Universal Studios Hollywood

I posted about the City Walk, just outside of Universal Studios Hollywood. Next I posted about Super Nintendo World. After that, I posted about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. For my last post from the park, I’ll catch up all the rest to complete our tour of Universal Studios. I will use the slideshow feature to shorten the post visually when I can.

One totally different feature that USH has that Disneyland does not have is that it is built on a rather steep slope. To get from the upper park attractions to the lower park attractions requires traveling up and down a series of four escalators in a row. These were easy to use and always reliable with no lines.

This super steep hill provided so many great vistas. Our first day was cloudy and especially hazy, so the views weren’t as good. But the second day the haze of the city cleared and so did the skies.

On day one, when I left the boys in the lower section and went by myself to the upper section, I climbed the stairs. It was hard, but I did it, and later I bragged to the boys. Pedro wanted to do it, too, so the next day he climbed it with me. The park numbers the steps for you so you can track your progress. There are 344 steps. Whew!

Ok, now to the park. Pedro’s favourite section was Simpson’s Land, after the famous TV show. Pedro has been a big fan for years. Me too. I remember when it was a new show and I was stationed at an Air Force base out at the end of the Aleutian Island chain that stretches toward Russia. I was taking an evening class and on Thursday evenings the teacher let us out a few minutes early so we could all run back to our rooms and catch The Simpsons. It was that big of a deal.

One joke at the park that I enjoyed was a giant red button on the side of the wall beneath the nuclear cooling stacks you see in the photo above. A sign beside the button says in big block letters “Do not press the button.” Naturally, little kids manage to get over there when their grownup isn’t watching, and they run right for that button. When pressed, a siren alarm begins ringing and steam pours from the stacks.

We also enjoyed the few TV and movie characters we saw.

We went on nearly every ride and they were not really my style for the most part. There is exactly one roller coaster. The rest are mostly rides where you sit in a seat and get moved around slowly, turning to face different screens where projections of things are coming at you and sounds surround you. Usually the seat wiggles and leans and bumps, to make it feel more real. It’s not very exciting for someone like me who is not all that into screens. And at their worst, I would get nauseous for some that did too much movement. Some had 3D glasses, which I never find effective for some reason, and are hard to keep on my head while I’m being jostled about. So my whole feedback on rides at Universal Studios is: meh. It did occur to me that Universal Studios is, at its heart, an entertainment media production company, so it does make sense that the theme park is screen based.

One other attraction outside the norm was the theatre, but it was sort of the same thing again. Screens, seats moving beneath you.

Prior to visiting, and during our time at the park, the ride most highly lauded was the Studio Tour. This is a few trolley cars strung together and passengers get a tour of the back lots while an audio/video feature plays loudly the whole time. Knowing nothing else, I assumed this would be a blockbuster of an attraction. It was definitely interesting, but did not match the hype. I think it would have been more enjoyable if the park simply capitalized on what is actually special and unique about it, and marketed the tour as an educational, historical and modern look behind the scenes of what Hollywood is most famous for: the movies and television productions beloved for decades.

The Studio Tour has a bunch of extra hoopla, like a sort of “ride” when the trolley drives into a big garage and a scene from Fast & Furious plays out on screens around you, some character visits, and a mini- Jaws reenactment. But all that was medium quality and more annoying than enjoyable.

The ride is actually pretty cool for all the stuff they gloss over: Entire neighborhoods of fake movie sets, with fake hospitals, and fake suburbs, a fake plane crash, fake banks and fake Old Westerns and fake Mexico. We saw the back lots of ginormous studio buildings and set scenes and parking lots and cranes and things; the stuff behind the productions. I found it all very cool. Especially in our little trolley cars because we would come to a thing that I might not recognize, then the little TV in the front of the trolley would play the movie scene of that spot, and we’d all go, “OH! I remember that!” and the location would be right there beside us.

One thing on the Studio Tour was a demonstration of instantly created rainstorm, followed by a flood. Especially surprising on a hot and sunny day.

On the other side of the street in fake Mexico, the audio presentation told us to take a look at that small, cobbled street beside us. A video played of a scene from some movie when characters were racing to escape a dangerous flood right in this spot. We could see a little bit of water trickling down the hill from the thunderstorm. But then…

And then, as we watched, the water stopped and the sun began to dry it out again, in time for the next group tour.

The attraction that I did not see mentioned prior to the trip, and not advertised within the park turned out to be the most AMAZING thing we did the whole time. (Well, I’m sure Andre would say Super Nintendo World was the most amazing.) Universal Studios Hollywood is a bit small, and by day two we had done everything there was to do, except Waterworld, whatever that was. We had tried it once, but the seats were full, so we came back a different time.

We followed the crowd inside a stadium-sized arena, with a stage that looked like it came right out of the movie. There is water between the stage and the seats. Organizers explained, as everyone was sitting down, that the people who sat in the very front rows WOULD for sure, get wet, and that allowed people to move if they wanted to. We took seats at the top, began to settle in, then reconsidered.

The seats faced the setting sun directly, and none of us could really look at the stage without discomfort. We got up and went to the opposite side of the stadium.

The arrow is pointing to a character, walking out to the edge of a platform while everyone was getting settled and ready for the show to begin. My camera was able to zoom in quite helpfully:

The Waterworld show is a scene acted out that was not in the movie, but would have fit into that world. The setting is a friendly island of floating metal scavenged from beneath the global-warming flooded world. Right away, scouts come zooming in on jetskis and do some great acrobatics and tricks. The scouts indicate that a nearby enemy floating island has sent a couple of villains on their way to attempt to take over their island. The characters all go to their stations to prepare to defend their home.

An extremely dramatic battle ensued, with lots of fire, fireworks, and water splashing everywhere. There are explosions and sword fights and gun battles and high dives and trapeze tricks and… oh, there is so much. We were simply dazzled.

At one point, I had my camera at rest against my chest, finger on the button, waiting for the next amazing thing to happen so I could take a photo. I heard a boom, saw an enormous thing smash through a wall, and I didn’t have time to look into the view finder – just held up the camera and clicked!

But Pedro was more self possessed and got a photo of what actually happened.

But after the flames subsided, the good guys (and gal) were victorious, and lived to fight another day. Or another show, which would begin again the next day.

On the way out, I passed some information boards that listed all the actors in the show and their other work in TV and movies. That made a lot of sense. These people were all professional actors (and professional performers, in the case of the jet skis) and they probably saw the gig at Universal Studios as a way to continue to hone their skills and get paid, when they weren’t in an actual movie.

That was our two days at Universal Studios. Fun was had by all. Crowds not terrible, even for Memorial Day weekend. Weather absolutely bearable for the end of May. We had a good deal on a hotel that was walking distance from the park and found an outstanding restaurant that was walking distance from the hotel too. We got an Uber to LAX and a smooth flight home.