Day 31: Universal Studios

On Tuesday morning we left early from our paradise and headed towards Los Angeles. We have thought a couple of times that maybe we should've just stayed in Palm Springs for the rest of the holiday ;-) anyhow, on 10am after few hours of driving (and very nerve-wrecking drive in LA morning traffic on a six-lane highway) we parked to the Curious George parking garage at Universal Studios.

We were expecting quite some queuing and general hassle. The biggest rush seemed to be on the entrance on buying the tickets and actually getting in. They offered also a first-in-line-pass which was at least $50 more expensive than the normal ticket. We decided to go with the normal ticket even though it would mean that we can't maybe do all the rides/sights. Luckily we were wrong!

It turned out Tuesday within a non-holiday week is actually great time to visit the place. We did not need to queue practically at all and we got always the front row seats. We started our day with Jurassic Park ride. That was reeeeeeally cool!! With all the dinosaurs and props from the movie. It also ended with a rather steep descent which led to an interesting on-the-ride picture, where someone is clinging on to her dear life while the other person is relaxing like being the owner of the world. It is still too bad we did not buy that picture :)

Some previous rides had some problems... And some velociraptors feasting.

After Jurassic Park we went to Mummy ride, Terminator2 movie thingie (quite bad..), Shrek 4D movie (when Shrek sneezes there was water spraying on us) and the new yet to be finally opened Transformers 3D. They were doing rehearsal runs with the ride which made it possible for us to try it out too. The Transformers thing was really amazing with lots of 3d which made us completely lose orientation. We would plummet down skyscrapers and fly high up and we had no idea in what position we really are on the ride.

We also did a one hour studio tour which was really interesting. We could see some of the actual sets ad props of movie like The Jaws, Back to the Future, Fast and the Furious etc. It was also nice to see Wisteria Lane in real life, and actually that is one of the few sets where the housed are not only facades but actually "real" houses where inside scenes can be shot as well. On the day of our visit they were shooting Desperate Housewives there, unfortunately we did not see any of the Housewives themselves. If we would not be cheap Dutch/Finnish people, we would've taken the $250 VIP tour where you can actually go and see the studios and different sets inside. Next time then... :)

Familiar motel...

When looking carefully there is one very old mom looking out of the window of the Bates house..

This 747 was a prop for Spielberg's movie "War of the worlds". They mentioned the plane from the scrapyard cost $16k and the transportation $200k

Daily production schedule with locations

Special bungalows for the producers/writers/film staff with named parking places.

After hours we decided to leave and find a hotel. We found it so close, that we walked back to the Universal City which was full of shops and restaurants. After dinner we decided to go see Hunger Games to the movie theatre. There were 6 people additional to us, probably again the Avengers that was on in 6 of the 19 screens of the theatre at the same time lured all the spectators :) And a one sentence comment of the movie: high five for non-helpless female/women heroines! (this view does not maybe represent the male part of our duo :-)