Universal Studios!

Tuesday, our first full day in Los Angeles, was my birthday. And our longstanding plan was to spend both my birthday and J's (two days apart) at Universal Studios Hollywood, which we'd booked tickets for before we left Australia. So on Tuesday morning, which was incredibly windy, we set off from our AirBnb caravan in someone's yard in North Hollywood and walked through the gates into Universal Studios at 10:30am, half an hour after they opened.

The thing I'd been most excited about was the section of the park called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. So, having done some quick research the night before, we had a plan of attack: go straight to the two Harry Potter rides and ride them before the lines get long; then, when the lines are longest during the afternoon, use that time to explore the Hogsmeade shops and eat lunch etc, before doing some more rides as the crowds thin out in the evening. This strategy worked extremely well!

We also had the advantage of visiting on a weekday after the Christmas holiday peak was over, which is probably as quiet as it ever gets. And we had downloaded the Universal Studios app, which showed live ride wait times and thus enabled us to make the best use of our time. This meant we got to ride our favourite rides over and over, choosing only rides with shorter wait times (I don't think we chose anything over 25 minutes until the end of the day, when we chose a 35 minute one) and sometimes not even having to line up at all.

Here's what we managed to fit into our nine hours at Universal Studios (I took notes!), in order...

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (ride) x 2

Flight of the Hippogriff (ride) x 2

Studio Tour (60 min tram tour)

Jurassic World (ride) x 2

Mel's Diner (lunch)

Triwizard Spirit Rally (show)

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (ride) x 2

Flight of the Hippogriff (ride) x 2

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (ride) x 3

The Three Broomsticks (Butterbeer & dessert)

Flight of the Hippogriff (ride)

Kung Fu Panda (ride)

Despicable Me Minion Madness (ride)

My favourite ride by far was Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. J and I rode it seven times; F rode it six and B rode it five (F and B dropped out due to queasiness during J's and my queue-free triple-go-round!). The ride was a combination of physical effects (our four-person carriage physically conveyed us through Hogwarts Castle, tipping, tilting, shaking and shooting steam at us as prop/animatronic Dementors, spiders, a dragon and the Whomping Willow attacked us) and digital effects (several times we passed through huge domes where videos played that made us feel like we were flying around Hogwarts Castle, playing Quidditch with Harry and Ron, zooming across the lake etc).

The whole thing was absolutely brilliant, with the physical movement and effects seamlessly interwoven with the digital wizardry so that it all felt amazingly real. My stomach did a huge lurch every time we swooped down onto the Quidditch pitch and Dementors chased us around under the grandstands! Even the queue for the line was incredibly well thought out: it took you through Hogwarts, with various fun things to see along the way — eg. moving/talking portraits, a classroom, Dumbledore's office, hourglasses filled with gemstones for the House Cup, etc. We rushed past them all as the line was never that long!

The other (older) ride in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is called Flight of the Hippogriff. It's an old-school rollercoaster that goes very fast but doesn't go upside-down. It only lasts 1 minute and 6 seconds so was over in a flash! But it was the perfect level of scariness for our boys, and they wanted to ride it over and over.

Here are some more photos of Hogsmeade taken throughout the day. I have to say we were really impressed — it was so, SO well done. Every little detail was just perfect. One such detail we appreciated was that staff members' attire matched the shop or ride they were attending to — note the difference between the Honeydukes employees and wand sellers below. Amazing!

And here are some photos of the non-Harry-Potter, non-Studio-Tour (B will do a separate post about that) parts of Universal Studios!

It was almost closing time when we lined up for Despicable Me Minion Mayhem. The app said 35 minutes when we joined the line, but that ended up blowing out to 1.5 hours. The ride malfunctioned and lots of people left (it was already after 7pm and the park had closed by then), but we stuck it out for a few more minutes and they ended up getting it working! They warned us that the ride might malfunction again and we'd have to walk out if so, but it worked fine. (It was a 4D cinema-style "ride", so it wasn't too risky to be the first batch of guinea pigs to go through after a malfunction!) And that was the end of our day at Universal Studios!

All in all, we had a wonderful day at Universal Studios Hollywood and feel it was a perfect fit for our boys' ages, interests and bravery levels. I really don't think we could have planned it better or packed more in... something we're especially grateful for given what ended up happening to our plan to return on J's birthday. But that's a story for another post!