Stephanee Travels

Mario, mummies, transformers, dinosaurs – OH MY! That was literally our morning, before 10am, at Universal Hollywood on August 16, 2024. Belive it or not, this was my first time (plus firsts for my husband and our kids) to any Universal park and I purposely didn’t plan much ahead because I wanted to soak it all in and enjoy. And trust me, it delivered – big time!

I should start by saying, I purchased express passes and early entry for Nintendo world. And it, in my personal and professional opinion, is the only way to go especially with impatient young ones under 5. I should also add thst we stayed the night before and night of our park day at the Sheraton Universal which was super nice and most importantly, super convenient. They had a shuttle that ran every 15-20 minutes between Universal, Hilton and Sheraton. It was maybe am 8 minute ride.

So night before, I made sure I knew our “wants” for the day and not shockingly, we wanted to do everything so I was like YOLO, we are doing it all! And read on – to find out if we did. 😉 So morning of, got up, ate some pop tarts and cereal from our Target run the evening prior and got ready – got on the shuttle at 715am and to park before 730am. The shuttle drops off by Universal Citywalk so it’s a bit of a walk to the gates (maybe 4-5 minutes) but once at gates, you go through one line where they scan your early entry ticket and then the next one scans your park ticket. Super important, if doing express passes, you need to get the tickets they give you at that second scanning spot as those are the only way you can use your express ticket at each ride. Once you have those in hand, into the park you go to the lower lot where Nintendo world is – this is about a 10 minute walk which includes 4 escalators down to the lower lot. (Not gonna lie – they are a bit steep) but once down there you just head into “Mario Kart World” as my 4 year old so cutely calls it. We went right to the Bowser ride and because we were early, we saved our express pass for later in the day when we knew it would be busier. We got onto this brand new ride in about 15 minutes during that extra hour before the park opened. There were a lot of people whom did this early pass – it was our main reason for going to Universal so it was a no brainer for us. We met Mario and Luigi as well as Princess Peach; their lines took only minutes to get through, too. We walked around and explored the other spots in that land and left there about 850am and headed into the park.

In the lower lot, the Jurassic Park water ride (my reason for wanting to come!), the Transformers ride, and the Mummy Returns coaster are all housed here as well so the natural thing to do while there are only a few hundred people in the park was to ride them all while there wasn’t lines (each had between 5-10 minute wait, max). This is the magical way to get on your faves multiple times throughout the day with the one-time express passes. Plus by riding the water ride in the AM, your clothes can dry throughout the day, haha! So we hopped on the 3D Transformer ride (suitable for all members of our family) and it was awe inducing! Such a fun, but bumpy ride. You truly felt immersed in the movie on this attraction. After we rode that, we did child switch on the Mummy Returns coaster which ended up being all three of our favorite rides (Ash was a little too short for this forward and backward coaster).

Quick note, the child switch room works great when you have a little member of your party whom can’t ride. Just pop in there while your other members ride, switch the parent and then everyone who can, can enjoy each attraction without having to wait in line again. You don’t need express passes for child switch but you can use them in conjunction.

Next, after the exhilarating mummy coaster, we got in the super short line for Jurassic Park and let me tell you, it more than delivered. I truly felt like thr TRex may eat me, haha! I’d say it was a successful ride especially when our 4 year old and 9 yesr old begged to do it again later – it is a steep drop just in case you have members of your party who aren’t fans of that. After that, our son played in the Dino playland which was super fun for him. Then we headed to the upper lot, up all those escalators again, lol. Feel free to take stairs and get a killer leg workout.

Upon entering the upper lot, your are in Springfield – home to the Simpsons. Had to hit up Krusty’s carnival adventure. Fair warning, it is a bumpy, twisty, turvy 3D ride. Not gonna lie – thought I was gonna toss my pop tarts. But I am glad I could say we did it and it was a well put together ride but my tummy just doesn’t like long 3D jaunts. We did use our one-time express passes for this ride, as I knew we didn’t want to go again.

From here, we hit the Studio Tour which was the other thing I was looking forward to (reminded me of the backstage tour at Disney MGM Studios pre-2011) and this is about an hour long ride. Wait time was only about 15 minutes but we used our express pass as, again, knew we only were doing this once. We took a pretzel/cheese and bought refillable drink mugs which are $19 but soooo worth it as we filled it up about 15 times that day. That tour was so fun, seeing the sound stages, movie sets, the cool people that make production happen, and the best, the live sets where we got to experience a subway flooding with an earthquake, a 3D set of the new Fast and Furious movie and a 3D King Kong set in the jungle. Also, can’t forget the fake set of Jaws, War of the World’s and even Norman Bates showed up on the porch of the actual Psycho house. I mean, you never know who or what you will see beyond the scenes in Hollywood 😉 Once we got off this tour, we decided to eat lunch in Springfield before heading back to our hotel room for a little break. The kids had chicken thumbs and we had a chicken waffle sandwich – both were served with fries. And to add room the excitement, we had to evacuate the restaurant because someone pulled the fire alarm, hahaha! On our way out, we did the 3D movie featuring Kung Fu Panda and that was juat adorable! We headed back to the hotel around 130 and came back at 3pm.

When we got back, we went to Super Silly Funny land and did the little ride there before heading to Harry Potter land. We felt so immersed there – we took it all in and then did the Harry Coaster first but since little man couldn’t ride, we used our express passes, walked through the castle and utilized the child room – cool part for our 9 year old is she got to ride twice! That ride was soooo neat, a roller coaster that turned in all sorts of ways but also had the 3D component so you literally felt like you were flying – super cool! Definitely a ride worth waiting in line for. Afte this, we did the smaller, non-3D coaster, that all four of us could do and our 4 year old absolutely loved it. My only complaint was it was sooooo short. After that, we headed outta there and went to the Minions Ride and Life of Pets. Minions is a 3D movie with the moving seat where as Life of Pets is a slow moving ride that had scenes set up to tell a story – loved both, super charming and cute and perfect for all ages. Once we were done with those, we just walked around as we had now completed all rides at the park – only thing we missed was the Waterworld show – it wasn’t high on any of our lists so we weren’t upset BUT my clients say it is cool to see so check it out if you have time.xso before we left, we went back to Jurassic Park and used our express passes to do that one more time because momma wanted to, haha, and then we ended the day back in Nintendo world and used our express passes for Bowser’s Challenge because the wait was now over 80 minutes!

During our day, we seen the Scooby Doo crew, Dracula, Marilyn Monroe, some Minions, the Simspon parents, Transformers, a “real life” raptor, and of course, the Mario characters I mentioned earlier. There are definitely lots of pop up times to see and experience the characters of these beloved shows. This park is filled with photo ops and little shows, play lands for the kids to relax plus the park has tons of the misting fans because let me tell you, August in California is HOTTTT!

So in conclusion, it is more than possible to experience the entire park in one day – even with a break in the middle of the day. A few ways to make this less stressful: pick a weekday when locals are in school, don’t pick a holiday, get express passes, get the early entry pass, and pick a close hotel with a shuttle. But if you want to take it slow and enjoy rides multiple times without lines, do multiple days and/or the express passes with unlimited usage.

Let me help you plan the perfect Universal Hollywood getaway solo or with your family and friends! It’s seriously fun for everyone!! 🙂