Geek Nation Tours along with Star Trek author, historian, consultant and producer, Larry Nemecek present “Exploring Trek Sites: Hollywood to Vegas With Larry Nemecek.”
Kicking off on Saturday, August 4th, the tour will travel to several well-known Star Trek filming locations, including the Griffith Observatory, Tillman Water Plant and Japanese Garden, the Santa Monica Pier, Paramount Studios, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, and Vasquez Rocks County Park with special guest Bobby Clark, who played the Gorn in classic TOS episode “Arena.”
All of these stops will lead to Creation’s Official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, taking place again this year at the Rio Hotel and Casino.
More information in the press release below.
Geek Nation Tours is proud to be a part of the positive vision of the Star Trek universe and adventures. And this year we are teaming up with “Dr. Star Trek” Larry Nemecek for our “Exploring Trek Sites: Hollywood to Vegas” tour, a truly extraordinary experience before and during the huge Las Vegas convention.
For 2012, why not celebrate Star Trek: The Next Generation’s 25th Anniversary and all of Star Trek with a tour guest-led by Larry—the noted Star Trek guru as a consultant, journalist, documentary producer and author of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion—often called upon for his vast knowledge of the Star Trek Universe and its business. He is currently researching Star Trek filming sites, and that is where you and Geek Nation Tours come in…
We will be along as Larry makes the pilgrimage to filming sites of The Original Series, The Next Generation and their movies, as well as Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Some familiar, some obscure—but all iconic and ready for you to revisit, right on location. The journey will take us from Hollywood and surrounding Los Angeles up to the Trona Pinnacles to the base of Mount Whitney, then on through Death Valley and into Las Vegas for the granddaddy of them all: Creation Entertainment’s famous Star Trek Convention.
“Geek Nation Tours is a tour company dedicated to the Geek in all his and her multifaceted interests: It creates holidays for Geeks, by Geeks,” said Teras Cassidy, owner and CEO. “Our new Star Trek tour with Larry continues our target involving Geeky conventions, tournaments and tours to places of historical significance to the Geek. It also addresses our real mandate: to give people the opportunity to revel in their Geekiness and to travel the globe seeking those things that they love to do, joined by like-minded persons who are just as interested in that specific geeky thing. So it’s not only a holiday vacation but also the chance to develop long-lasting friendships.”
“When Teras approached me about developing this tour, rooted in L.A. with lead-ins to the Vegas convention, my mind took off racing immediately at how and what we could pack in,” Nemecek said. “I was not only flattered, with his resume of doing these tours, but amazed at the serendipity because I’m currently researching Trek’s location sites, using my own archives and interviews. I was also impressed that Teras imposes a one-bus limit, so we are all in-person all the time. So, we have crafted a great schedule of sites that will lead fans to not just the obvious, like Vasquez Rocks, but the obscure as well. Personally, it will be exciting to share info and fun with our fans in-between the tour stops—an experience where no book or convention talk has ever gone before. Plus, fans get a great Hollywood/Vegas experience, to boot.”
Fans arrive in Los Angeles on Saturday before the Las Vegas convention, start the night off at Griffith Observatory, and then have four days of Trek-site Hollywood and road touring stops with Nemecek before arriving in Vegas, where the Geek Nation Tour umbrella remains active right through the five convention evenings. And always with the option to explore on their own most any time.
Geek Nation Tours specializes in bringing people from all around the world to these places and events, Cassidy says—and even takes care of the non-geek spouse as well. “If a partner would rather go to a museum, ball game or shopping mecca, we can take care of that too,” he says. “Everyone wins. The ‘non-geek’ can re-meet up in the evenings, of course—where participants get together to talk about the day’s events and to share hints on the excitement of the next day.”
Founded in 2009, Geek Nation Tours has developed holidays focused on gamers for Gen Con and Adepticon, media fans for a UK tour of castles, museums and tabletop miniatures… tours augmenting San Diego Comic Con, the Supernatural Convention, Creation Entertainment’s Las Vegas Star Trek Convention, and now Seattle’s Emerald City Comic Con. There’s also military historical tours to American Civil War sites and Napoleon’s battle of Waterloo!
Larry Nemecek launched his “Mystar Media” brand in 1992 with the publication of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion from Pocket Books. He now calls his blog “Trekland” to reflect his workplace past and present as editor of the official Star Trek Communicator magazine, art coordinator for the Fact Files, consultant to Star Trek: The Experience, The Exhibition and the World Tour, and columnist since 1996 for Star Trek magazine. He appeared in The Captains of the Final Frontier for Biography, Rod Roddenberry’s Trek Nation, G4’s Proving Ground, and is currently producing a documentary, The Con of Wrath, about the infamous 1982 “meltdown to miracle” show intended to be the first rock concert of Trek events.
For more information and a complete itinerary, visit Geek Nation Tours and Larry Nemecek’s Trekland.
Nero
May 19, 2012 at 9:21 am
This sounds pretty damn cool.
Larry
May 19, 2012 at 11:52 am
Aside from those “headline” places, there’s also some really obscure places on the schedule–like mountain places near Lone Pine, and more obscure sites like the “Q Continuum.”
Parker Freeman
May 19, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Sounds like a pretty cool experience. Although $2500 plus flight is a little out of my price range.