a day in universal studios hollywood
We visited the Universal Studios in Hollywood, LA on a sunny weekday in early July. We ended up spending a whole day, from park open to close (9AM – 9PM), making the most of all the park’s rides and attractions. Read on to see how we navigated our day and planned our park visit!
Buying Tickets
We purchased our park tickets online on their official website just the day before our visit. There are different admission fees depending on the day that you choose (weekends are more expensive than weekdays, high season is more expensive than low season, etc). When we visited, Universal Studios had a promotion going on where the purchase of a 1-Day General Admission ticket came with an additional 1-Day Free until December 18 that year (excluding select dates). We didn’t end up needing to go back for a second consecutive day (we felt like we checked off most of the activities in 1 day), but the one packed day could have been split up into two more relaxed half-days.
We didn’t opt for any ticket upgrades such as the Universal Express or VIP Experience. Although some forums highly recommend the Express pass, we didn’t feel like it was worth the extra cost (almost $100 USD extra). We were also able to shorten our waiting times for some rides with single-rider lines. Ultimately, with our General Admission, we were able to go on all the rides that we wanted (some even multiple times!). The Universal Express option could be more appealing for busy weekends/holidays, or families who prefer not to split up for rides.
Planning for Arrival
We planned to arrive around 1 hour prior to park opening to get ahead of the crowds. The Jurassic Parking Garage is typically the most favoured lot as it is the closest lot for general parking; this lot is known to fill up quite quickly in the morning. You can get even closer with the preferred lots in the Frankenstein + Woody Woodpecker lots, but it is significantly more costly. When we arrived to the park at 8AM, we were able to get into the Jurassic Parking Garage.
From the parking lot, there is a short walk to the park through the Universal City Walk. There are a few stores which open prior to park opening – one being the Super Nintendo store. We stopped by here on our way to the park to pick up our Power-Up Bands for Super Nintendo World, so that we wouldn’t have to fight the crowds after park opening. Although a pricey purchase, we felt that the bands did add a lot to the Super Nintendo World experience, so we would recommend it to anyone who visits! To save costs, you really only need 1 band per group to get the full experience (unless you’ll be a frequent visitor or if you want to get competitive with the games).
After reaching the park, we queued for ticketing – they started checking tickets and letting visitors enter a waiting area around 30 minutes prior to park opening. Then, about 10 minutes to 9, they opened the gates to the park.
Rides & Attractions – Upper Lot
Where to start?! That is always the biggest question for early-comers to the park. As we heard most people rush to Super Nintendo World at the beginning of the day, our strategy was to go on a bunch of rides with no lines before hitting up Super Nintendo World in the afternoon (hopefully once the morning rush dies down).
The key thing that helped us the most throughout the day was downloading the Universal Studios Hollywood App on our phones – this had information about wait times, show times, and whether single-rider lines were open. Additionally, the app is also how you get to interact with Super Mario World. If you want to be super keen about maximizing your time, a tip is to download the app a few days ahead of time, and check on the wait times throughout the day to get a sense of how popular each ride is. We did this also to gauge the need for an Express pass.
We started our day at the Upper Lot in Springfield and headed directly for the Simpson’s Ride – one of my personal favourites. Since there were barely any people who headed to this ride, we made it into the first batch and didn’t have to wait at all to ride (!!). One of the downsides to this was that we missed all the pre-ride animations, so we came back to this ride near the end of the day to experience it in full.
Next, we headed to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. Again, the wait at the time was so short that we missed many of the pre-ride animations (we also came back to this one again later in the day). This was a super cool ride with exciting animations, although Jiajia got a bit motion sick with all the special effects. After this ride, we also went on Flight of the Hippogriff, which ended up being a less interesting (and quite underwhelming) rollercoaster. After finishing with the rides, we decided to skip out on exploring Harry Potter World until later in the afternoon to take advantage of the short morning lines.
Our next stop was the Studio Tour – this is the most iconic attraction at the Universal Studios and definitely a must-visit for all-comers. The tour takes around 45 minutes, and takes visitors around a number of attractions and a drive through the Front Lot and Backlot of the studio. There were many cool special effect exhibits throughout the tour, which was so unique to the experience. Looking back, it was also great that we did this closer to the morning before the day started to get hot (as the tour is all outdoors). Visitors should note that the last tour starts at 5:15PM, so plan your day accordingly!
Next, we headed to Production Plaza, where we watched Kung Fu Panda Adventure in the DreamWorks Theatre. This was a multi-sensory show with visual effects, and was a nice and chill retreat from the heat outside.
Finally, we finished off the rides in the Upper Lot in Minion Land – by this time the wait times were starting to get long for most of the rides, so we ended up waiting about 30-40 minutes to enter The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash and about 20-30 minutes for Despicable Me Minion Mayhem. Of the two rides, we thought that the Despicable Me Minion Mayhem was a lot of fun (and super cute) so we came back to that ride a second time before the end of the day.
After Minion Land, as the lines started to get long everywhere, we decided to stick around in the Upper Lot to finish exploring The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We grabbed some refreshing frozen Butterbeer and explored the many shops within the world. We had a pretty productive morning – at this point it was only around 1PM, so we still had the whole day ahead of us!
Rides and Attractions – Lower Lot
After finishing up the Upper Lot in (almost) just the morning, it was time to finally hit up Super Nintendo World. We had been checking our Universal Studios Hollywood app all morning and the wait times for the rides in the Lower Lot had not been letting up, so it was time to suck it up and face the crowds.
Despite the crowds, Super Nintendo World was SO COOL. This was new to me since the last time I had been to Universal Studios, so I was in awe with how realistic and animated everything looked. I learned that this is the smallest Super Nintendo World of all the Universal Studios, so I can only imagine how cool the other ones are. We started off by walking around Super Nintendo World to collect coins and play all the mini-games. These mini-games were only accessible with the power-up band, which is why we would recommend at least having one within the group. All the mini-games only had short wait times of 10 minutes at most, so we figured that we could monitor the line for the Mario Kart ride while trying to complete all the games. There were a total of five mini games to complete; if you completed at least four (I think) you get the chance to enter the Bowser Jr. Shadow Showdown, which was a fun interactive mini-game of its own.
At some point during the afternoon we decided to line up for Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge. This was probably the most popular ride within the park at the time so the lines were consistently over an hour long all day. The wait ended up taking us something like 90 minutes, which was longer than advertised, and we were dying in the scorching heat as the line was mostly outdoors. To be honest, we felt like the ride was overrated, as the instructions were somewhat confusing and it was difficult to see what was happening through the glasses that were provided for the game. It was definitely not worth the 90 minute wait, although we also could not have lived with missing out on the most popular attraction in the park.
In total, we ended up spending about 4 hours hanging out and thoroughly completing all the activities/rides within Super Nintendo World – not a bad way to spend an afternoon! After finishing up, we headed to grab some food before going up to see WaterWorld in the Upper Lot at 6:30PM.
After Waterworld, we returned to the Lower Lot to finish up the rest of the rides. We went on Transformers: The Ride, Revenge of the Mummy – The Ride, and Jurassic World – The Ride. We were able to go on Revenge of the Mummy 3 times consecutively (waiting 10 minutes at most each time) thanks to the single rider line – such a fun and classic coaster! The only regret we had here was saving the Jurassic World ride for last after the sun had set, so we were left wet and cold after all the big splashes (it would have been wayy nicer in the heat of the afternoon!).
After finishing up in the Lower Lot, we headed back up to the Upper Lot to catch the Nighttime Lights at Harry Potter World. We ended our day running around to try and catch a couple final rides before the park closed. The rides ran right up until closing so we were able to sneak in a couple rides even after the evening show!
Shows
There were two main shows to catch during the day: WaterWorks and Nighttime Lights. WaterWorks runs multiple times throughout the day, and Nighttime Lights only runs once a day at the end of the day. For both shows, it’s recommended to arrive around 30 minutes prior to the showtime (or at least 15 minutes for Nighttime Lights) to secure a chance at a decent viewing spot. In my opinion, both shows are worth making time for, although the Nighttime Lights are not nearly as magical as Disney’s nighttime shows.
Food
Universal Studios does not focus on themed foods nearly as much as Disney. Some of the restaurants or cafeterias were themed, but the food inside was all very basic (burgers, fries, etc). Since we had overeaten during our whole trip leading up to this day, there was nothing that really piqued our appetite during the day. We ended up sharing a turkey leg and fries for dinner, in addition to the Butterbeer from the afternoon and an ice cream post-dinner. The turkey leg was not bad and the portion was decent for sharing (so ended up being quite cost-effective!). The plus-side of mediocre food was that there were barely any line-ups, so this wasn’t a major time stressor for the day. Despite this, for a hungrier day, we would probably plan to pack at least one meal to bring into the park.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Universal Studios Hollywood is an amazing way to spend a day in LA regardless of age – there is something for everyone! It was definitely helpful to do a bit of research to be strategic about the day, but even without planning there is tons to do in the way of shopping and walking around. Since we spent all day maximizing our time in the park, we didn’t end up having any time to explore the Universal City Walk, which we’ll look forward to visiting in a future trip. Until next time!!
