Today was simply Universal Studios day. I'm not sure if I originally even planned to come here, but after I found they had a special series of halloween themed nights, I was super excited.
The start of the day was a bit of a disaster as we must have just missed a bus heading near Universal City, then waited nearly 30 minutes and nothing showed up. Never fear though, the metro train also goes near there. Arriving at the train stop was another disaster though, as the signs about how to get to the Universal Studios shuttle (bus) seemed to be contradicting each other. At one intersection the signs to the shuttle literally instructed you to take all four crosswalks of the intersection and end up back where you started!
So arriving later than planned was a bit crappy, since we all know the good rides fill up early, although I picked a Thursday to reduce the impact of this. I also should have read the map they give you at the entrance, as it specifically says take the Studio Tour early, since the line gets big. The good thing is there are signs throughout the park giving you estimates of lines for each ride, but they seem to be a little bit slow to update, and so aren't as useful as you'd hope.
Started with The Simpsons ride, which supposedly had a queue of 10 minutes when we joined it. Like I just said though, we were in the line for closer to 30 minutes. The ride itself if very cool, you get in these carts and then get lifted up so you're looking at this big surrounding screen. From there it's a thrill ride as you might expect, and you're sufficiently tossed and turned along the way.
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| Merchandise for The Simpsons ride. |
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| A super sized edible donut! |
Next stop was the rides down at the Lower Lot. There is a simply massive series of four escalators to get you from the Upper Lot to Lower Lot, takes forever. Down in the lower lot was the Jurassic Park ride (for some reason most of the rides seem to be based on really old movies, I don't know why). This one was in boats moving along a small water canal, in a Jurassic Park environment of course. It was a bit disappointing really, because there was only one really fun part at the end, where you get a bit wet and due to the velocity of the drop it feels like your vital organs are about to exit your body.
Across from here was The Mummy ride. Now I haven't watched these films, but the ride was the biggest joke ever. You're in carts again, and you have some random lead in video and audio, then everything goes dark, you get bounced around like nothing you could imagine, I felt like I was going to be sick, then all of a sudden the ride is over! There's no point to the ride.
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| This isn't even half of the stairway. |
We stood in line for a Backdraft ride (did anyone even watch this film?) which turns out to be not much of a ride at all. You go through a few rooms and watch videos where Ron Howard and some actors talk about how great this film was, and how they made it. Then finally you get into a room that looks like one of the sets for the film, followed by lots of fire, stuff exploding and crashing down around you, and then you're done.
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| Don't bother with this one. |
Next was the Water World show (now I'm sure nobody watched this one) which has some actors going around on jet ski's and stuff. It wasn't too bad but just not really my thing.
Given that the Water World show only runs two or three times a day, almost everyone seems to have attended this one around lunch time. So, my (great) plan now is to sprint for the Studio Tour while the rest of the idiots are still leaving the Water World show. The line is only 15 minutes long! But then Jason starts complaining that he wants lunch because it's nearly 2pm, and the line is short and so it won't be a problem to come back later.
They had a small diner called Mel's Diner which had a great Strawberry Milkshake. For the record I mostly lived on milkshakes and fries at the many fast food places we went to, since many of them didn't have much else for vegetarians. Never fear though, because I actually lost a couple of kilograms during the trip due to all of the walking.
So after lunch we headed down to the Studio Tour. Yep you guessed it, massive lines now. We had to wait for over half an hour to get onto one of the tour trams. Our tour guide was some super keen and friendly guy, which was great. The tour begins by just visiting some of the studios from the outside, then you start to see some sets designed for the ride - water, explosions, that kind of stuff. Overall the tour was great fun.
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| The World Famous Studio Tour, and the Terror Tram at night! |
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| I missed a few cars, like the Back To The Future ones. |
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| The Fast And The Furious. |
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| Guess what happens next. |
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| That's right, I try to take photos and keep my camera dry. |
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| Don't remember what this is. |
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| A bad photo from the set of Desperate Housewives. |
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| Bates Motel. I was on the wrong side for this, but I recorded one good movie. |
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| War Of The Worlds. |
As I mentioned there is a halloween themed night to come, but one of the rides was also open during the day, Chucky's House Of Horrors. In this one you basically walk around what they call a "maze" which in reality involves walking through a bunch of rooms with a particular theme, be it a haunted house or whatever. The catch is there is a bunch of staff hiding inside the rooms, and their job is to either jump out at you, chase after you, or make loud noises at opportune times. So as you might expect, very scary and great fun. The only thing that spoiled it, and this was the same with the night mazes, was there was often too many people in them. So if you're just a few steps behind another group of people, they get all of the scares, and you just see them from afar - the staff usually spends a few moments taking their position, and then get set to scare the next group.
Just enough time before the park closes for the afternoon to see the Shrek 4D film. Now we actually encountered a bunch of these "4D" films during the trip, and by fourth dimension they mean pumping water and air/wind out of the seats, as well as having the seats move around. Not exactly a fourth dimension, but it was alright.
The only thing I was upset about with the day was that they had a similar Terminator 2 3D theatre to the Shrek one, but it was closed during the month of halloween for a crappy Rocky Horror stage show.
The park closed so they could prepare for the halloween night, so we had a few hours to waste in Universal City. It's almost exactly like Pier 39, in that you get a few shops, some souvenirs and some restaurants. The Hard Rock Cafe is also here, but I didn't go in. Instead I chose a restaurant that was showing the World Series Game Two (Yankees vs Phillies).
Finally it was opening time for halloween night, and from the instant you enter the park it's simply awesome. Speakers throughout the park are playing music predominantly from Saw, but also from Halloween, Shaun Of The Dead and some other horror films, while the park is pretty much covered in smoke and there's hundreds and hundreds of staff walking around in costumes - for example, guys in the full Saw pig-mask outfit and operating chainsaws. Unfortunately there's only a few photos and movies of the night, as without flash you don't get a great shot, and I expect they wouldn't appreciate everyone going around using flash.
No mistakes this time, as we headed straight for the Terror Tram. You get dropped of halfway along the tram trip, and walk through this outdoor area with all kinds of crazies. My favourite moment was when they had one of the rooms of the Bates Motel with the characters from The Strangers walking around inside and banging on the windows.
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| The tram for the studio tour. We had three different hosts and they were all fantastic. |
Next up was the Saw maze, as described before. For some reason I forget the details of the maze. It was pretty fun, but crowded. Also while down in the Lower Lot we went on the Jurassic Park ride again, this time in the dark.
There was a Bill And Ted's Halloween stage show next. For some reason it wasn't really about halloween, it was a show dedicated to pop culture events of the past year (and I love pop culture). The show was entertaining, I just didn't see how it related to halloween.
There were additional mazes for Halloween and My Bloody Valentine. The Halloween one was great because it replicated some of the house from the first film, but I actually though the Valentine one was the most entertaining, even though I haven't seen the film.
Having purchased front of the line passes to skip the queue for the halloween night (costs like an extra $25) we had almost seen everything, so we went to the Rocky Horror stage show next. I had really low expectations for this, because anything I've ever seen about Rocky Horror just seems stupid. And it was pretty crap.
Before leaving we had time to fit in another run on The Simpsons ride. In summary, a great day at Universal Studios.
