Lights Camera Excursion

Step into the scenes of your favorite movies and TV shows with these tours of California studios and locations.

- Jason Leppert

Hooray for Hollywood! Travelers cruising to California cities can celebrate movie magic — and not just in iconic Los Angeles. Beautiful San Diego and San Francisco offer up tons of filming locations to be admired by fans seeking to retrace the steps of their favorite movies and television shows.

In fact, it seems all too appropriate that The Love Boat is one of the finest examples. Even if passengers were only to board their cruise ship in San Pedro along the coast of Los Angeles and not explore beyond, they would witness some of the show’s former stomping grounds. Indeed the very slipway across from the Vincent Thomas Bridge is where the titular Pacific Princess once berthed and was filmed for the TV series.

While exteriors of the intimate Princess Cruises ship were shot at the terminal — which is still used to this day by much larger vessels — interiors were mostly handled on a soundstage with some other mixed scenes on location. 20th Century Fox Studios was the main production facility for the show’s run. Unfortunately, it is one that does not offer tours to the public.

However, there are plenty of opportunities to visit several different studios for a fee and many more public filming locations for free. Princess, for instance, offers a shore excursion to check out “Universal Studios On Your Own,” but more often than not, some independent research is required to find the best spots and tour them accordingly.

LOS ANGELES

(Long Beach and San Pedro)

Of course by default, Los Angeles’ close proximity to Hollywood makes it the cinematic mecca on the list, and both the ports of Long Beach and San Pedro conveniently serve round-trip cruises as well as day visits to repositioning ships.