I still get a lot of messages about my posts chronicling our tour of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop in New York and the nearby set of Sesame Street. While the Sesame Street set is, sadly, still not open to the public, the Jim Henson Company just started offering weekly behind-the-scenes tours of the New York Creature Shop!
These 80-minute tours are available on Saturdays through the end of May, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually add more dates the way they did after the first round of tours in February.
The tours include a puppetry demonstration, a chat with a puppet builder, and even a puppet photo op like the one Patrick got with The Amazing Mumford.
Hopefully you’ll also get to see the Mustache Drawer!
Check out my original post for the inside scoop on some of what you’ll get to experience on your tour. And click here to book tour tickets.
If you’re traveling from out of town, I definitely recommend combining the Creature Shop tour with a visit to the nearby Museum of the Moving Image. They have an excellent permanent exhibit on Jim Henson featuring nearly 500 artifacts like costumes, sketches, storyboards and historic puppets.
(Let me know if The Swedish Chef and Big Bird still have our names on them as sponsors from the big fundraiser a few years ago!).
Add in MOMI’s regular screenings of Jim Henson’s film and TV work, and you could make an entire weekend of your visit. Grab an AirBnB in Astoria, do the set tour on Saturday, and visit the Jim Henson exhibition on Sunday. Heck—even if you can’t tour the set of Sesame Street, you can still drive by Kaufman Astoria Studios where they shoot the show!
What do you think?