I did the ultimate experience tour this weekend and it was pretty good. I have toured during the celebrations and I felt like I wanted a more in-depth and less rushed tour.

- The tour guide (Tomi) was really great and genuine. He was very knowledgeable.

- We watched the Manchester Something in the Water video in the video editing room. We also watched the usual short Musicology tour snippets with the DC soundcheck and a few other snippets. Lastly, they showed some of the panel discussion from the 2017 Celebration, which I'm not really interested in and would rather see more content of Prince himself.

- In Studio B we took a photo and had an indepth discussion about Prince's recording process. We got to hear some of The Breakdown from 2013 Montreux and compare that with the actual isolated studio vocal tracks from the song. That was one of the highlights of the tour. We also heard a demo version of Rock n Roll Love Affair, which was interesting.

- We did the usual in Studio A which is watch the short interview of Prince and Larry and listen to a snippet of Ruff Enuff.

- We got to go into the soundboard room in Studio C, which was also new. We were told that is where Prince would write songs. We watched the Plectrum Electrum video and some previouisly available clips of Prince playing drums in Studio C and the end of the Daisy Chain video of him playing basketball in that studio.

- The soundstage room had a bunch of stages with his instruments and outfits. Of coure, the new Yamaha piano was there. It was nice to see his baby blue Bentley and his purple Prowler in the room also.

- They fed us grilled cheese, some smoothies, chips, salad and a cowboy cookie.

- I was told that the reason they won't let us upstairs is because of the handicap access issue. They will never use that elevator and can't modify the building without jumping through a bunch of hoops. They may let us downstairs to see the vault and the garage soon.

Overall, it is a good idea to tour the place when the masses are not there so that you can enjoy it and take it all in. My main issue is that we were there for 3 hours and probably watched/heard 5 minutes of new Prince content that was not previously avialable. At least an hour of the 3 needs to have exclusive content if they want to keep us coming.

Agreed about the new content. I'm pretty sure it has to be some type of legal issue. They were showing the unreleased concerts early 2017 and that abruptly stopped after the first Celebration. It was reported that that was one of Prince's wishes, to show unrleased concerts in the soundstage. Now the soundtage is only seen on the tour, Celebrations, and other rare events. It would be great if they had more concerts throughout the year. They need to update the outfits more often too. Once a year is not cutting it. I mean they said they have over 7,000 items, so why not change it up more often? They also should get the Official Prince Estate merchandise in there too. Too bad they don't have access to all the unreleased stuff. Album listening parties would be awesome. It's almost like the Prince Estate and Paisley Park are not working together to make it wildlly successful. Hopefully they can fix that. Now back to looking at my new chain hat...

thank you for sharing your experience

it does make sense as to why they can not do tours upstairs, i orginally thought only family, friends &

archivists were allowed

I did the ultimate last June and had a similar experience

I think Tomi is superb and one of the best

fun fact: you can find him in the audience from the 4/16 PP photo

It was a pleasure to have access inside Studio B & C

Most of the clips currently shown can be seen somewhere online, which doesn't make it exclusive but it's nice to share these moments with others in the same room(s).