LA: Universal Studios

I have never been to Universal Studios before, so I was unsure of what to expect, other than it’s a theme part. The main attractions of the place for me were of course the Wizarding world of Harry Potter, The Simpsons area and the studio tour.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

In Universal Studios there is a replica of Hogsmeade from the Harry Potter movies, it also has a Hogwarts that has the main ride of the Wizarding World inside. The ride is amazing, and the whole Hogsmeade area is really well made and you can spend a lot of time exploring it, which we did.

Springfield

For an old Simpsons fan like me this was just as exciting as visiting Hogsmeade, and we had a lot of fun walking around here and meeting characters and stuff.

The Studio Tour

It’s a tram ride that takes you through the universal studio lot, you get to see a lot of sets from famous films and shows which is fun to see. Sadly (for a nerd like me) there is more focus on being entertaining than educational, I would have liked to see more of how things actually work and are done, and less shock effects and movie promotions, but for people who are less interested in the workings of the movie industry I’m sure this is the perfect way to make a tour like this. So yeah I’d recommend it, but if you’re a bit of a moviebuff don’t expect to learn a lot, but you do get to see some pretty cool sets in real life.

Waterworld Special Effect Show

The final thing from Universal Studios I wanna hightlight is the Waterworld show, while the movie was not a huge success this show has been running for 25 years now, and has actually opened in other universal parks too.
And it’s easy to understand why, it’s just cool and shows a lot of cool special effects work.

So Universal Studios were fun, but after one day there I felt like I had experienced what there was to do, even though I had far from done all the rides I had experienced what I wanted and I didn’t feel a need to come back even though it was both fun and impressive. So if I had to give a tiny bit of advice to other travellers going to California, if you have to choose between Disneyland and Universal, I would absolutely pick Disneyland, I may be biased, but to me Disney just has more value for your money, I could easly spend a week there without being bored whereas Universal I was really done with after one day. If you have the option you should definetly do both, but if not this is the one I would skip.