Writer Ian Maxtone-Graham was interested in making an episode where the Simpson family travels to New York to retrieve their misplaced car.

Executive producers Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein suggested that the car be found in Austin J. Tobin Plaza at the World Trade Center, as they wanted a location that would be widely known.

Homer later receives a letter from the New York City government, which informs him that his car has been found parked in the Austin J. Tobin Plaza and will be destroyed if not picked up in 72 hours.

While waiting for a parking officer to come and remove the clamp, Homer buys khlav kalash (a fictionalized kebab served on a stick) and several cans of crab juice (in order to wash away the taste), and now needs to urinate, but is afraid to leave his car behind.

The family attends a Broadway musical about the Betty Ford Clinic, and then takes a carriage through Central Park to where they are planning to meet Homer.

[3] Writer Ian Maxtone-Graham, a former resident of New York, had conceived the idea of having the family travel to the city to locate their missing car and believed it to be "a classic Manhattan problem".

[4] Bill Oakley, who had visited the World Trade Center when the construction of the towers was completed in 1973, suggested parking the car in the plaza of the buildings.

[5] When he returned, Lance Wilder and his team spent time creating new scenes and backgrounds, incorporating small details such as signs and hundreds of extras that would correctly illustrate the city.

[7] Oakley and Weinstein were pleased with the final results, and both noted that the buildings, streets, and even elevator cabins were detailed closely to their real life counterparts.

Director Jim Reardon wanted to replicate films that ended in a similar way, and commented, "I remembered that every movie located in New York would pull back if you were leaving town on a bridge.

[5] In 2019, a hand-drawn cel from the episode, depicting the two towers, was given to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, in what the curator termed a "hilarious and tender" donation.

[9] Some conspiracy theorists believe that a scene in the episode foreshadows the September 11 attacks: in it, Lisa holds a brochure for a $9 bus fare with the World Trade Center shown in the background.

"[11] Bill Oakley, the episode's showrunner, reacted to a New York Observer article in 2010 via Twitter by saying, "$9 was picked as a comically cheap fare...To make an ad for it, the artist logically chose to include a silhouette of NYC.

[5] The musical sequence played during the Flushing Meadows segment is a stylistic parody of the piece "Flower Duet" from the opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes.

It was the highest-rated show on the Fox network that week, beating King of the Hill's season two opener "How to Fire a Rifle Without Really Trying".

[19][20][21][22] Ian Jones and Steve Williams, writers for British review website Off the Telly, claimed that the episode "ditched all pretence of a plot and went flat out for individual, unconnected sight gags and vignettes".

[23] In a separate article in Off the Telly, Jones and Williams write that the episode "... wasn't shown for reasons of taste and has never appeared on terrestrial television in Britain", referring to a BBC Two schedule of the ninth season, which began in October 2001.