Universal Studios

Today we headed out to Universal Studios. It was only about 20 miles away from our hotel in Anaheim, but it took about 80 minutes to get there due to LA traffic. You know that SNL skit where they make fun of all the highways in California? Well, it is true. We never stayed on the same highway for more than 10 minutes. Thank goodness for the GPS!

It was a beautiful and very hot day. On the lead up to the park gates, we walked past a bunch of chain stores that looked like a great place for hanging out after the park closed at night. But then we were finally showing our tickets and entering.

The first shop inside the park was the Harry Potter store. The boys and I were so excited and raced around exclaiming, "Look at this!" and "That is so cool!". The boys wanted everything of course, including the Griffindor Sword, and all the wands.  We promised that we could come back after we were done in the park or we never would have gotten out of there.

The first show that we saw was Waterworld. The boys have never seen this movie at all, but it was still exciting to watch all the stunts. We sat at the very top in the shaded section, so we weren't in the "Soak Zone".  We had great seats to see the whole set.

After that, we walked around a bit and saw the future entrance to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts which is supposed to open in 2016. No behind-the-scenes tour  this year though, I asked. 

One of the newer rides is the Minion Mayhem ride. Jeff learned his lesson from Disney's Star Tours and decided to sit this one out while the boys and I went on this one. This ride is a 3D immersion ride where you sit in seats that jiggle and move as you watch a big screen. This one also blasted air at you too. It was awesome!

Beginning of the line

Our cool 3D glasses

My little Minions

When you come out of the ride, you are in the space that is geared to the younger kids. The kids and I rode on the bugs, which is like the Airplane ride at Bay Beach in Green Bay.

All over the park there are these Cool Zone fans that blast out mist. Since it was literally the hottest day of the year (temp hit 100 degrees), it definitely helped. These mist fans were in most of the lines too. Disney should add these to their lines that are in the sun.

We took the Studio Tram Tour next and waited at least an hour. They did have workers whose primary job was to make standing in line go faster and cool people off by squirting them with squirt guns. The boys thought he was hilarious and as our line snaked closer to the worker each time, the guy made them laugh.

Once we got on the tram, it took us down to the backlots where they actually do film some shows. Many of the sets are generic back grounds that are decorated once a show is scheduled to film there.

A New York City street scene.

This was used in Back to the Future

A street that has a flash flood.

 They were filming two different shows in the park that day. One was an unnamed pilot and another was a show that neither Jeff nor I ever heard of.

Desperate Housewives. 

At the end of the tour, there is a cool 3D portion that happens when the tram goes into a garage. Dinosaurs and trucks look like they are crashing into you on both sides. The effect was a little ruined however because the 3D part failed to start, so we had to drive out and around and go back in. 

After that, we were all getting a little exhausted by the heat and sun. We walked down to the Jurassic Park ride, which involved going down 4 steep, really long escalators, but the line for that was more than an hour long. We went to play in a little shaded playground for a bit but the kids didn't even want to do that for very long. We could have gotten the add-on "Front-of-the-line" VIP passes, but it would have added another $200 to the day, so we decided against it. Would it have been worth it? I'm still not sure.

We were all getting close to being ready to head back to the hotel by this time (4:30). But one of Jeff's favorite shows, the animal tricks show, was one more stop that we all wanted to make sure we attended. It was definitely not the excellent show that he remembered (and that the old family movies showed). Very cheesy, with a couple dog tricks, one cool bird trick, and a really silly story line. 

We had our promised stop in the Harry Potter store before leaving. The boys got Griffindor bookmarks and I bought my trip souvenier, a huge Marauder's Map coffee mug. 

Did we get everything out of Universal Studios that we should have? Definitely not. We missed most of the rides like Simpson's, Transformers, Jurassic Park. But we definitely had a great time. We still got back to our hotel a little before 9 pm due to the drive on the crazy California highways. In all, it was a fun day!