Lost Virtual Tour

We accidentally stumbled upon two Lost props locations recently. One was Penny's new sailboat. Did you notice it in 5x03 (see episode screenshot at top)? It's not the Elizabeth (which presumably moved with the island's radius). This is a new boat on the show, a luxurious sailboat that is the 57 foot flagship of the French Beneteau company, and is a fitting sailing vessel for a very wealthy Penelope Widmore. Its location? Hint: it's near the Elizabeth and the Searcher... We'll post more details soon, and it is somewhat visible from public access areas after a bit of a walk (as is the Searcher, but not the Elizabeth).

We also were minding our own business at the Kapiolani Community College (KCC) Farmer's Open Market on Saturday mornings, and was browsing for greens in the far corner booth, when over the bananas I spied... the infamous "frozen donkey wheel" that Ben used to move the island. Right next to it was what looks like the column ruin to which the Others had tied Anthony Cooper after he came out of the magic box in Season 3. We'd totally forgotten that KCC is adjacent to the Hawaii Film Studio.


Stay tuned! We'll have this and more as we post locations for Season 5 episodes (and the S4 finale, which we're working on laying out now)!

We're still playing catchup but we posted locations for Episode 4x12 last night. Once we get through the 2-hour finale of Season 4, we will be aiming to catch up to the latest broadcasts of Season 5 episodes. There are also lots of goodies from contributors who have emailed great photos, so those are coming too! Stay tuned!

Good news, we're finally catching up with the episode backlog. We've just posted known locations for 4x10 and 4x11, as well as a few scattered corrections in earlier episodes.

We're working on 4x12 and the double hour finale 4x13-14.

There are lots more exciting updates coming after that, because these are just the location listings: we also have new location pages coming, from old and current seasons, as well as boats and helicopters from ourselves and readers who have emailed in photos.

We also have some photos from off-Island locations coming, from LA and even London!

And as a special treat, we have special on-set and soundstage photos (from past seasons-- no spoilers here) coming from our special contributor who calls himself Jacob's Mole.

So stay tuned!

Jon Lachonis, aka "DocArzt", blogging at his UGO gig, has stated that according to his (usually very credible) sources, the world premiere beach screening event for the Season 5 has been canceled. So until you hear more, don't buy your plane tickets to Hawai'i for this event yet. And if you've already bought them, don't despair, you'll still be in paradise.

If you don't know what Sunset on the Beach is, it's an event put on by the City & County of Honolulu, to show free public movies on a large screen erected on the east end of Waikiki Beach. And every season of Lost (except strike-marred Season 4), ABC has hosted at this event a star-studded world premiere of the season opening episode, one week before the broadcast premiere. Think a crowd of thousands, and the cast of Lost on a red carpet. It's a great event for local fans, and it would be sad if this event didn't take place this year.

Read more at UGO here-- but read only the first paragraph, because the post contains spoilers after that point.

We are continuing to work on the back end to finish up the locations for the remainder for Season 4. In the meantime, we have photos posted for Hy's Steakhouse in Waikiki, which was the opulent location for the UK auction house where Widmore bid on the Black Rock manifest, and where Desmond surprised him. The immediately following scene in the men's bathroom however was not filmed here, so that location is still a mystery to us.

Well we still haven't updated the locations for the last few episodes of Season 4, but we are working on it, and have even visited some of the locations. As a teaser, here are photos from the real life Searcher. Stay tuned!

While we work on updating the filming locations for the final few episodes of Season 4, we'll drop a fun tidbit today:

During the stunning finale, we were pleasantly surprised to see the Searcher appear on Lost as Penelope Widmore's rescue boat. This boat in real life is exactly the kind of boat Penny would use to find Desmond.

Not Penny's Boat:
The boat really is called the Searcher, and is a luxuriously appointed 96 ft research vessel owned by Dr. Jon Littenberg. Littenberg used to own a smaller boat, with which he occasionally helped marine scientists conduct their research. Eventually he decided change his life path by purchasing a former luxury yacht and converting it into a research vessel and home, in order to facilitate research full time through his nonprofit the Medical Foundation for the Study of the Environment (MFSE).

To learn more about the Searcher, read all about it at the official site

Perhaps most famously, the Searcher was recently used by none other than Jean-Michel Cousteau in a voyage to Kure in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands (See the PBS Special).

This effort culminated in President Bush's June 2006 establishment of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands area as a National Monument, the largest protected marine area in the world (press release).


So, following the Kahana (see our page here), this is the second boat that retains its real-life name when shown in Lost. In a similar vein, we'll soon cover real-life filming locations this season that were depicted as themselves in Lost. There are at least three. Do you think you know what they are? Stay tuned!

Apologies for the delay in posting the filming locations for the last few episodes of Season 4. We've been caught up by the dreaded IRL ("in real life") world, but will try to get these new locations posted ASAP in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!

As you may have have noticed from the enhanced captions of the catchup broadcasts, the helicopter scenes were filmed at Kualoa Ranch. However it was not in the main Ka'a'awa Valley that most locals associate with the ranch and call "Kualoa Valley", and most Lost viewers associate with Hurley's golf course. Instead it was in the adjacent Hakipu'u Valley.

Our friend Ed Kos of Kos Hummer Tours just sent us a batch of photos from the valley that are exact matches with the helicopter scenes from Season 4. He earlier sent us photos that match Season 3 scenes such as the sonic security fence, and the campsite of the Others by the ruins where Locke's father was tied up. See all his photos, including his newest ones, on our Hakipu'u Valley page.

Contact Ed Kos at his website above to inquire about a personal tour into this valley; it's just about the only way you'll get to see it in person, since it is private property of Kualoa Ranch.

Also, we reported earlier that Ed Kos' Lost tours were featured by The Denver Channel, a news crew from Colorado. He was featured in a FIVE-part segment on Lost filming location, and all have now aired so we now have the links for you:

Kos Tour The Denver Channel Part 1
Kos Tour The Denver Channel Part 2
Kos Tour The Denver Channel Part 3
Kos Tour The Denver Channel Part 4
Kos Tour The Denver Channel Part 5

Lost filming locations have started to pop up in the captions of ABC's "Enhanced" versions of the week before's Lost episodes that are aired as a rehash along with the current episode. I don't know if they are running out of things to comment on, or if it really helps the general viewer, but it sure is fun from our point of view to see Hawai'i's filming locations highlighted.


Some of the captions from 4x03 The Economist include:
1) "This scene was shot in Kualoa Ranch on the island of Oahu. Kualoa has been a location for many films including Jurassic Park and Pearl Harbor. "
2) "The 375 yard, par 4, 17th hole on the Fazio Course at Oahu's Turtle Bay Resort is doubling as a Seychelles golf paradise."
3) "Crushed ice and special FX turn Honolulu into snowy Berlin."

Also there were two captions related to locations in the enhanced version of 4x02 Confirmed Dead, including a fun fact:
4) "This scene was shot at a rock quarry in Hawaii."
5) "This looks like LA, but it's not all but 15 scenes in 77 episodes of LOST have been shot on the island of Oahu, Hawaii."