure I was going to love what came next. I know! I was shocked too, but I was so wrong. After posing here for a few pictures we moved and and that’s really where the fun began.
Behind The Scenes
As soon as you leave the sofa and intro credits set, you get to see real costumes from the show. I’m pretty sure I can remember every scene these are from, both the costumes and the iconic lines for each character.
It was neat to see other behind-the-scenes info, especially learning about the “theme” and palette for each character’s costumes, as well as seeing the layouts for the sets.
Seeing a signed copy of the script was another exciting thing that I hadn’t expected since I didn’t really think about the writers when watching the show because the episodes just turn up at my house. There were three different signed scripts to see.
The classic “Rachel” haircut was iconic when I was younger, so seeing all the iterations of Jennifer Aniston’s hair was really cool, even if it made me feel old. I mean, isn’t that just kick-you-in-the-crotch, spit-on-your-neck, fantastic, when you see things from your youth in a museum-style experience?
The Stories
Once you go through behind-the-scenes you start to see the sets and photo op set-ups. One of my all-time FAVORITE episodes is “The One Where No One’s Ready.” This has the taking of the essence of the chair, the opposite of taking someone’s clothes (opposite is opposite) and of course some characters going commando, which you never do in another man’s fatigues. But the fact that they had this set up so you could recreate the iconic “Could I be wearing any more clothes!?” moment just really started to kick the fun into high gear.
I love this complicated and thorough chart for who dated each other. It has a NYC subway map vibe which I also appreciated. So many leaf blowers to go through until our favorites found their lobsters.
One of the easter eggs that can be found throughout the show is what’s on the Magna-Doodle on the back of the guys’ apartment door. Underneath each one you can see which episodes they’re from. Fellow Friends fans – care to take a guess on a few in the comments?
One of the touches that made this experience so great, besides all the props, costumes and sets, was that there were small extra touches. Like the duck and the chick (the actual one, not Joey and Chandler) sounds coming out of the foosball table.
Getting to pose with Hugsy, Joey’s bedtime penguin pal – uh, sorry *secret* pal, was a definite dream come true!
There were some great Thanksgiving episodes and seeing this very iconic prop set brought back memories of escaped Underdog balloons, beef in the trifle and of course, “more turkey Mr. Chandler?”
These posters lined the alleyway where you could pretend to be Phoebe playing her guitar. When you looked closely, they were little easter eggs themselves for different episodes and hilarious scenes and lines.
One of the criticisms of the show was that it’s all about sex. And that’s true, even when a kid (who eventually turns out to be her brother) accidentally gives Phoebe a condom when he drops some change in her guitar case. But any true fan knows that the show (unlike Kicks, Skids and Slorps which weren’t suitable for adults anyway) is designed to highlight what life might be like for some 20-30 somethings as they figure out their adult lives.
Monica’s Apartment
Seeing the hallway and into the kitchen in Monica’s apartment gave us plenty of opportunities to recreate some of our favorite moments from the show. Like when Ross “falls” down the stairs while pranking Rachel with Ben or when Monica tries to find the ink stain on her housekeeper’s jeans to prove she was being stolen from. Other guests (and the very young photo staff) looked at us a little weirdly sometimes, but that’s what these spaces are for – creating and recreating the moments you love from the show. You can see these below!
Chandler’s Apartment
Probably one of the areas we interacted with the most was the boys’ apartment.
This is where we got to play some foosball, hug Hugsy, looked at Stevie, wondered if we could move the hockey stick and go inside to see if it would fit a grown man, and have the best nap in the world. But nothing prepared us for being able to sit down in the loungers – clearly these are replacement loungers after the devastating thing that happened to Rosita that time she wasn’t healed.
OH yeah! Let’s just turn on the Baywatch and relax!
Central Perk
Ah, the coffee shop, where they all hung out at 11am on Tuesday and couldn’t figure out why their bosses didn’t like them. It’s also where viewers saw a few famous cameos from Robin Williams and Billy Crystal and Helen Hunt and Leila Kenzle to name a few.
This was a much more fun sofa to pose on, although it’s literally only while writing this post that I’ve noticed that the sofa from the opening credits IS THE SAME ONE FROM CENTRAL PERK! What!? How many times have I watched this show and not caught that!? Ok, sorry I’m back.
Here’s me dreaming of a man with hair brighter than the sun… oh, you know, Gunther Central Perk.
Gift Shop
I could’ve bought just about everything in the gift shop – like Bloomies calls to Rachel, so too did the tiny Hugsys and Crap Bags call to me. But since we bought the photo package we decided to skip the merch this time around.
Recognize The Scenes?
We recreated a few scenes from Friends while we were on the sets – can you work out which ones? As I mentioned above, this is one of the best parts of The Friends Experience – getting to recreate scenes that you love from the show.
At the time of our visit in July 2023, the ticket prices for The Friends Experience in Detroit were as follows:
- Adults 11+ (timed ticket): $27
- Premium ticket (Skip the line + get a free mug): $44.50
- Flexible entry: $37
- Seniors (55+), students & military: $25
- Children (4-10): $24
They also have a photo package you can pay for which costs $25. We got that package; you only need one per group rather than per person.
The tickets and photo package therefore weren’t cheap, but they were worth it for all the fun we ended up having.
As far as how much we enjoyed it?
It goes:
Friends TV Show…
The Friends Experience…
…
…
any other experience.
[…] the sets from the TV show was a lot of fun, particularly when recreating some of its iconic scenes. Check out this post for more about our visit to The Friends […]