The Ellen Degeneres Show in Chicago

A week or so ago, Liz found out that The Ellen Degeneres Show was going to be taping in Chicago. She signed up for tickets, and got a letter saying we had two “standby” tickets to attend the show.

This morning, we got up a bit early and left the house around 9:30 AM. We had to be registered and on-site by 11AM, and so we figured on being downtown by around 10AM. I had a hunch that there would be a bigger line than we anticipated, but didn’t say anything… and when we showed up, we were hit with a ginormous amount of people, all trying to get into the show.

On Illinois, near the back of the Tribune building.

The entire line was wrapped all the way around, by NBC, in a sort of big “U” shape.

Back on Illinois, we spotted the check-in areas.

Folks trying to register and get in line. We asked around, and apparently a TON of folks got standby tickets. So much so that the line itself wrapped around the Tribune building on Michigan Ave… and was extending over the bridge.

By the time we started walking to find the end of the line… they were already moving the back half of the line off of Michigan, and onto the other side of Illinois.

We checked with one of the security personnel, and asked what our chances were of getting in. She looked at us and said “It’s not very good.”

We walked over to Michigan anyway, and got a slight glimpse of things before Police moved everyone away. Liz and I decided that, since we were downtown already, we’d wander around some and do a bit of window shopping.

About 3 hours later, when we walked back to the scooters… there was still a tremendous line of people, waiting to try to get in.

Next time around, I need to trust my instincts about crowds.

Did a quick search on Flickr, and there aren’t many photos. In fact, they were searching folks after they signed in, as no photos were allowed. On arriving, I had left my camera in the scooter… but once we figured out we weren’t getting in, I went back and snapped a few shots of the crowds.

Apparently though, we missed out on some free Oprah pizza. If only we would have waited in line for 5 hours!