Thank you so much to  Yahoney @ylima0609  for sharing her Grey Carpet Experience in NYC at the Fifty First on Today Fan Screening. Please credit all text and photos to her.

On January 20^th 2015 I was able to get tickets for the Fifty Shades First screening event that the Today show was going to have. Even after receiving an email from Universal Screenings I was kind of skeptical thinking this could all be a scam.

As the days were getting closer, and the Today show had a whole week with special reports on the movie and seeing the fan sites commenting about it, I started to believe it was actually going to happen. On February 3^rd NBCUniversal sent a reminder email.

So the day finally came, Thursday February 5^th. After working my 8 hours at the hospital, picking up my kids from school, leaving them with my mother and leaving everything ready for my time out of town…left to the airport. MCO to PHL to EWR.

(I wore my Team Grey shirt for the trip, from www.etsy.com/shop/ManCaveStudios )

We arrived in EWR (Newark) at 11:30pm and to the hotel at around 12:20. The guy there told us that a taxi (which was our plan) would cost around $90 to New York City!!! So change of plans. That means, waking up even earlier.

I woke up at 2:30am to get ready and make a quick new plan. We took the hotel shuttle to the airport and from there the train to Penn station. Once there we literally jogged 20 blocks to get there on time. The weather was brutal; I have experience really low temperatures before but not running!! It was kind of hard to breath, LOL.

I finally saw The Ziegfeld Theater sign and it was like seeing heaven! There was already a line but not too bad.  There the guys in charge of security and organization divided us in will call 1, 2 and 3. As we were in line they kept looking for people that had WILL CALL 1 or 2 to let them in the tent. We were starting to get frustrated and upset (including the people around us in the line). I mean, we were in line at the designated time, and 0 degrees outside and feels like -6, and other people that JUST got there were getting in before us just because their paper had 1 or 2 and ours had a 3.

There was a lady behind us that look like she could be my mom and she was with her mother, which looked like she could be my grandma. We were all jumping in place and moving around because we were literally FREEZING. The poor lady even said: “If they don’t let us get in in the next group I am going home, I can’t handle this cold anymore.” Another comment that I heard was “So much for first come first serve”.

Right after that one of the guys comes out and tells us that we were going to be able to get in to the Grey carpet but the theater was full so we would have to come back to see the movie at 11am.

Finally they let us in (ladies behind us included, YEY!). After they give us the “CONTRACT “and moved us to the other section, things started to move and change really fast.

There were a lot of people from the Today show crew there. Right at that moment they told us we couldn’t pass and they made a semicircle with the barricades they had there. So we were stuck there, 2 feet away from the door they all were going to come in!! So it was ALL WORTH IT AFTER ALL!

They all came in: Carson, Natalie, Eloise, Sam and Aaron. Then Erika came in and as I was taking her picture she says: “Wait, let me take a picture of you guys “. I later found out that she posted it in her Instagram

We could see part of the Audi outside.

Then Jamie and Dakota came in. They were right there in front of us but the majority of the time we were facing their backs. It was all very fast.

Carson and Natalie talked to them, they did the selfie and someone from the crew moved them to their next stop. So no chance for selfies or autographs

(Obviously this picture is the only one that is not mine)

When everyone was gone from the grey carpet, they gave us wristbands to come back at 10:00 am to be able to see the 11:00 am screening. So we left and after having breakfast at a nearby Dunkin Donuts I decided to go back to see if I could have a picture of them leaving the theater. So after freezing for another 20 minutes I saw Dana Brunetti getting in the theater but couldn’t get a picture. After that Eloise came out and after her Sam. She came to us, took some pictures and autographed my book!

When we came back at 10, they were all leaving. I stood around for a while with hopes to see Jamie but I didn’t. There were like 10 more people around me and they had no idea who was whom. There were guys with around 5 books each one just for autographs (I guess to sell them). I was all excited yelling: Oh there is Eloise and they were, WHO? Who did you say she is? Oh I don’t know any of them? REALLY!?!?

Then I saw Erika and asked her to sign my book and she apologized because they were taking her inside the car and she couldn’t. There was a lot of security around them.

The time came for us to get in the beautiful theater! The movie was great. My husband enjoyed it and he said that its better than he thought it would be. I asked him what impacted him more and besides Ana needing a serious trim, he was really drawn to the moment when Christian talks about being 50 shades of fucked up. He understood what it meant, that moment represented the lives of a lot of people that show one face to the world but inside they have turmoil.

Since I arrived Thursday at midnight I missed all the fun and awesome meets the ladies had with Erika and Dana. I don’t believe I knew about these events at the time of requesting my days off work otherwise I would have loved to be there.

Even though things didn’t go exactly as planned…everything worked out well and I would love to do it again for Darker.

In case you are wondering. I am 37 years old and I was able to go to the screening with my awesome husband. This is the first time in my life that I did something like this. He knew how much I LOVE the books, how excited I was about the movie and how much I like Jamie :.) This trip was actually an early Valentine’s Day and 14th anniversary gift.

So why exactly I love it so much? I just love how much he willingly changed because of how she made him feel, she showed him a whole new world. Because of how she saved him and gave him the love that he so much needed.