1. Universal Studios y’all.

    Before the awesome stuff, I have to discuss the weather in LA. It is cold. Honestly. Way colder than I was expecting in May from California weather. I woke up this morning at 6:30 (bleggh!) in preperation for our two hour drive to Universal and Alexandra’s and my room was a giant ice box. It was nothing short of horrible and it turns out we weren’t the only ones suffering. The entire LA crew couldn’t work out their prehistoric thermostats and everyone spent most of the night shivering.
    I guess I find it funny that California is known for its gorgeous weather and I was expecting nothing but gorgeous and its been nothing but kindof cold so far. California has this huge image of golden sun and amazing beaches and in reality it’s not like that all the time. It’s funny how television shows and movies can make us think the funniest things.

    So yes. This morning was not a good start but the rest of our day was nothing short of EPIC. Universal Studios is going to be hard to top. I have a metric ton of pictures and I learned a lot today from our awesome tour guide, IRA GOLD. This guy was like the Wikipedia of Universal Studios. He had an astounding amount of knowledge about the place and was extremely personable and probably a huge nerd. But he was awesome and leading us through our VIP tour of the park. Yeah, that’s right. VIP tour. We got to cut in line allllll day. Bam.

    THE LAYDOWN:

    House of Horrors:
    The House of Horrors was your typical haunted house set-up: the maze, the props, and the people in costume that swipe the air dangerously close to your face. Our group of 12 got split up about halfway through, and Hohle ended up following seven screaming girls through the rest of the maze which he found highly amusing. In all honesty, it was the perfect way to start the day because it woke everyone the eff up.

    Terminator 2: 3D:
    Alright y’all. This may be the thing that makes me not completely hate 3D. I’d always found 3D kindof cheesy (you know the scenes were they purposefully throw something unnecessarily just to make it “come” at you) and typically try to avoid it at all costs. The Terminator show was, in all honesty, pretty fricken cool. It was a mixture of film/3D footage and actors performing on a stage in front of us. They had a lot of awesome fog and light effects (including real guns altered to not fire bullets but still sound super loud) and the experience was overall pretty enjoyable. Maybe 3D has its merits.

    Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride:
    So. I’ve only been on one rollercoaster before in my life because I have an extremely irrational fear of heights and dropping from them. But! The Mummy rollercoaster was awesome for a few reasons. Firstly, it was indoors which meant for me that it wouldn’t be going that high. Secondly, it was almost all in total darkness with flashing lights so I couldn’t even really see were we were going which was slightly scary and yet took away a lot of my rollercoaster apprehension. Yay!

    Universal’s Animal Actors:
    This show was adorable, and made me want a puppy even more than I do now. Essentially the trainers did a few tricks with birds, dogs, and then an orangutan (which was wearing tiny little pants!). He explained the process of _________, in which a dog is focused on the actor while also listening to the commands of their trainer. It was pretty intense to see the dog watching a little boy on stage while doing all sorts of tricks like crawling across the floor (which was adorable).

    The Simpsons Ride:
    I personally thought this ride was going to be lame and I got extremely sick of watching Simpsons clips while we waited to move into the ride. Our LA crew was split up into two seperate rooms and seated in these intense looking little pod things. A screen in front of us started playing a little intro movie and then everything went black while our pod raised 10 feet above the ground and ascended into a room with an absolutely massive screen. And then it was pretty much like every other motion simulation ride but with the Simpsons. It was fun though and there were definitely some intense points.

    Lunch:
    Not gonna front, we got the hook-up a lot by being on the VIP tour. We skipped lines. We got to ride in a tram that was way awesomer than a bus. We got IRA. And we got to eat in a buffet that wasn’t chocked full with disgusting theme park food (turkey legs spring to mind). There was a ton of food and drinks and desserts and it was awesome. And fattening. Yay?

    The Tour:
    Probably one of the most information rich sections of our day was the tour of the Universal Studios… studios. We got to ride in an epic tram-esque vehicle and we spent exactly 2 and a half hours (according to IRA, this is a big deal) touring the studios. It was pretty awesome. We were on the set of the NBC show “Parenthood” and we were allowed to walk inside the house set (it looks real until you look up and there is no ceiling). We then walked through one of the studios that was home to sound work, mainly voice work. Apparently, the people that dub and mix the whole movie are sometimes given four days to do five days of work, oftentimes only finishing it the morning before the movie premieres on the red carpet! That is insane. We then movied through several movie sets (The Grinch, The Desperate Housewives street, Psycho, War of the Worlds (my favorite! it was the scene were the airplane crashes, gaaaah. Pictures will follow soon) and a few others). We got to see a ton of cars from movies including the DeLorian from Back to the Future and the Mule from Serenity! EPIC. The tram took us into a few awesome little rides including King Kong 360 3D (another mind-changer on 3D for me) and an earthquake simulator that was recently used in an episode of Bones. Our last real tour fun was walking through the city streets they had constructed. In a matter of minutes the street we were walking on had been used in a ton of movies (Back to the Future, Transformers 2, Captain America, Austin Powers, Spiderman 2, etc). It was pretty cool to say the least.

    Waterworld:
    Okay, okay. Not the best movie ever but the show they put on that centered around the movies plot was pretty epic. They used a lot of jet skis and waverunners, combined that with fireworks, pyrotechnics, and gun noises, and finally, lighting a guy on fire. It was insane. Apparently the fire jumping guy is one of the most highly paid people in the park because of how insanely dangerous his job is. Ira was telling us that most of those guys don’t have eyelashes or eyebrows, which makes sense but still sucks for them. But then again, they’re banking apparently.

    JURASSIC PARK- The Ride:
    Ponchos! The Jurassic Park ride was a water ride that ended in a big splash so everyone in our LA crew was wearing awesome yellow ponchos for about 10 minutes before we got on the ride (to the weird stares of the people around us). The ride itself had a lot of animatronic dinosaurs that we were able to see as we made our way around the little river before finally making our way up an extremely steep hill, making some turns, and then dropping 83 feet in 3 seconds. It was terrifying and yet, awesome.

    At this point we had all decided we had seen everything we had wanted to see and parted ways with the badass tour guide that was IRA. We made reservations at a restuarant called the Yard House (known for having the largest draft selection) and had delicious food (even though everyone was still nursing a food baby from our buffet earlier). I fell in love with the Yard House when I found out they had Woodchuck Cider on tap which tastes about a million times better on tap than it does out of the bottle (even Alexandra liked it!). So yeah. Aftet that we went to Ralph’s and the LA crew got ready for a party! Wooo! :D

    9 months ago  /  Notes