Universal Studios

Pete and I have woken nice and early to cruise down the freeway to Universal Studios. I've found driving fairly easy over here, the roads are ridiculously easy to navigate on and the drivers are super relaxed considering the amount of traffic here. I feel like Americans would have a harder time learning to drive in Sydney traffic then us having issues over here. I guess having five lanes wherever you are makes all the difference regarding traffic flow and no-one here ever seems to tailgate (again probably helps having the 5 lanes and no assholes sitting under the speed limit hogging the fast lane!)

Universal Studios was amazing. The atmosphere, the movie sets and the replicas of the different sets were just phenomenal. The amount of work and money that would have to go into each of the different "worlds" to make them as fabulous as they are just amazes me. There was a Harry Potter World - incredible!, The Simpsons World - AHMazing!, Despicable Me World - Fabulous! and a Jurassic Park World that was also ridiculously well done. I spent the whole day in awe of how real they looked and how well they had been built to life-size scale so that we could use them.

Our day started with a tour of the movie sets and that was even better than I had thought it would be. We hopped on a train-tramy thing that drove us around the entire studio, it was massive. The whole tour took about an hour and we were able to see the sets of King Kong, Jaws, Fast and Furious, Back to the Future and The Grinch. They also showed us through the sets of some famous Tv shows. I wasn't familiar with all of them as most were American shows but Desperate Housewives was one of them that I did know and they showed us the street of which the ladies houses are filmed in. The houses are literally just shells of a house with a garage that opens and closes but it looks so real from the front with a car, driveway, real grass, a letter box everything. Once the doors opened though, there's nothing behind them but ladders and paint cans used to paint the outside to make it look real.

Our tram stopped in the middle of the road at the bottom of a hill and they asked us to take a look at the country towns tin roofs to watch on as they showed us how they create the rain and lightning storms in movies. That was amazing, the rain started lightly then progresses heavily with the flickered lights to show lightning then all of a sudden everything opened up and a gush of water came flooding down the hill right toward our bus, it was totally planned but amazing!

They then put us in a bunch of simulators to reenact some famous movie scenes and show us what the actors get put through to make films look real.

There is a scene in King Kong where the Ape fights off Dinosaurs and our tram was placed right in the centre of that scene. The fight between the Ape and Dinosaurs happened all around us, with the Ape picking up our tram and shaking it around. The dinosaurs jumped onto the tram making it shake and feel like it was getting crushed - of course our tram didn't lift off the ground and there weren't real apes or dinosaurs there but the simulators were so life-like it literally felt legit real.

We were also part of a scene recently showed in Criminal Minds where we were sitting at a tram station (in the tram) and had a speeding truck crash into the station we were sitting in when the truck tipped. It then started to roll down the hill toward us (This was physically happening right in front of us, no simulations!) As it was rolling toward the tram we were sitting in at the station it starts to burst into flames and within seconds as it's about to blow a burst water main (of course) allows water to pour and flood waters come rushing down the subway straight toward our tram. Just as it was about to come through and wet everyone the floor tipped from under us and the water went rushing below - phew!

It was amazing to see how real they can make things for both tv shows and the actors. I could imagine how easy it would make things for the actors and actresses in terms of making what their doing feel more real and believable for the viewers.

We spent the remainder of the morning walking around and exploring each of the little worlds they had before stopping in at the Kwik-E-Mart for lunch in Simpson's World. It was so real, it was awesome.

We then watched a few of the shows. There was a show called WaterWorld which was basically a pirate show, it had Jet-Ski riders in it and the performers were having all sorts of battles with each other both in and out of the water, showing off some of the fighting scenes you would see in movies and blowing up sets during battle which was pretty amazing to see. We then saw another show called Special Effects, it was awesome. They showed us how Ted from the movie "Ted" was created, how they light people on fire during filming, fight scenes and how they make it look real but don't actually hit each other and how they make sound effects in movies (did you know that an empty water bottle being crushed in your hands is used to make the sound of bones breaking in movies? If you think back to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park when they were eating bones - the sound of an empty water bottle was used to create this noise, try it out!)

All in all it was a pretty good day out, Pete and I paid extra money to buy a VIP pass meaning we had priority access for all rides. We didn't have to line up at all, we were able to skip the queue straight to the front and most times were treated with priority boarding meaning we could have first choice on the ride as to where we would like to sit. Usually we wouldn't bother with the VIP passes but we only had a day there and wanted to make good use of our time and it was great, although I was a tad disappointed with the rides at Universal Studio. I am such a rides person, I freaking love rides especially the scary ones but most of the rides in fact, 95% of the rides in Universal were just simulators. Don't get me wrong, the

simulators were great, nothing like the simulators in Australia, these ones actually felt ridiculously real but they just didn't do it for me. Not even close to being scary enough and I felt like once I'd been in one, they all just felt the same.

We then did a bit of souvenir shopping and stopped in at Harry Potter World to try a Butter-beer (it was gross!) before walking around the park to meet the characters that were out for show and pictures. It was so incredible and every character that you wanted a photo with had an attendant with them who would take both a professional picture and a picture off your camera or phone for you also free of charge (something that NEVER happens in Australia!)

We had a quick stop in at Moe's bar, back in Simpson World for a Duff beer (Fyi, it was gross too!) before making our way out of the Park as it was time for close. Just outside of Universal Studios was a Hard Rock Cafe and as it was dinner time we decided to stay there and give it a try. It wasn't too bad and as usual the service here in America is fantastic. I am told it's due to the fact they live off tips and perhaps that is why they are so friendly and have amazing customer service. Either way I am loving it, having worked in Hospitality myself for many years I freaking HATE rude service so it's good to be around people who actually do what they are getting paid to do.

Anyways, tomorrow we've decided to go to Disneyland as they have a "Paint the night"Parade on tomorrow night that they only perform a few times a week, tomorrow being the only night we can view it!

We've been told all the characters come out and light up Disneyland at 9.30pm and that it isn't to be missed so we will definitely be there.