Day 285 Getting the VIP treatment from Universal Studios Hollywood!

The home of the biggest filming studio in the world and a designated city in it’s own right, complete with Mayor (Bill Cosby), hospital, post office and zip code, Universal is quite unique. As we shared with you in our Los Angeles blog we had decided to see the studios in style with a VIP Experience pass. This involves a guided tour throughout the theme park and studios to include access to a VIP lounge, lunch, a walk around on the sets of movies, access to the prop department and bypassing all queues for rides. We started our day with coffee and fruit in the VIP lounge talking with some of the team on the VIP desk. It was very busy in the park as it was not only a Saturday but also the start of the school holidays in LA so the prospect of not having to queue for anything was already worth every penny! We met the rest of our group, 13 in total that included a family from California, a couple from England, India & some guys from Mexico, a right international contingent us lot were!!

First stop was Shrek 4D show, neither of us had seen a three or four dimension movie so didn’t know what to expect. It was fabulous and the fairy at the start of the show was unbelievable, the seats moved and when Shrek sneezed and you actually felt as though you were being splattered! A great introduction to the studios. Next was the newest addition to the theme park in Universal, The Simpsons Ride. This is a simulated rollercoaster & VERY VERY good. In fact it was our favourite out of all the rides in the theme park, so good we returned later in the evening for a second go! The Mummy ride was next, a high speed rollercoaster with scary figures lurking in the dark! It was very fast and even went backwards, there is something about feeling the force of terminal velocity in the dark! We went on the mummy ride for a second time later in the day, although I had forgotten just how scary it actually was and the official photo I have my eyes closed!! Boooooo.

Jurassic Park is one of the most famous Universal movies ever made and a massive grossing film, the ride is a trip through the forest and then a plummet into water, again very scary if you are a girl like me who is better in a harness and in control rather than relying on the tracks working properly……..don’t ask why but I kept thinking about the film Final Destination 3! In between rides we went to the Universal museum and saw some sound & light shows, one was Back Draft, from the movie of the same name. This showed how fire is made and controlled on the set. There were 100 park guests in a small warehouse, which suddenly burst into flames in a 3 minute show, with explosions happening all over the place. The heat from the flames was immense, great to see how this was all man made and controlled. The best was yet to come and after a great lunch including some apple pie and ice cream, we jumped on our own personal tram to be guided through the backlot of Universal studios Hollywood. Our guide, Chris showed us the studios & the streets used to emulate Mexico & England. We stopped to see a simulated flood, well actually it was a real flood, it was just controlled and could be rerun every 60 seconds! That’s the movies for you! You may have heard in the news there was a fire at Universal Studios a couple of weeks ago. This has destroyed some of their New York streets. As the sets are made primarily from plastic and wood, they were highly sensitive to the fire, it is sad to see. Work is already underway to rebuild.

Everyone that enters Universal gets to see around the backlot, for the general public this is on a tram, with a guide that passes through Jaws set, War of the Worlds, The house from the film Physco…….it lasts around 45 minutes and is always very popular. With the VIP experience, we saw all the same things but were able to stop and walk around the sets as well as visiting one of my favourites……the 4 storey prop department. Sets in movies and TV shows need to be made & the prop department is a massive warehouse of everything that you could ever conceivably need to construct a home, office, shop, restaurant etc etc. All the props are categorized and Universal rents out its props when requested to other studios. It was cool to see all the ID badges, fake bombs, swords, even spare limbs! Universal have recently made a film based in Japan, so there were loads of props with Japanese writing….turn them around and they doubled as English! Basically this would be a hoarders paradise and I haven’t even mentioned the amount of Beads!!!!!!

After the prop department, Chris led us to Wisteria Lane, the home of Desperate Housewives. I was disappointed to learn that Wisteria Lane has also doubled as many many streets in movies. It is amazing how different the place can look with a lick of paint, some shrubs & a different cast! For example, one of the houses on Wisteria Lane was used as the house in the Munsters. Desperate Housewives is made by ABC studios, and they are renting the street from Universal. As a result when they are filming, there is virtual lockdown and the tour can’t get anywhere near. However as it was a Saturday there was only security in Wisteria Lane so no bantering with Terri Hatcher for me or Eva Longoria Parker for Mike!! AND we were able to see the whole set, I can say I walked on Wisteria Lane, and it is now fully rebuilt after the tornado!

We had a stop at the house featured in the Physco film. It is actually quite spooky and the steps you see Mike and I standing on in the picture are in really dangerous, all of course to make them look even more authentic! The War of the Worlds set is the most impressive. Again this is not a Universal movie but the studio bought a jumbo jet going into the aviation graveyard and used it for the film. Universal have a contract agreement that anyone who uses their lots restore them to the way they were originally, however when War of the Worlds was made they saw the interest from guests to the park so told the production company they could leave the plane and Universal would promote the movie in return for a fantastic sight for the visitors to Universal. Now it is very morbid to be walking around the crash scene of a jumbo jet but the detail was just incredible. The plane had landed in a regular American street and there were cars and clothes lying around. We definitely felt part of the experience being able to walk around through the ruble. Now I bet you didn’t know the scenes from Jaws were shot in a small lake in Universal! The same lake that is in Murder She Wrote!

We arrived at Universal at 9.30am and didn’t leave until closing time at 8pm. As a result of being VIP guests for the day, we didn’t have to queue for anymore than five minutes for any ride or attraction, of course a front of line pass would give you the same privilege. What was different about the VIP experience was the access to the backlot. Being able to walk around the sets, see inside the prop department and spend 4 times as long on the tour than the regular tram ride around Universal studios. We spent $200 each on the tickets and in our opinion it was worth it. I’m not so sure if we would have enjoyed the park quite as much with a one hour wait to get onto the Simpsons ride.

So Universal Studios ended our time in Los Angeles, although we fly home from here in a few weeks so we will get to get a flavour of LA once again. Next stop is somewhere we expect to be completely different……..Texas!

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