We had THE BEST time visiting Universal Studios Hollywood and I wanted to share our awesome trip with you! 🙂
It was hubby’s first time in California, and my second.
I had visited Universal Studios Hollywood on my first trip, but this was 6 years ago!
So a lot had changed, and I was super excited to see it all!
I decided to break everything down into categories to keep this post more organized and easier to read. I hope you enjoy reading about our adventure!
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
I am a HUGE Harry Potter fan, so as soon as we got to Universal Studios Hollywood the first place we visited was Hogsmeade! We walked around and quickly made our way to Hogwarts.
The ride is familar to us since we have been on the one in Orlando plenty of times, but the wait time was much lower – which we appreciated so much!
Even though we had the Express Passes (which I’ll talk about later on) it was so nice to be able to walk around the castle and enjoy everything about the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey experience without being surrounded by a ton of people!
Plus, putting our bags in and out of the lockers was a breeze!
After riding Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, we went to enjoy Flight of the Hippogriff!
Flight of the Hippogriff is a cute little ride and super kid friendly!
We loved walking around Hogsmeade talking selfies and visiting every shop!
Honeydukes is one of my favorites because when it comes to candy, I am always down to get some haha!
Studio Tour
I am a HUGE movie nerd! So we HAD to do the Studio Tour!
In the Studio Tour you get to visit 13 city blocks on four acres of historic studio lot in the largest set construction project in studio history, built with creative consultation from Steven Spielberg himself.
There are so many things to see and so much to learn about!
If you love movies, this is a MUST DO!
You get to encounter the wreckage of the Boeing 747 from Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Visit Amity Island and hang out with Jaws, come face-to-face with King Kong, experience a Fast and the Furious race, and my favorite – visit Bates Motel!
Psycho is one of my all time favorite movies – such a classic!!!
I was geeking out hard while driving by this!!!
Pay attention to the windows in the pictures above! 😉
The Mummy
The Mummy is my favorite ride at Universal Studios Hollywood!
I’m a fan of the original movie and I have always loved this ride back home in Orlando, but let me tell you that this Universal Hollywood version is much much better!!!
Character Interactions
OMG! This is something that I was SO IMPRESSED with!
The character interactions at Universal Hollywood were AMAZING!
Every single character we came across was awesome!
I also loved that there were characters walking around everywhere, and they kept switching them off too!
For example, we got some photos with Lisa Simpson, then Krusty showed up, and then Homer and Marge were there together – we sadly didn’t get to take photos with them!
Dracula was really funny and asked where I was from.
I told him that I was Brazilian but lived in South Florida, and he said that he was going to come to my hotel room late that night because he loves warm blood! Hahahaha!
But I have to say that my favorite character interaction was with Doc Brown!
When I said that I was a movie nerd I wasn’t joking…
Back to the Future is in my Top 3 favorite movies, so when Jaime and I were taking pictures in front of a pretty wall and I saw Doc Brown I started freaking out!
He saw it and ran up to us and photobombed us and it was just THE BEST!
Definitely one of my favorite moments of the day!!!
The Walking Dead Experience
I LOVE LOVE LOVE Horror!
And I especially love Halloween Horror Nights!
So when I heard that Universal Studios Hollywood had an all year round scary experience I was SO excited!!!
I will admit that at first I was a little scared because I didn’t know what to expect, and they only send a small amount of people through the unlike Halloween Horror Nights, where there are a bunch of people walking together at once!
Since I was a little scared during the first time, we went a second time so I could really enjoy the experience since I wasn’t freaking out so much, haha!
It was AWESOME!
Universal Express Pass
I HIGHLY recommend getting the Universal Express Pass, especially if you are only visiting the park for one day.
The Express pass includes one time Express Access to each ride, attraction and seated show.
You save so much time by skipping the Regular Attraction Lines!
With our Express Pass we got through all the rides we wanted to ride (including the 1 hour long Studio Tour) in 4 hours!
It was amazing!!!
Views
So for those of you who don’t know, there are 2 “floors” at Universal Studios.
Most rides are above, but a couple are below – like The Mummy and Transformers, so you have to take some escalators down to ride them.
The views are really beautiful and breathtaking!
We don’t see mountains like these in Florida!
Kid Friendly
Although the kids didn’t come on the trip with us, I was thinking about them the whole time!
We FaceTimed so much and I couldn’t help but point out and talk about all the things they would have loved about Universal Studios Hollywood.
Between the whole area around the Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, DreamWorks Theatre Featuring Kung Fu Panda, and The Simpsons Ride™, there’s tons of fun to be had!
The Super Silly Fun Land is super cute! 🙂
They have a Silly Swirly Fun Ride which Emma and Owen would love so much!
We seriously had such an amazing vacation!
Thank you so much Universal Studios for hosting us!
We cannot wait to go back with our kids in a few years!
