Friday, January 14, 2011

VaycayDay 7 - Universal Studios, Hollywood

Day Seven.  Ellie was done.  She was done with theme parks.  Done with being told where to go.  Done with characters.  We walked into Universal Studios and near the front saw Curious George and Feivel.  Did she care?  No.  She wouldn't go near them.  We hear, "I don't want to be here and I . . . DORA!!!!" As she ran away from us and into Dora's arms.  Her mood improved considerably after that and she met more characters and told me, "Mom, I did not even know that Dora was real!  I just thought she was a cartoon!!"  It was supercute.  
 We made our way down to the lower lot where they had the Universal Studios Tour.  We didn't even know that was part of the place and the guy said that's what they were famous for.  Huh.  I took quite a few pictures of the tour but they seemed boring to blog about without people in them.  We drove by studios that were filming shows and movies; saw the cars from magnum pi, mummy, fast & furious, back to the future, jurassic park; we drove by a few movie sets where they showed us 'this is how we make rain/flood/cars wrecking/etc' . . . but then on the tv screens on the bus they would show you the exact movie scene that filmed on the set we were looking at.  Kinda cool.  Randomly we were driving around a corner where a storage lot was and I yelled, "Back to the Future!" and took a picture.  Just stuffed in the corner randomly by the side of the road were the Lyon Estates statues from the movie.  We drove through Amity Island, Wisteria Lane, Whoville, Bates Motel, War of the Worlds, etc.  Cool stuff for movie buffs.
 After the tour we did the Simpsons 4D roller coaster ride and then all Ellie wanted to do was play.  So one adult stayed with her at Curious George's water park while the other went and rode Mummy roller coaster and Jurassic Park ride.
 We had a little meltdown on the way out of the park - I wanted to catch Hollywood Blvd before it got dark and scary and Ellie was tired from a long week.  So we grabbed some delish frozen yogurt . . . and we were on our way.
 Neither D nor L really wanted to be in Hollywood, but I didn't want to miss it.  So we found a parking spot underneath Kodiak Theatre and made our way up and down on the stars and by Grauman's Chinese Theatre where they have red carpet premieres.  This was the first time on the whole trip I truly felt scared - it was SO grody there and had nasty people wearing nasty costumes and totally harassing you everywhere you turned.  I swear there was a huge 7 ft black pimp standing just outside of the Hello Kitty pic.  Ellie ran up to give her a hug and I cringed - and quickly snapped a pic and grabbed her hand and got the heck outta there.  Twenty minutes after leaving our car we were done and on our way back to the parking garage.  Goodbye scary Hollywood - we actually hope to never meet again.

1 comment:

  1. We spent 10 days in Florida at disneyworld and the beach. That was in May 2010. I still haven't blogged about it. Thanks for posting all these pics and stories about your vacay. I am now totally motivated to get my posts done!!

    Looks like you guys had tons of fun. I am not really the sappy "disney is the happiest place on earth" type of person, but really I have to say it was magical when we were there. I hope it was magical for you guys too.

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