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| - A disclaimer: This movie is deeply embeded with fond Christmas memories for me. This movie has always been a staple of Christmas cheer. I am the kind of person who collects the Christmas Story Village sets, gives away Christmas Story Christmas cards each year, and wraps up gifts in Christmas Story wrapping paper. I love this movie and all the childhood holiday good feelings of the past it helps me remember. Thus, this review may be biased.
I learned of this place about three years ago. And every year since then plans have been made to make the trek from Chicago to Cleveland to visit it. But, every year it doesn't happen. Weather, work, or various elements always got in the way. But not this year. This year was the year. After looking at the website and seeing that Ian Petrella, the actor who played Randy, was going to be at the house to help with the tours during the summer, the plans to visit the house in November were scratched and a new plan to come in August was put into high gear. Cleveland hotel accomodations were taken care of, dinner reservations were made, and addresses were put into the GPS. Yes, my wife and I were finally going to go to the house and celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary in the process. The house and museum did not dissapoint.
Parking was easy. The house is in the middle of a regular neighborhood with nothing else around so the free street parking was simple and abundent. I remember reading a past review that stated the neighborhood was sketchy and they feared for their safety, but I disagree. It's a normal city neighborhood. Kinda worn out in places but people are hanging out on their porches, some are walking dogs, kids are riding bikes, nothing told me to watch my back. When approaching the house the first thing we did was buy tickets for the tour. These are purchased in the gift shop across the street. While we waited for our tour we walked about the gift shop and it was pretty sweet. They had leg lamps, shirts, plenty of Christmas Story Village pieces to purchase. I wanted to buy everything.
When the time of our tour came near we went over to the house and waited on the porch taking pictures of the leg lamp that sits in the front window. Eventually a guide met us outside and began the tour by explaining to us all the insides and outs of the movie, how it was funded, some fun facts about the filming process. She then told us something I forgot about and it kind of crushed me. The interior scenes of the movie were filmed on a sound stage in Canada. I knew that. I did. But for some reason my brain forgot that fact and because the house looks so similar on the outside I just assumed it would look the same in the inside. The tour guide must have read my face of dissapointment because she then went into the story of how the house was restored. How the owner loves the movie and how after he purchased the house he went to great lengths to make it look and feel like it does in the movie inside and out. We then went through the front door and standing there was Randy.
Ian Petrella seems like a good guy. During our 10 minutes or so with him talking to the group, he answered questions, let us take pictures with him, and then signed some autographs. Sure, I had to pay for the autographs but seeming my family are such huge fans I didn't care and bought five of them for gifts. Seeing how many I wanted he then threw in a free signed poster. Thanks Ian. The inside of the house is fun. It's not exactly like the movie but they have a lot of cool touches that make it pretty close. After talking to "Randy" the tour guide just let us roam around the house and have fun. My wife and I had a blast taking pictures around the house. We posed with the leg lamp, read the newspaper at the table, and of course sat in the bathroom with a soap bar in my mouth. Yep. They had the soap just sitting there and I, like I'm assuming and hoping others have done in the past, put the bar in my mouth and took a picture. Tasted gross and was probably littered with germs, but totally worth it. The only problem with the final part of the tour is that it was too quick for us. The guides were telling people to leave and we still wanted to have fun in there. But, really, the whole event cost only $8 bucks a person so being hurried didn't really bother me and I was almost tempted to buy another ticket to go back in. But I didn't and left the house content and happy.
The museum, which is directly across the street from the house, is small, cute, and had some cool memorabilia. The museum is not the reason to come to this place but it was a nice cherry on top of the Christmas Story House experience. The whole event will probably take less than an hour but if you like this movie even a little there is enough fun to be had and it's worth the trip. And if you were raised on this film and love this film then there is no question you should finally, like me, make the pilgrimage and visit this wonderful house.
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