Universal Studios Hollywood

There are three things that make our Universal Studios trip and this review less than they could be. Two of them were not really in our control.

The first is that there was a terrible heat, also referenced last week in the review of the Los Angeles Zoo. This dampened some of our enthusiasm, though it was nice that they had misters set up for waiting in line.

Shade might have helped more, but it is hard to say with such a punishing heat.

In addition, there is just a lot to do there. While you are much closer to Universal Studios from midtown LA than from Anaheim (starting point of our previous two visits to Universal), there is still travel and traffic and we also needed to go back to the hotel to pick up our checked bags, then get to the airport in time for our flight. 

All of that means that we did not have sufficient time, even if we had not been fighting the heat. For a future attempt, I would stay at one of the adjacent hotels, and for the best chance of avoiding a heat wave go in January. For this trip, that was not completely in our control.

There is a lot to see there, even random things like this classic Dusenberg used in The Mummy.

However, the third issue is really on me.

Our main priority was the tram tour, so we went to that first. That in itself was not a problem.

However, I kept trying to capture everything interesting, in a moving vehicle with lots of people all around, and I drained my freshly charged camera battery before we even finished the tour. Any photos I have that are not of the tram tour happened before we boarded the tram, because I could not take any pictures after.

I should have been able to do better than that, no matter how exciting it is to drive past movie sets that you recognize, especially when so many of  the pictures turned out blurry and low quality.

This was my third time on the tram ride, having gone once in the mid-80s, and again in 2000.

It was interesting noting some of the changes. They no longer part the Red Sea (which was never as impressive as it should have been), but you do still withstand the flash flood.

You drive past a gallery of movie vehicles...

... and some old set pieces, including the mobile lab from The Lost World, with a few dinosaurs (but not animatronic) nearby.

They have also added two 4-D experiences, one based on King Kong and on on The Fast and the Furious. Try getting a good picture of those! 

Seriously, I did. It didn't work out. Regardless, you get attacked by dinosaurs and giant spiders, and you see the front of the tram knocked away. This does make small children much more likely to cry then when it was just a Cylon attack or riding through an avalanche. Sure, those are very old references, but so was the old Magnum PI car.

Ultimately, we did not mind that the bulk of our experience was the tour. I do feel bad that I did not get more (or any but the one) pictures of Springfield, which was amazing.

I also wish I'd gotten a picture of Scooby Doo hanging out the top of the Mystery Machine. Nonetheless, I do have an idea of what to do differently, and I will keep that in mind.

Accessibility: The mobility seemed really good from what I saw. For sensory processing issues, those 4-D experiences could be rough. There is a guide for the Orlando location that may still give some ideas: https://www.universalorlando.com/webdata/k2/en/us/files/Documents/UOR_Cognitive_Disability_Guide.pdf

The also do offer tram tours in Spanish, and those are regularly scheduled.

COVID: It is very much outside for the most of it. Inside there were masks, somewhat, though it was not really enforced for some of the well-ventilated stores. It seemed pretty safe.

https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/web/en/us

(I did not find the web navigation helpful.)