If you are Travelling to Los Angeles it’s highly likely that you will try to fit a trip to Universal Studios on your itinerary. It’s touted as the place to go if you want to learn about the production of movies and TV shows.
Prior to leaving Australia, T let me know that a visit to Universal Studios was at the top of his Bucket List. Most importantly, he wanted to do it in style and booked our family of 4 the Universal Studios VIP Experience for a date between Christmas and the New Year.
Our visit was planned for midday. We had left booking a little late so had few options. I strongly suggest that you try to book early and aim for an early morning start if you’re planning a trip in winter when the sun sets just after 4.30 pm.
The Universal Studios VIP Experience is a premium tour. You are personally guided through the site for over 6 hours. It includes a small buffet on arrival, water throughout the trip, a gorgeous lunch, front of the line rides (you literally get to go on the ride as soon as you walk through the gates), and a little tour bag similar to the ones you receive in airline business class (ours included baby wipes, mints and hand warmers.
Those with VIP Passes also get to visit actual sound stages where blockbuster movies and TV shows are filmed and go inside the sound department and enormous prop warehouse.
On our arrival, we skipped the lines and walked straight through the VIP entry. A short elevator ride to the first floor and we feasted on a buffet of pastries, sandwiches, yoghurt and fruit which we washed down with a selection of juices before meeting our tour guide.
Our wonderful tour guide let us know that she had planned a great itinerary for the day and had her phone ready to check the queues as we walked around so we would never need to wait in line. She promised a day of fun and wonder. My expectations were high.
We followed our guide to the very bottom of the site to begin. It’s the furthest point from the Universal Studios VIP Experience room and requires a number of escalator rides down a steep embankment to the bottom. Here we weaved around the lines and hopped on our first ride, Transformers: The Ride-3D. What an introduction to the rides! With Optimus by our side, we attempted to fight for our survival and protect the AllSpark from Decepticons. It felt like we were in the middle of a war zone four storeys high! Next on the list was Jurassic Park – The Ride.
Striker and I decided to skip this leaving T and Sunshine to take our place. With 1.5 million gallons of water used for this ride, we knew they would probably get wet and were thankful that our host provided ponchos. Striker and I waited at the end of the ride so we could see the boat T and Sunshine were sitting on come down the mountain. When they disembarked the ride T was shaking and Sunshine was smiling. Afterwards, we learned that when it was built the Jurassic Park ride’s 84-foot plunge was the largest theme park water descent ever constructed. Revenge of the Mummy was the last ride in this area. We chose to skip the ride as neither T or I were the kids just weren’t ready for that level of excitement.
Our host let us know that the WaterWorld experience was next. She had reserved us the best seats in the house and we were, again, able to skip the queue. I’m old enough to have watched the original motion picture with Kevin Costner when it was first released so I knew we were going to see action.
Both kids were on the edge of their seats throughout the show, watching on as the actors performed daring stunts, blew things up and flew planes through the air. After the show, we even had a chance to meet the actors. Being part of the Universal Studios VIP Experience we were the first to do so again. I could get accustomed to VIP treatment.
So what to do next? With lunch on the horizon, we were told we could fit Despicable Me Minion Mayhem in before we ate. In no time we were shrunk and converted into minions in the super-villain laboratory and then we went on the ride. Striker doesn’t really like rides but he loved this one and asked to go again. and again……and again.
For lunch, we were taken to a Universal Studios VIP restaurant. It was amazing with options for every taste. Garlic prawns? yes. Roast meat? yes. Vegetarian options? Too many to list. They even had Nutella for the crepes! We would continue to rave about this lunch for days afterwards. Lunch took about an hour with all food, desserts and beverages covered in our ticket price.
After lunch, it was onward to the Studio Tour. Being VIPs we had the luxury of a small tour trolley that took us around the Backlot. Watch CSI? It’s filmed here! Our tour took us onto the set of About a Boy, the TV show starring Minnie Driver. The kids found the set incredible. Learning all the secrets of television have them a new perspective on what they see. Striker whispered to me “TV is all trickery, mum, trickery! You can’t believe anything you see!” What a great learning experience!
The next stop was the enormous prop warehouse. I have never seen so many chairs and I’ve been to many school halls! I loved the warehouse and could have easily spent a day or more trawling each row for finds. We saw props from Angelina Jolie movies. Props that were reserved for our favourite TV shows. So many items it was overwhelming. We learned that they can be changed but must be restored to what they look like when they leave or a fine is issued. There’s also a huge deposit put down for the privilege of borrowing from the prop warehouse.
Our Studio Tour then took us across 13 city blocks on four acres of the historic studio lot. We recognised many of the sets from movies that have appeared in more than a handful of movies. We even found Norman Bates at the legendary Bates Motel from Psycho who walked to our trolley and tried to stab me (I think). The plane crash from Spielberg’s War of the Worlds has sighted as well as Jaws. The highlight here was probably the award-winning King Kong 360 3-D created by Peter Jackson. Being Christmas we were also delighted when we came across the Grinch that Stole Christmas.
The tour went for well over 90 minutes. Being winter, it was dark by 4.30 pm. This was probably the most disappointing thing about our tour. It made the kids tired and we still had half of the park to see. I highly recommend you book your tour as early as possible so you can see as much of the park while the sun is up.
Our tour guide said goodbye after the Studio Tour. We went on to enjoy the Simpsons Ride (no less than three times!), The Special Effects stage and much much more.
The Universal Studios VIP Experience is out of this world. At $299.00 US a person it is pricey but an experience you won’t regret. If you’re keen to just see Universal Studios and aren’t really fussed about lines or seeing all of the backlot you can buy regular tickets from $84.00. Click here for Universal Studio Ticket information.
(psst…read our post about The Wizarding World of Harry Potter au Universal Studios Japan for our adventure in Osaka)
