Senoia, Georgia is home to the filming of the hit TV thriller – The Walking Dead.
9 seasons of zombie bliss lead to this moment
For Christmas, I surprised my mom with her best gift yet – a 3 day weekend in Georgia for the official Walking Dead studio tour.
We drove, allowing us time to stop & shop in both Carolinas.
I have an entire itinerary for this girls getaway, as we only had so much time there due to the 8 hour drive each direction.
We stayed in Griffin, GA which was only 25 minutes away from Senoia.
The first full day in Georgia we were up bright and early. We ate at the Woodbury Café. The entire downtown of Senoia was used for the filming of Season 3 with the Governor.
Every inch of this town was Walking Dead wonderland.
They had museums, street markers, guided tours by guides who dressed as characters from the show, the official Walking Dead store, restaurants founded by actors on the show, and so much more.
For lunch, we ate at Nic & Norman’s opened by Greg Nicotero & Norman Reedus – both from the show.
When our tour began, there were a lot of rules about what could and could not be photographed, but we saw it all.
No pictures were allowed at Hilltop, but let me tell you – it is breathtaking. The drive up to the gates is chilling & the house is HUGE. Every detail is so mesmerizing and must take hundreds of employees and hours of labor.
We were blown away seeing buildings & cars from episodes allllll the way back in Season 1. Train tracks from Terminus, Rick’s cop car, the Sanctuary, Oceanside, Rick’s camp for while they were building the bridge that he burns down in his final episode, the group of mangled motorcycles from when Daryl killed all those Saviors with a grenade launcher, the sewage pip Carl and the others hide in where he reveals he was biten, and even more chilling spots like where Negan took Abraham & Glenn’s lives.
Everything is kept on the property at the studio. When we asked our tour guide why, he said because it costs money to move things and it’s cheaper to keep it. Also, since they are still writing seasons ahead & now the new movies, they want to keep these props in case they are ever needed again.
All of the scenery & props were cool, but nothing like driving up to the walls of Alexandria.
When I say it is a fenced in community in the middle of a normal neighborhood – I mean it. I tried to take pictures to show just how close the gates are to everything else in the town.
Best part however, people actually LIVE behind the walls of Alexandria.
We couldn’t take pictures of several of the homes because they are residential. I’m so jealous of them!
If you are a fan of the show – I highly recommend this tour. Tickets are $65 per person and it’s definitely an experience I would love to do again. Keep in mind, every season there are new sets & new characters; so each tour you will see different sets and it will be forever changing.
But it isn’t just the tour that’s exciting. Spending time in downtown Senoia was a fan’s dream come true. Talking to the locals about their interactions & friendships they’ve formed with the actors was so fascinating. Sometimes as fans we forget these actors are real people too. Hearing from locals that they know each other on a first name basis may seem wild, but it makes the actors and watching the show that much sweeter.
So the real question is; when am I moving to GA? 🍑
The B Word 