Last day in LA

As this was our last full day in LA we got an early start and headed to Ihop from breakfast before picking up the car and driving to the Griffith Observatory which gave us a good view of the Hollywood sign for a quick photo shoot.  You can’t visit LA without seeing the Hollywood sign so that was definitely a must see and the fact that it was kind of on the way to Universal Studios helped.

Finding Universal was easy enough but driving into the car parking building was like winding through a well signposted and heavily coned off area.  We picked up our tickets which included Front of Line passes.  These allowed us to skip the queues once for each ride and go directly to the front.  We had such good experiences with the similar passes at the other parks we were keen to do it again.

Universal is not quite a manicured as Disneyland was but it was certainly prettier than Six Flags.  Luckily we got there relatively early in the day so the park hadn’t filled up with people.  Our first stop was the Haunted House which was actually a lot scarier than I had anticipated.  The skeletons and mummies were are unrealistic as ever but the dangling cobwebs that caught in your face and hair were slightly disturbing.  However the scariest part were the people dressed as monsters that jumped out at you when you least expected it.

We had been advised to start at the back of the lot as it takes the crowds a little while to filter back that far and you can often jump on some of the rides without waiting in line early in the day.  It turns out this was really good advice.  We got on The Mummy roller coaster first without using the Front of Line Pass and only had to wait a few minutes to be loaded into a car.  This ride was one of the best at the park as after a slow start it shoots you forward and zooms around an indoor track until it comes to a sudden stop and after a short message threat from the Mummy, you are hurled backwards down the same track to the start of the ride.  As we found out most of the rides at Universal are what they like to call 4D, so we were squirted with water and blasted with air to give us the impression we had blood dripping on us of bugs trying to crawl up our legs.

Next we jumped onto the new Transformers ride which is also in 4D.  This ride isn't a rollercoaster, you are loaded into individual cars and given 3D glasses and sent out with one of the Transformers to save the Allspark.  The car is like a motion master in 3D on a short track which allows them to have more than one car going at a time.  This is definitely one of the best rides I have been on as it gets you up close to the action in the fight sequences and also drops you off a tall building without ever really moving very far.  If you ever visit Universal, you must do this ride.

We decided to the leave Jurassic Park and WaterWorld rides until last after my experience with Splash Mountain so we headed back up the escalators to check out when the next Special Effects demonstration was.  Since we had some time before the next show, we used out Front of Line Passes to get into The Simpsons ride.  This ride is set up exactly like the Transformers one but didn't really compare because it was like being in a cartoon, therefore didn't feel as scary.

The Special Effects demonstration showed us some old and some new effects used in movies with the help of volunteers from the audience.  It was interesting to see how realistic some of the older ones could still look and how hard it must have been on the actors to use them.  After the show we went into the Shrek show since the entrance was directly opposite and we had a bit of time to kill before the Blues Brothers show.  Shrek was another motion 4D motion master ride that squirted us with water and air to make it more convertible.  This was one of our least favourite rides at the park, mainly because we felt we had done it before at the Simpsons and Transformers rides.

The Blues Brothers showed up in a police car and sang and danced on stage.  They must have been pretty hot in their suits because it was getting very warm at this stage.  They encouraged the crowd to get up and dance along with them and a few were getting very into it.  At the end of the show they drove off in their Police car again, a lot of the characters we saw had cars.  Once again, Americans certainly know how to commit to a theme.

After the Blues Brothers show we jumped on the tram for the Studio Tour.  The trams drive around the studios and explain what the sets are used for and what tv shows and movies may have been there.  The high lights included the miniature ship used in the filming of the King Kong movie and the subway which they can crash a train into a flood and the Mexican town which they sent a flash flood through.  It was even used to film an episode of Bones, one of my favourite shows.

The Studio Tour takes about an hour so it was getting on in the afternoon by the time we finished.  At this stage we decided to redo the Mummy and Transformers rides using out Front of Line passes since we had enjoyed them so much the first time.  Since it was near the end of the day we decided to do the Jurassic Park ride and risk getting wet.  There was a stall on the way in selling bright yellow ponchos so we decided to buy one each just in case.  This turned out to be a really good idea.  The ride started out as a nice safe boat ride through a prehistoric swamp where herbivore dinosaurs grazed.  However something goes wrong half way through the ride and we were taken up an incline and dropped down an 84 foot drop underneath a T-Rex.  The drop hadn’t looked that big from the outside but from the top it was surprisingly scary.  And the ponchos came in handy when we hit the bottom and the water sprayed up and drenched everyone.

After that we headed up to the WaterWorld show.  This is kind of a shortened re-enactment of the movie of the same title starring Kevin Costner.  Everyone in the show is a trained stunt man or woman so the show was full of action.  Luckily we were sitting far enough back that we didn't get sprayed with water by the jet skis.  The best bit was when a plane busted over the top of the backdrop and crash landed into the water right in front of us.

The last attraction we went to was the Animal Actors show where they demonstrated some of the tricks the animal actors are taught and how they use them to get the animals to interact with the human actors or the set around them.  The show descended into planned chaos and we saw dogs, cats, ducks, Guinea Pigs even a big pig and heaps of other animals.  It would have been more fun if we were able to pet some of the animals but I get that it might be overwhelming for the animals to have so many people crowding in on them.  They were very cute though.

We drove straight from Universal to the Staples Centre where we were watching the LA Lakers play the LA Clippers.  While trying to find the correct entrance we saw David Spade.  He was the only famous person we saw in Hollywood.  Our seats were quite high up behind the goal and one end of the court.  I was a bit freaked out by the height because we were right at the front of the terrace and there was only a shin high wall and a knee high glass wall between us and a big drop.

The game was really exciting, the Clippers led for the entire game, sometimes by at least 15 points.  However the Lakers came back towards the end and nearly caught up.  The last two minutes of the game probably took at least half an hour to play out with all the time outs and free throws that were taken.  I had expected the game to go for maybe an hour, or an hour and a half at the most but we were there for nearly three hours in the end.  I didn't realise basketball games were so long.

We were flying to New York the next day so we went back to the hotel and packed up and got ready to leave LA for the last time.  I think Rob was a bit sad to be leaving the Mustang as well, but maybe one day in the very distant future he will own one.

Will add photos another time. Got to get to sleep earl tonight since we need to be at the airport early tomorrow.  Goodnight everyone.