On our recent trip to California we decided last minute to include a quick hop into Univeral Studios Hollywood.
On our first trip out west this past May, Tiff and I originally planned to include Univeral Studios, but due to an unfortunate wardrobe choice I made (linen pants = the dreaded Disney Rash) we had to cut those plans short and settle for exploring CityWalk instead.
Check out my review of Toothsome Emporium if you'd like to see how that experience went and why my burger needed a diaper.
This time around since M. would be traveling with us, I wanted to make sure that we could go and I didn't have any physical limitations to hold us back. The good news was that we were able to get tickets, the bad news was pretty much everything else.
Where is it?
Universal Studios Hollywood (USH) is a little under an hour northwest of Disneyland close to Burbank, CA. Depending on traffic it is also around an hour away from LAX. Similar to Disneyland being minutes away from the smaller John Wayne Airport (SNA), Universal Studios Hollywood is about 15 minutes away from Burbank airport (BUR).
For our trip we flew into LAX to stay our first few days in a resort near Disneyland (stay tuned for our resort review) and traveled to one in Burbank for our last night. We bought a single day park pass to hang out for half a day before picking up our luggage and heading to the airport for our flight home.
What do they have?
Similar to Universal Studios Florida, they have rides dedicated to Universal and Dreamworks IPs. There's rides and lands based on The Simpsons, The Mummy, Transformers, The Secret Life of Pets, some Hello Kitty, Jurassic Park and some classic monsters.
Miss Hello Kitty is the bestest vampire
Of course the heavy hitters are Harry Potter, Minions and the new Super Nintendo Land. USH is the first american location for the Super Mario themed land and rides.
Super Nintendo Land
The immersion in this land is unbelievable and walking in was the stuff of 80's kids dreams. Until you see every 80s, 90s, and 00s kids that are also there to have the same experience.
Because of the popularity of this land, it actually opens to the public after the park opening. Due to it's popularity, Univeral offers a Early Access ticket for this specific land that ranges in price from $20-$30 per person and is an additional cost to your park ticket. For our trip we attempted to purchase the EA ticket, but there were only 2 available.
Since it didn't make sense to Rock - Paper - Scissors for a winner between the three of us (1 of which was a tween), we decided to just try our luck with the rest of the population. Knowing that we probably wouldn't be able to do much in SNL and only had a half-day in the park we went in with lowered expectations which ended up not being low enough.
As the actual park is divided into two locations vertically, SNL is on the lower part of the park down a incredibly high set of escalators.
We are hella high up
By the time we made it to the lower level, we could see that everything aside from SNL had minimal wait times. Knowing the unlikelihood that we'd be able to do more than shop and wander a bit, we took note of rides that we might be able to do when we walked out.
Both The Mummy and Transformers were showing basically walk on times, so we figured those would be safe bets. Unfortunately, once we were overwhelmed with the land and made our escape, our backup rides were either over 30 minute waits or already down with a technical issue. In the end we made our way back up the trail of escalators to Springfield to hop on the Simpson's ride. While the ride initially had a 15 minute wait, we timed it to nearly 30 mostly due to the small ride vehicles and long load/unload time they require.
You'll be able to shop if nothing else
While waiting for my Simpson's induced nausea wear off, we wandered around the park for a bit to take in the possibilities of Universal if we were to come back for an entire day.
We were able to hop on Secret Life of Pets which was a cute ride.
You can't eat in everybody's kitchen
The crowd levels upstairs where still on the low end, so we grabbed a plate of nachos while the line was still short and explored the Minions themed area.
Nachos!
In all it was a nice kid-friendly area, but the mash of themes that are crammed together made everything feel very disjointed. Add to this the decorations up for Halloween Horror Nights, making everything feel that much more confusing.
She is the cutest cat vamp I've seen
Talking about food, before we left the Nintendo area M. and Tiff grabbed a few treats to review. Neither felt that the treats were worth the price, and overall both drinks were too sweet.
After finishing our nachos we walked towards the Harry Potter area to explore the shops as the ride lines would be too long to wait before our flight. As M. has never had a butterbeer, we headed to the 3 Broomsticks to grab a drink before making our way out of the park. The app initially gave us an immediate time once we placed our orders. It was when we clicked the button to start preparing our order that we ran into trouble.
In all we waited nearly 25 minutes for our 3 drinks to be prepared even though the app said to approach the window to pick them up. It was only partially busy, but not busy enough to make sense on why there was such a backup in orders or why it wasn't being accurately reflected in the app. When we did finally get our drinks, the mood was noticably spoiled so we called it a day.
Universal is known to run a variety of specials, but on this day we each paid around $100 for a day ticket, and I it was not worth it. Even if we had a chance to spend the entire day in the park, there just wasn't enough there to keep me interested. The lines were long, the rides broke down repeatedly or made me sick and the app was inaccurate.
Even leaving the park was more difficult that it should be as the drive back to LAX could take an hour or more depending on traffic. At the end of the day, all three of us were highly disappointed in our experience and will not be returning any time soon. While Epic Universe may be something some folks are excited to visit in Florida in the coming months, unless you are a local and very dedicated to a mishmash of IPs there really isn't any reason to make an extra trip to Universal Studios Hollywood.
And once Epic Universe does open, I expect even folks to be even more disappointed in what this park has to offer.
If you are wondering if a day at Universal would be a good add on to your Disneyland trip, we'd say unless you're a die hard fan of the other parks this one is Not Worth It.
