Universal Studios

After such a big day yesterday I wondered whether we would get going to Universal Studios very early. Amazingly enough everyone was up pretty early. We left at around 9:45 looking for breakfast. We found Carl's Jr and were surprised at how inexpensive it was. The main thing was that we could order small enough portions for us to eat. We all had scrambled eggs and muffin and all finished! Is this a record? Sean now seemed to be feeling a lot better, but his spots looking scabby and horrible. People still talking about the earthquake and the many aftershocks.

We headed off along Interstate-5 North and then 101 (Hollywood Freeway) as we had done two days before and arrived after about 40 minutes. It's hard to believe that you can get from one part of LA to the other in such a short time. The freeway system has a lot going for it.

At Universal Studios the kids were annoying each other but they were getting pretty tired. Once in the gate we went to the first show in Entertainment City. It was called Animal Actors featuring birds, an orangutan, and of course dogs: Benji, Lassie, Beethoven and so on. From here we headed off for a tram ride. We had to take a very long escalator down "Starway" to the bottom of the hill. Nicole said that this was new since she had been here.

THere was a bit of a queue for the trams, but we haven't been anywhere in America where we haven't had to queue. The tram took us around to all of the new and old movie sets like the clock tower in Back to the Future, Old Jerusalem, Western towns of course, Chicago, Mexico, the Psycho house and more. There were the expected special effects one too like the simulated earthquake in a subway, the alpine avalanche (which made you think you were tumbling), Jaws and King Kong. The boys were a little scared in these - they are very realistic.

After the tram ride we queued up for ET. It was a spectacular ride on a bicycle through wonderful scenes and effects (like a Disney ride) from bright colours to a background of stars. We had to "save" ET and return up to his home.

After this we queued up for Backdraft - a movie about firefighters. Neither of the kids was keen at all on this but we went in. Nicole and Pete had a good view. Mine was not so good, and Joel & Sean ran to the back. It was certainly a tremendous show to put on in front of tourists. Lots of fire - it was quite real, explosions. You could really feel the heat as well.

From here we went to the World of Cinematography display, which showed how they do special effects such as falling from buildings, the DeLorean in Back to the Future, and the Hoverboard. This occurred in 3 separate sound studios. In the third there was a bit of a show with live participation adding sound effects to a Harry & the Hendersons clip.

After this we made our way back up the Starway and watched the Conan the Barbarian show. We wanted to go to Star Trek then, but we were too late so we made for the Miami Vice show. This showed lots of stunts like falls, with shooting and again explosions with fireballs. When this was finished, we went to Mel's Diner to eat. We decided the food here was better and cheaper than Disneyland. Then off to the Graveyard Revue. 15 minutes of rock music, featuring Beetlejuice, Dracula, Phantom of the Opera, Frankenstein and a werewolf and a woman - I'm not sure who she was supposed to be. Quite entertaining. After a bit of souvenir shopping we decided to call it a day.Read more