| Chicago AC/DS concert Allstate Arena |
| We (Tory, Melissa, Anna, Meagan, Amy) left straight from school to go to the Aaron Carter/Dream Street/Lindsay Pagano concert at the Allstate Arena! We were all totally happy and incredibly hyper!!! We were finally getting to see Dream Street in concert! We'd been counting down the days from around Day #64. We stopped at a Walgreens on the way to buy cameras and get some snacks for the way up. (Tory and Meagan bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch in honor of Chris…*sigh*). We also bought Greg some Elvis chocolates for when we would see them at the meet and greet the next day. Then we left and on the way watched Dream Street Live and listened to the Broadway Kids cd. Along the way, we also made paper patches for our pants that said Dream Street and I Love Dream Street and Chris, Greg, Frankie, Jesse, Matt and you get the picture. We taped these on, but all of them had basically fallen off before we even got into the arena. When we got to the Allstate Arena, we went to the line that was already lining up to let people in. We could see their tour bus! ah! There was a camera guy out there making videos for aaron carter or dream street or whoever so we held up our posters that we had made for the camera. With one sheet of poster board per word, we had written AIN'T NOTHING BETTER THAN DREAM STREET and CHICAGO LOVES DREAM STREET. It was super. We hid our cameras in our pants (hahhahhahaha!) and went to our seats which were section 114 row N. This wasn't all that bad, but we were pretty far away, yet we could still see them well and had a straight view of them. They let us all in at about 6:00 maybe later, and the whole time until the concert started we held up our posters. We were so surprised when we saw Joe Berger walk to the sound stage or whatever a little ways away from our seats. Everyone was looking at our huge posters, and Joe Berger gave us a thumbs up! It was awesome!!! The concert started. Half or maybe more of the people there were Dream street fans. While Lindsay Pagano was performing, Tory and Melissa got Aaron Carter glow sticks for themselves and for Meagan. When Dream Street came on, IT WAS SO COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were all screaming and jumping up and down and everything!!! When Dream Street went off stage *sniff, tear, wail* Anna was nowhere to be found- her dad either, so we (now being Tory, Meagan, Melissa, and Amy) went to buy Dream Street tour shirts, which are incredibly cool! We came back around and found Anna, who was looking for us, and her dad. Aaron Carter had already started to perform, and Anna's dad took all of us, along with our posters along a hallway to some of the stage side seats. We succeeded into sneaking into better seats right at the side of the stage to see Aaron Carter because Dream Street had already come and gone *tear*. We got seats right by the side of the stage- we must have been less than 20 feet away from Aaron Carter. We saw 4 or 5 of Aaron's songs (and we could tell he was pointing and waving right at us, because we were the only ones yelling for him right in that section), and before we knew it, there was Louie, Dream Street's producer, walking up and down the aisle right next to us!! We could not believe our eyes!! We kept telling ourselves not to overreact this whole time while we said hi to him a couple times. He pulled about 5 little girls from the section right beside us, and brought them up the aisle and out into the lobby. Anna's dad was smart enough to follow Louie and the girls he picked. According to Anna's dad, Louie had the 5 girls up there by a door when Louie asked the 5 girls he picked if there were 15 of them and they said, no you must have been confusing us with someone else. Anna's dad jumped in and said, well I've got 5 girls who would die to meet Dream Street! Louie told Anna's dad that he could probably only take 1 or 2 of us back though. When Anna's dad came back and got us, he took us all up to the door which was right outside the aisle. We were thinking that Dream Street was in there and we were going to be able to take a couple pictures then leave. When we got up there, Louie was like "oh why didn't you tell me it was these five?!" (We were really interested at this remark, and later we found out from a fan at the meet and greet that the guys had pointed to a group of five girls on the side that we were on that they wanted to come back. this was also interesting because when DS was on the stage, we weren't in the close seats so it was kinda funny lol!!) Louie comes back and brings us, and the 5 girls farther back towards the back of the arena. There were also extra people that tried to tag along. By this time, Brian, Dream Street's second producer, had already come out. The place they brought us to was kind of open and we thought they would go get Dream Street and they would take a few pictures with us and then leave. Louie then leaves, apparently telling Dream Street we were coming. Then we realized that WE WERE GOING INTO THEIR DRESSING ROOM!!! We could not believe it!! Finally Louie came back and he allowed all five of us to come along including Anna's dad. Louie kept telling us to keep cool and be calm. By this time a group of about 15 more people had accumulated behind us trying to get with us. Louie then told everyone he would only us 5 girls (the DS hooligans hehe) back first and then maybe come back for more people. He took us through a hallway reminding us that there were going to be a mob of other girls waiting to sneak in and to stay close to him. Sure enough, there were tons of girls waiting by the backstage entrance. We went past a couple security guards and a curtain and a security guard stopped us right inside the curtain. Then Louie came back and was like "they're with me". The security guard totally backed off saying ok ok. We then continued to go down two narrow flights of stairs until we saw a back room in front of us and their tour bus parked on the ramp leading out of the arena. We continued right into the back room which happened to be their dressing room!!!!!!!!!! It was so incredibly hard to believe that they were RIGHT THERE in front of us!!! We all went inside and there were about 15 other people including their mom or dad, sisters, brothers, nephews (of Louie) and a few contest winners for Aaron Carter. It was a totally white room with a couch and a refreshment table. When walking in, Anna said to herself, "Breathe….inhale…..exhale…." Greg was passing by, patted her on the shoulder and said, "you're doin' fine!" lol that's just super…! The first one we all saw was Jesse! We walked up and he hugged all of us, and he was being sarcastic, pretending to be a crazed fan jumping up and down screaming oh my god oh my god while giving us hugs. Chris was not in the room at the time, and the next ones we saw were Matt and Frankie sitting on the couch, and Greg was sort of in a corner talking to someone. Matt hugged us all and so did Frankie. Frankie was up and talking to us for awhile, along with Greg. Chris had come in the room too. We had stupidly used up all of our film at the concert and only had four pictures left on Anna's camera. We used those as group shots of us and Dream Street. When we were getting ready for the pictures we were telling the guys that we had listened to their old songs on Broadway Kids on the way to the concert. Greg kinda rolled his eyes when we said we were listening to Hair. We were also talking to Jesse about singing with Sugar Beats and he started to sing She Drives Me Crazy- and Chris joined in! When we were talking to Frankie, Meagan goes, "You know what my favorite movie is? Jungle to Jungle!!" Frankie started cracking up while we were telling him how cute he was in the movie. Since Frankie likes water sports, Anna was telling him how she lived on a lake and had a waverunner and such. Frankie was like, "Well then I'll have to come and visit!" It was great. We were also talking to Claudia for awhile about the contest videos. We also talked to Joe Berger who had seen our signs. One other time when we were talking to Frankie, we mentioned to Frankie how we celebrated his birthday and asked him if he had had a party. Sadly he said no, and we were all like awwwwwwwwwwwwww. At this time, they all had to change from their concert clothes into normal clothes, which Chris had already done. While they were changing, we all just stood there in shock. When Frankie and Matt came back from changing, Matt pushed Frankie into the refreshment table, knocking over a water bottle and an empty can of diet coke. Frankie just kinda stood there looking and laughing at Matt when Amy asked Frankie if he was gonna pick that up. Frankie immediately reached down and picked up the water bottle and can while Amy babbled on about how she was joking. A little while later we were standing with Greg, Matt and Frankie when Amy touches their cheeks to 'see if they're real'. Greg responded by calling her weird, but in a nice way. Then Greg gave Amy his pre-packaged gum wrapper and kissed it! All of us but Amy had on our Dream Street shirts and had all the guys and Claudia sign the back. We also had them sign our posters for us. We also got Louis's signature, Joe Berger's signature, Brian's signature, and Matt's dad's signature (michael ballinger). Another time when we were talking to Frankie, we explained how we were going to go to the meet and greet the next day but that we didn't have a ride. Then he was like "well you just tell your parents that Frankie said you have to come!" It was so funny!! Then Tory showed Chris her pocket pics that she had digitally altered with her and Chris together with the backgrounds of scenes around the world and her school. Chris looked at them and was like "How did you do this? this is so cool!" Tory said, "well I just scanned you in moved us together and changed the background." Then he turned and hugged her and gave her a kiss on the cheek. ****siiiiiighhhhh**** The guys were always wanting hugs and all in all, Chris kissed Amy twice, and Tory and Melissa once. None of the other guys gave kisses..*tear*. We eventually lost track of the amount of hugs they gave us because there were so many. The way they hugged you was soooooooooooo cool!! They would like run their hands up and down your backs and when Chris went farther back to where the guys were changing, he tickled Tory's stomach on his way out…**ahh! it felt so good!!!!! ~tory** Lots of other cool stuff happened, but, sorry we can't explain everything. Before we knew it, it was time for them to leave and we gave them all good bye hugs and followed them (not chris though) out to where they would get on their tour bus. Matt, Frankie, Greg, and Jesse all left and someone (we think it was Brian) was yelling for Chris to hurry up. He started to walk toward the tour bus (this is when Amy ran up to him and hugged him and he gave her the second kiss) when he realized he had forgotten his coat and ran back inside. He was in there for like 3 minutes all while people were yelling at him to hurry up. He came back out and we sadly watched them go as we all yelled good bye. All in all we had been backstage for app. 45 minutes and didn't see anything else of Aaron's concert. All of Dream Street was SO nice! We then were directed back up the stairs and through the curtain where there were at least a hundred girls behind metal barriers. We felt so special leaving because everyone was asking us if we had had backstage passes and if Dream Street had left already. We told them we were just randomly picked out of the audience and that their tour bus had already left. Some of them didn't believe us at all and were thinking we were just told to say that. We went back out to the lobby and talked to Louie's sister and her two sons (Louie's nephews). They were all really nice and we got their autographs too because they were associated with Dream Street. They gave Anna and Melissa their VIP stickers. We talked to her about the guys and she said they all weighed under 140 lbs and that to her knowledge they didn't have girlfriends. She was really nice along with Louie's nephews. While we were talking to them, a few people started to trickle out of the arena, and we left just as the concert was ending. Un-knowing to us, Anna's dad had picked up Dream Street's water bottles and we have them right now!!! Melissa also got a toothpick, and Anna, Meagan and Melissa got their markers that they used to sign our posters and shirts. We talked about our backstage experience the whole way home and were so excited we just had to have a sleepover before we went to the meet and greet the next day and we were sooooooooooooo totally happy!!! Our dreams had come true!! |