Sunnyday ‘Scoot’ tours take sightseers to parts unknown

Amy Wagner likes to wave. She waves a lot — at pedestrians, at bicyclists, at fellow motorists — and often, sometimes surprisingly, they wave back.

“We want to be a part of the community, and that’s why we wave,” Wagner said Friday morning. “We can’t tell you how many people we’ve seen wave back.”

Driving along in her red three-wheeled “scoot,” which looks something like a roofless version of Lightning McQueen from the animated movie “Cars,” traveling down San Fernando Boulevard in Burbank — where their company is based — to Western Avenue to Riverside Drive and into Griffith Park, she waves.

PHOTOS: Sunnyday Scoot tours give different perspective while driving

Behind her on Friday morning were three more green scoots — specially manufactured two-passenger scooters — each with a driver and passenger partaking in a tour led by Wagner and her boyfriend and business partner Michael Hunter. Many of them waved, too.

That level of what Wagner called “personability” is part of what the couple believes makes their new tour business, called Sunnyday Scoot, unique. The other part is the gas-powered scoots themselves.

Sunnyday tour guides — there are four including Wagner and Hunter — take caravans of up to four scoots on three-hour driving tours that focus on lesser-known sights in and around Griffith Park, or on one-hour adventure rides that are more about the fun of driving. The company offers four tour packages, as well as customized romance packages.

Hunter said it’s more fun than the typical tour bus, and participants not only get to buzz up and down the winding roads of Griffith Park, among other routes, they get to feel the wind in their faces while doing it. The tours bring some excitement to driving in a town where the prospect of regular traffic intimidates visitors and enervates locals, he said.

Neither Wagner nor Hunter are natives of California, though Hunter has lived in the Los Angeles area before, and they don’t bring insider knowledge of the places they visit. However, they say they put a lot of work into research for the tour and have even taught locals a thing or two.

Jamie McCormick was back for his second tour with the scoot company on Friday. Even though he has lived in Los Angeles for several years and goes to many events and venues around town, his first tour showed him a side of Griffith Park he’d never seen, including places Walt Disney visited with his daughter.

Hunter said when they started the business, they expected to serve mostly tourists, but they’ve actually had many repeat customers and locals.

Chandra Chang, a writer and producer who lives in Los Angeles, shared a scoot with McCormick. It was her first time.

“It feels like a Mario Kart,” she said, referring to the video game that involves popular Nintendo characters racing in go-carts.

Sunnyday has been open for business a little more than two months, but it took about two years of planning, including a nationwide search for the right location before settling on Burbank because of the year-round good weather and proximity to Griffith Park. Hunter said it’s a “dream job that snuck up on me.”

Not only does he love it, he said, he’s happy with the response it’s been getting from customers. He and Wagner practically beam with pride at the five-star reviews they’re getting online — all nine on Yelp and the four so far on Trip Advisor.

“Our last review didn’t even mention the scoots,” Wagner said, adding that it focused on the couple’s friendliness.

Hunter said that while the scoots may “separate” them from their competition, “it’s good to read the reviews that say it’s us that separates us.”

For more information, visit sunnydayscoot.com.