There's a world of difference between wanting to do something and actually accomplishing it. (What's that saying about best-laid plans...?) Head writer Robert Guza Jr. explains what a technical achievement the carnival story was — in terms of both filming and storyline.

Soap Opera Weekly: You decided not to build sets for this story — but didn't renting an actual carnival present its own difficulties?
Robert Guza Jr.: Once we glommed onto the idea of doing it for real, we figured we can't screw this up; we had to nail it. It's one thing to put up a carousel, but how do you light it? How do you get cameras in there so you can see your people? Can we do scenes on it, or is it too noisy to pick up audio?

Weekly: And, aside from the technical achievement, how do you squeeze a carnival into a hospital show?
Guza: How do we make this work, story-wise? You need a pretext so you can get all sorts of characters from all walks of life under the same roof at the same time. Making it [a benefit] for Sonny's son folds it all in. We get our mob guys and, because it's a carnival, you get a lot of the kids. I would say pretty much our entire cast is involved in this. I've never been prouder of a production team than I was with these guys. It's just amazing. Take the fortune-teller's tent. The exterior is on location and the interior is on the soundstage.

Weekly: Where does GH go from here?
Guza: We are starting to think about another event that we can do differently — more than just building sets and burning them down or shooting them up. I may very well peg something to March. Basically, what you try to do is, when the stories are right, you do [them]. You don't wait for sweeps and you don't rush it to get into sweeps. You just do it when it all dovetails.