Universal Studios Hollywood

12/6/10 - Day 2 Hollywood

We woke up early and were first at the restaurant for breakfast when it opened at 6.30am. The HI breakfast was pretty good - coffee, juice, cereals, muffins, bagels, toast, bacon, eggs, sausage, hash brown and some strange lumpy white goo that we stayed well clear of and later discovered was white gravy.

We were headed to Universal Studios for the day and wanted to arrive by 8.30am so we were at the front of the line when the gates opened at 9am. We had some time so we drove up to take some photos of the Hollywood sign first.

Trying to "hold" the sign.

Not quite tall enough!

Too short

Not even close!

We arrived at Universal Studios around 8.30am when the crowds were starting to roll in.

My one complaint about the day would be the ticket booths set up. I had bought the Southern California City Pass from the Universal site as it was the only one that would let me use the print at home option. So we had to collect our City Pass booklets at US but we couldn't do that at the ticket booths at the entrance. We were scanned in with our printed tickets and told to go to Guest Services inside the park to collect our booklets. But we couldn't do that until the park opened at 9am. So even though we got there early, we still had to wait till park opening and then line up for our tickets. Anyway, it wasn't too long a wait and I had our booklets by 9.15am. I had torn out the Universal touring plan from The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland but left it at the hotel. Doh! We had to wing it so decided to do the rides first, starting with The Simpsons.

From there we headed downstairs to the Lower Lot where we rode The Mummy (using child swap as Sammy wouldn't ride) and Jurassic Park. I know that I read somewhere not to sit on the left on JP as you'd get soaked. Well that little tidbit left my mind when we boarded the ride and I sat on the left. I can confirm that those on the left most certainly do get soaked! I had to walk around in sopping jeans for the rest of the day and it wasn't exactly warm!

I had considered buying the Front of Line passes but at $50 each I decided against it and I'm glad I did. By getting there early and doing the 3 major rides first we didn't wait in line at all. We walked onto all 3 and were the only ones on Jurassic Park that early in the morning (everyone else was probably waiting for it to warm up before they got soaked!).

We checked out the rest of the Lower Lot and had fun with the props while we headed back up to do the backlot tour

The backlot tour was so much fun! It has changed since I last went on it in 1996! The trams back then seated around 20 people, now they seat 100s! I was disappointed that there isn't King Kong or Jaws or Hill Valley anymore but the kids really loved what we did see and our tour guide was very entertaining. As soon as we got off they wanted to go again, but the lines were huge by that time so we gave it a miss and went off to explore the rest of the Upper Lot.

The Curious George playground was very tempting but we didn't have a change of clothes or towels so we said we had to skip it. Sammy didn't like that idea though and ran right in fully clothed!

Note that these family dryers are a waste of $5! He came out as wet as he went in.

In the afternoon we couldn't walk 2 feet without bumping into a character

When we'd done all of the rides and shows we decided to head out and check out the CityWalk. We all loved Universal and had a really great day. And when we got back to the hotel and checked the touring plan, we found that we had actually done everything in the exact order anyway!

We decided to have a drive around Toluca Lake Estate on our way back to the hotel. My friend Alyson, who lives in LA had made a Google map with some stars addresses for us to check out, but we didn't have internet access to look at it so we followed the Stars Homes map that I had bought the day previously. We saw the Jonas Brothers old house and Miley Cyrus's front gate (all very exciting for the kids!) and then got caught in really heavy Hollywood Bowl traffic on our way home.

We finally got back to the hotel and headed off on foot back down to the Walk of Fame to get some dinner. I was determined to find In n Out Burger as it had been recommended by so many people. A guy overheard us talking about it and gave us some directions which turned out to be wrong. He sent us the totally wrong way and we wandered the streets of Hollywood for awhile before asking for new directions. We finally found it and the line was out the door! It was late and we were hungry so we decided to give it a miss and ate at IHOP instead. We never did end up eating at In n Out after all.

It was a very quick visit to Hollywood but we loved every minute of it!