Hey, “Friends” fans, remember the one with Rachel’s letter, in which she “rambled on for 18 pages — front and back!” The one when a thief trapped Joey in “the unit” with the help of a hockey stick? The one when Ross, Rachel and Chandler couldn’t get the couch up the stairs? (“Pivot! Pivot!”)
You can relive those memories, and many more, at The Friends Experience, which opens at The Gateway in Salt Lake City on Friday, and will be here for three months.
The attraction is filled with artifacts (like Rachel’s letter and the hockey stick) and re-creations (like the “pivot” couch and several “Friends” sets), but The Friends Experience is NOT a stuffy ol’ museum.
It does include exhibits. Original scripts from the insanely popular 1994-2004 sitcom, which followed six twentysomethings — eventually, thirtysomethings: Rachel (Jennifer Aniston), Monica (Courteney Cox), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow), Joey (Matt LeBlanc), Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Ross (David Schwimmer).
There’s the turkey, complete with big sunglasses and a fez, that Monica pulled over her head. A history of Rachel’s hair. Ross’ “Science Boy” comic book.
But fans don’t just have to stay behind velvet ropes and gawk at TV history. Taking selfies and cellphone video while you’re inside the re-creations of “Friends” sets is not just allowed, it’s encouraged.
“It’s not like a museum where you’re looking at props and costumes from a distance,” said Stacy Moscatelli, CEO of Original X Productions, the company behind the attraction. (That’s sort of the experience if you take the Warner Bros. Studio Tour on the backlot in Burbank, Calif.)
(Original X Productions) Taking pictures in Joey and Chandler's recliners in the Friends Experience.
The Friends Experience is “more hands-on. You can sit in the boys’ recliners. You can sit at Monica’s table. You can sit on the couch. We’ve had people re-create scenes on video and send it to their friends.”
You can dance in front of the fountain to the “Friends” theme song. (“I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour …”) You can sit at Monica’s kitchen table, in Joey and Chandler’s recliners, and on the orange couch in the Central Perk coffee house.
It sounds kind of hokey — especially if you’re not a big “Friends” fan — but the attraction has garnered positive press as it’s traveled across the county. It was voted one of USA Today’s 10Best Readers’ Choice Best New Attractions, and it was on CNN’s list of the 12 Best Immersive Experiences.
The goal is to unabashedly “cater to the ‘Friends’ fan, and give them kind of this amazing, immersive ‘Friends’-only experience they can only get here,” Moscatelli said. “Our aim is to ... give everybody an opportunity to engage with the show.”
It’s not unusual for “really hardcore fans” to enter the exhibit and gasp, she said, because it looks so familiar. But while it’s designed for “Friends” fanatics, less engaged fans can also enjoy it — and maybe find out they’re more engaged than they thought.
(Original X Productions) Pivot! Pivot! The couch is stuck on the stairs in The Friends Experience.
“I always laugh when the casual fans come in and they sort of say. ‘Oh, I’m not that big of a fan.’ And then you see them walk by the pivot couch and go, ‘Oh my God! This was such a good episode!’” Moscatelli said. “You start to see them realize through the experience that they’re actually a bigger fan than they thought they were.”
By fans, for fans
Getting the attraction set up takes a staff of 8-to-12 people about two weeks. “But it’s actually not that cumbersome,” Moscatelli said. “We’ve been moving it around for about three-and-a-half years, so we’ve gotten pretty buttoned up on our process and our timeline.”
Staffers — including Moscatelli — are big “Friends” fans themselves. “We all had to rewatch [all 236 episodes] when we were creating the experience, which was kind of the best job assignment I’ve ever had,” she said with a laugh.
And she’s still watching repeats. “Whenever I travel, I always watch it in my hotel room to fall asleep to, because there’s always a marathon,” she said.
(Original X Productions) Fans hang out in Central Perk in The Friends Experience.
(Indeed, Nick at Night airs 10 episodes or more in a row every night. Local viewers can also watch episodes on KSTU-Channel 13 and TBS, and all 236 episodes — plus the 2021 reunion — are streaming on Max.)
“I call it comfort food,” Moscatelli said. “It’s kind of that thing that you love to go back to because it is so familiar, at least to those of us who grew up watching it — which I did.”
Free flow
The Friends Experience has “sort of an implied route that most people take naturally,” starting with the fountain seen in the opening credits and ending in Central Perk. But it’s not required.
“We’ve made a couple of changes in Salt Lake where it’s a little bit more of a free flow,” Moscatelli said. And if you miss something along the way — if, say, there’s a long line to sit in Chandler and Joey’s recliners — you can backtrack.
She recommended taking time to stop and watch a video of “Friends” costume designer Debra McGuire, who “talks about how she created [the characters’] individual looks and personal styles,” she said. “It’s a really interesting perspective and something that you can’t see online.”
(Original X Productions) Monica's kitchen in the Friends Experience.
You walk through the famous purple door into Monica’s apartment, where you can hang out in the kitchen. Across the hall is Chandler and Joey’s apartment, complete with those recliners and the foosball table.
You can strum Phoebe’s guitar, poke Ugly Naked Guy with the made-from-chopsticks poking device, and make like Joey when he put on Chandler’s entire wardrobe. (“Could I be wearing any more clothes?”) There’s a mannequin wearing Chandler’s entire wardrobe — you can pose with your head on Joey’s body. And there’s a similar photo op where you can rest your head on mannequins wearing Ross and Chandler’s “Miami Vice”-ish suits from a flashback episode.
“We want people to be able to see what they would expect to see,” Moscatelli said, “but also to be surprised by things that they weren’t expecting to see. And feel like it was a really great way to spend their day.”
(Original X Productions) Fans play foosball in Chandler and Joey's apartment in the Friends Experience.
Multi-generational appeal
“Friends” premiered on Sept. 22, 1994, and ended on May 6, 2004, but it has remained wildly popular ever since in syndicated reruns, on Netflix and now on Max. Fans who watched it during the original run are now in the 40s, 50s, 60s or older, and there are teens and pre-teens who just recently started streaming it.
“You see the parents who watched it the first time around,” Moscatelli said. “And then you’ve got kids who saw it in its second or third time around. It’s fun to see them come in and have a moment together.”
Fans of all ages can answer trivia questions, which “can get competitive. There are some easy questions, but it’s actually pretty hard. That’s kind of a fun way to test your fandom and challenge whoever you come with to see who’s the bigger fan.”
Going to the chapel
Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Rachel and Ross all got married during the run of the sitcom — Ross said “I do” twice. Whether that was inspiration or not, there have been more than 200 proposals at The Friends Experience.
“It’s the best day ever when you’re on-site for a wedding proposal,” Moscatelli said. “It makes us feel really good that the show means so much to them and to their relationship. And that they let us be a part of it.”
Some people contact the staff at The Friends Experience and “get some pre-arrangements done” before they arrive. “And then sometimes people just spontaneously decide ‘This is the moment.’ And that’s pretty great,” she said.
There have even been a couple of Friends Experience weddings at the permanent, non-traveling version of the attraction in New York City — which includes a re-creation of the Las Vegas wedding chapel where Monica and Chandler didn’t get married and super-drunk Ross and Rachel did.
Check out the merch
To no one’s surprise, The Friends Experience is accompanied by a store where you can buy all sorts of “Friends” merchandise. But you might be surprised to learn that you don’t have to buy a ticket and go through the attraction to buy the merch — there’s a separate entrance just for the store.
(Original X Productions) The Central Perk coffee house in the Friends Experience.
“And we have a number of things that you can’t find anywhere else.” Moscatelli said. Like Monica’s jam. And Huggsy — Joey’s plush toy bedtime buddy, who he eventually, reluctantly ceded to baby Emma.
“Everybody knows a ‘Friends’ fan, so we think it’s kind of a nice thing to offer that opportunity to come in and check out the merch,” she said.
The Friends Experience opens Friday, Oct. 20, in Salt Lake City at 16 N. Rio Grande St. in The Gateway — north of the Olympic Legacy Fountain — and runs though Jan. 28. Timed entry tickets are $26.50, plus taxes and fees, and are available at FriendsTheExperience.com/SaltLakeCity.
