Universal Studios Hollywood

One cannot come to Los Angeles without visiting Universal Studios. What I can say is that it is very unlikely I will visit it again, at least not in the near future. Perhaps for kids it is fun, and this is the reason they are able to sell annual passes; otherwise, I cannot understand why anyone would go more than once a year.

Aside from the Universal Studios tour, Jurassic Park, and perhaps Waterworld – if there were no queues – I would not have bothered with the rest. But, by charging an entrance fee that gets you into all the attractions, Universal Studios gets a lot of extra money they would have missed out on otherwise, not to mention avoiding the logistical complications that would have come from charging for each attraction separately.

Everywhere I went, I was sprayed with water, with the exception of Waterworld (ironic, isn’t it?). The poor guys who were sitting in the front row had buckets of water thrown on them (there were some warnings displayed before entering Waterworld, and I had a feeling this would happen so I chose to sit at a distance). Hope that the water is filtered every day as nobody wants to be drenched in dirty water.

My wife and I went to the House of Horrors, as well (after all, it was included in the price). There, you move in a line and ghosts, skeletons, etc., jump out at you from the wall. They can’t do it to everyone in the line so who gets scared is totally random. The poor guy in front of us got almost everything, so my wife and I couldn’t stop laughing. At one point, he was so disoriented he hit his head on one of those fuzzy mirrors that covered the walls in one section of the corridor.

The Universal Studios tour was good; I wish I could have taken a photo, if not in (ideally), at least beside the DeLorean car used in Back to the Future. Of course, they cannot afford to do this for thousands of visitors, but they do organize VIP tours – maybe they are allowed to stop by this famous car.

Warnings were posted before the rides that recommended caution to those with heart conditions, dizziness, neck and back injuries, pregnancy, etc. From time to time, I get a pain in my neck so it wasn’t a good idea to go on many rides, but they were included in the price. . .

There should also be a warning against eating just before going on a ride. While I was in the queue for Jurassic Park, I bought an ice cream. Not at the 1st kiosk I passed, which would have been the sensible thing to do, but at the 2nd one as I was getting bored and had started to regret not having bought one earlier. The queue started to move faster so I had to eat it in a hurry and, during the ride, I had an uncomfortable sensation of the ice cream in my stomach; I hoped I wouldn’t throw up. I began to think about the people around me – perhaps they had just eaten, too. I was beginning to think what a good idea it was to where those yellow raincoats, but I couldn’t figure out where they were provided.

I saw on various billboards, under the Universal Studios logo, that they are called ‘The Entertainment Capital of L.A.’ Why not of America, would have anyone complained ?