“Something 99.9999% Of People Will Never See”: 79 Times People Got Exclusive Access To Places And Couldn’t Believe Their Luck

I was a coach at a major Special Olympics International event back in 1983 and I had some time on my hands and had taken a walk near a Helicopter that had recently landed near the Campus. I was admiring the aircraft when Muhammad Ali stepped out, walked over to me and invited me to take a tour with him around Baton Rouge in the Helicopter! He had seen my Vest identifying me as Coaching Staff, and had observed me admiring the aircraft.
We went for a 40 minute tour (he asked me how much free time I had), treated me like gold, and talked Special Olympics together as we looked around on the tour.
He gave me an autographed photo of the both of us together, and gave me Autographed photos to give to all my athletes and their parents. He also gave me an Ali jacket, and later gave me a certificate of a large donation he made to the Special Olympics in my name! A really personable, caring, wonderful human being who really genuinely cared about kids and the Special Olympics.

When I was a vet student at LSU my sister was a doctor in New Orleans. One day she called me up and said One of her colleagues was going to the NO zoo to do an ultrasound on one of the new gorillas. Her colleague knew I was in vet school and asked if I wanted to come see it.

When we got to the zoo we found out that the veterinary anesthesiologists that were flying in for the procedure had been delayed and it would be a while before we started. One of the zoo vets asked if I wanted a tour of some of the backstage areas before the zoo opened.

That would have been cool enough for me, but it got better. Once the doctors began setting everything up, I tried to stay as far out of the way as possible. I figured I would just be watching from a corner. Then one of the anesthesiologists walked in the room and said he needed several larger people to help carry the gorilla into the procedure room. Im a little taller than average and he pointed at me and said "you're coming."

I went back in the cages and saw the gorilla unconscious and lying on a huge cargo net. It was an adult male, and I never appreciated the size of those guys before I was close enough to touch it. It took about 8 of us to move him. You could feel the power (and stink) radiating off of him, even while asleep.

Everything went fine with the ultrasound, and he entered the zoo population a few weeks later.

When our daughter was born, we almost never went out and finally had a date night to catch Rodrigo y Gabriela. Our agreement not knowing how loud the show would be with a baby in the Bjorn was we’d leave if she fussed. Sure enough two songs in, it was too much so we left. A gentleman in a suit followed us out and asked why we were leaving early and we told him. He asked if we’d like to watch from a more conducive location and took us to this private sound booth suite behind acoustic glass. Was amazing (and one of those awesome moments where people amaze you with kindness).

My dad did the lighting fixtures for the Statue of Liberty, so I got to see all sorts of back areas when he brought me along. I was a little kid, but still- I got to visit her and see all over during the renovation in, I think, 1985?

"Whale graveyard"

The huge, hangar-like storage area where a natural history museum keeps all its whale skeletons.

Also, a penguin "love village" behind the scenes, inside the penguin enclosure at a zoo. They have all these little huts (painted white, with blue roofs and a red heart over the door) because, apparently, penguins need privacy to do the deed.

Being a biologist has its moments.

Employees only areas of a zoo. They used a Silence of the Lambs-style sliding box to feed a panther. Multiple bars and fencing and a big yellow line to mark how far the cat could potentially reach. Also got to help feed a hippo fruit and hay, as well as tossing fruit to the gorilla family. The silverback made eye contact with me and gestured for an apple.

I have technically sat in the House of Lords- because I was unwell when I was visiting there, and so was granted an exception to the usually strict rules about not sitting on the seats there… I’m pretty sure that makes me a Lady now.

So this is a story.

Back in 2010-12 I was a resident at a state psychiatric hospital. I happen to like old architecture, so when I wasnt preoccupied with being very mentally ill, Id walk the grounds and look at the buildings.

Some of the buildings on the property were long abandoned, and one was in the process of demolition.

One day I noticed a window open, ground level, that led to the underground tunnels. I had time before I had to return to my ward, so I went through it. These were the tunnels that connected all of the buildings, and I found an entrance to one of the abandoned buildings while snooping around.

It was so cool in there. I found an old gymnasium with a large stage, and there was a folding table with old patient art on it. (I took one, which I kept to this day)

I made sure to keep this window accessible, and I returned to explore almost daily for months before I was finally caught by security. All they did was lower my priviledge level for a few weeks because I was at the end of my stay anyway.

Its nice to have that memory in an otherwise very dark period of my life.

When I was 15 I went to my uncles workplace. He worked at one of the largest hydroelectric powerplants here in Sweden.
At that time they where doing some upgrades and maintenance at one of the turbines so it was closed off and parts of it was removed so we could go inside of it.
So I was inside of the part where all the water goes and spins the turbines, that was pretty cool too see.

Got to see a pulse test in a nuclear reactor. Lots of students at my school get to see it every year but seeing the blue glow of Cherenkov radiation in person is awesome.

The Room of Tears. It’s the room behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel where the newly elected pope goes to have a cry. There’s an adjoining room full of papal vestments from the last 900+ years. It was incredible to see threads of gold woven into gowns and hand made silk shoes. This is also the room where we saw the black/white smoke machine, papal election voting cards, the bible they swear on, the voting rules and the hammers they use to break the door seal during a jubilee year.

The demilitarized zone between North and South Korea!

Large paleo storage three or so secure floors below the Field Museum in Chicago. Absolutely incredible to see all those specimens at such varying stages of being studied.

I even got to touch Sue's (the t rex) last meal.

Wild.

Submarines. I served on four of them. Radioman.

Decades ago I got to work with a mapping crew in some rarely explored parts of Mammoth Caves. Got to see places very few others have ever been.

When I was 14 I found a staff pass to a festival. When asked how I had it I said my dad John works for them. I knew no John but it was a name I knew a lot of people had. I got to sit next to Blink-182 at lunch etc. It was great.

NotARapture:
I had a production pass to Coachella. Even with production pass I couldn’t get a good view of the Childish Gambino. So I went on stage. On my adventure to find the stage people would stop and ask me questions. I said I was, “Amanda’s runner” and they’d let me through. I made up Amanda. It worked.

NASA Mission Control and the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (pool) where they train.

I got a tour of the Children's Television Workshop spaces in NY City. The corporate offices were amazing, but the puppet workshop had muppet body parts all over the place. Not unlike the droid scrap yard in Cloud City.

Was talking to a guy while watching the 4th of July fireworks in DC. He accidentally insulted my wife, and to make up for it took us on a private tour of the National Archives (he was a security manager).

We went all over the place and finished with a view from the roof of the Mall and downtown DC.

10/10 would accept that apology again.

Edit: the insult was entirely banal and he was almost distraught with his apology. We’d been chatting for a while before it happened so there was some rapport.

Area 51. I was about nine years old in the early 80s. We went on a family vacation and went to area 51. My dad was retired from the military but always wore his captains hat. My dad was messing with my mom and said he was going to go in and drove up to the first gated checkpoint. The guard at the gate must’ve saw my dad‘s hat, lifted the gate and waved him in. My parents looked at each other like WTH and my dad kept driving. We got about a half a mile in past the front gate before we were stopped. My parents had to talk to them for about five minutes, but eventually let us just drive out.