Today we visited the world famous Universal Studios. Just inside, we had breakfast as we had had to get up early to take a 90 minute bus journey to get here. Soon, we found the House of Horrors, a dark haunted house you walk through. We found Frankenstein in there. Creepy monsters jump out and scare you half to death. I'd love to work in there as a scary monster, jumping out at people. That would be cool.
We strolled through 'Westminster', a street with a London theme, followed by another street with a French theme, containing the Moulin Rouge. In this street, we found the motor bike and side-car used in the movie Inglourious Basterds. Shortly, we both took a ride on Despicable Me, an animated ride with simulator, depicting Gru and the Minions. I liked it.
Universal Studios serves as both a theme park as well as being THE Hollywood studios, where much of Hollywood's filming takes place. The studios are nestled within a sizable hill on split levels, with the famous Beverley Hills in the distance. Between the Beverley Hills and Universal Studios is a huge expanse of flat land, containing many buildings and homes, as well as the Disney Studios and Warner Bros Studios. From Universal Studios, there is quite a view.
After we met the very sexy Marilyn Monroe, we took the Studio Tour, which any visitor must do. You board a tram and get taken through the various film sets down hill from the northern and eastern sides of the theme park. Hollywood constructs whole streets and towns, using usually just the facades of buildings, to great effect in its filming. We saw City Hall which helped Michael J Fox get home in Back To The Future. A nearby street was the set of Desperate Housewives. One of the houses was used much earlier in The Munsters. A short distance away saw the filming of Leave It To Beaver back in...the 50s? Just around the corner was the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho. And we saw the crashed aeroplane and all its debris still littering the ground from War Of The Worlds. We also saw how they did the parting of the Dead Sea, and afterwards Jaws himself leaped out of the water to scare us all!!
In the afternoon, we saw a show called 'Special Effects', an amusing and informative half hour on how films are done, how tricks are performed, and how sets are fabricated to achieve a desired appearance. Once out of there, Jean took the Simpsons ride, the Mummy ride and the Transformers ride. It being a very warm day, we went together twice on the watery Jurassic Park ride, which sailed past T-Rex and other prehistoric critters that tried to frighten us, and where we both got very wet on the final downhill slam into the water below.
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