Oh, Connecticut: land of whales, women’s basketball, surprisingly good pizza, and, of course, Rory and Lorelai—the titular mother-daughter duo from the long-canceled (but recently rebooted) aughts WB series Gilmore Girls. I’ve seen the entire series all the way through roughly once a year since I discovered it in high school via the hilarious, often scathing recaps that writer Pamela Ribon did for Television Without Pity, which puts my total somewhere in the 15-plus range. Is it essentially white noise at this point? Yes, but I’m still capable of curling up and paying attention to its rehashed plot every fall—which is more than I can say for most of the comedy series I watch on a loop at bedtime.
The aforementioned string of vague cliches is all I’ve ever really gathered about Connecticut, despite spending my whole life visiting my dad’s parents in West Hartford, so when I got an email inviting me to experience something called the “Authentic Gilmore Girls Getaway Experience” at the Delamar Hotel in West Hartford, I leapt at the opportunity. No, I don’t normally relish the six-hour flight from LA to the East Coast, nor do I like fall anywhere near as much as Lorelai Gilmore famously loves winter, but I am used to making the pilgrimage to New York at least a few times a year to visit my own parents. So why not change the destination by a few hundred miles in order to visit a fictional representation of someone else’s TV family?
Upon arriving at the Delamar on a crisp November night and settling down to peruse the package’s options with a hot toddy, my natural urge to rank things kicked in. As such, here’s a rundown of the various Rory-and-Lorelai-themed offerings in order of how likely Rory and Lorelai would be to actually do them.
Item Number 1: Being picked up at the airport in a luxury convertible
Photo: Courtesy WB