This summer's first big family vacation took us down south for a week to see two parts of our state we had never explored: Universal Studios and Palm Springs. We started our trip with 2 days in Hollywood.
Our first afternoon and evening was spent exploring the Universal City Walk that was right outside our hotel. Our Universal hotel, by the way, was a Christmas gift from Heather and Andrew, who knew we planned to make this trip this summer. It was super fancy and in the best location! Delia said she wanted to live in it. ;)
There are tons of fun restaurants and shops to wander around on the City Walk. It's pretty touristy, but it's bright and colorful and a lot for your senses to take in. Dave and I just loved watching the girls and their amazement. I think Ella has more pictures on her phone of that first night on the City Walk than anything else we saw all week, just because of the spectacle and novelty of it all!
The next day was spent at Universal Studios. This is a trip that became an idea 5 years ago when the girls and I started reading the Harry Potter books aloud together. We read them slow and always said we'd visit Harry Potter World in LA when we finished. With tears, we closed the cover on book 7 this winter and were ready to be immersed in this fantastic fictional world! I LOVE this story and had high expectations, but I will tell you that they were even exceeded! The attention to detail was sooooo phenomenal! I've never had an experience quite like this, where you are dropped into a world that previously only existed in your imagination and it looks, sounds, and tastes pretty much exactly like you thought it would!
Another Christmas gift from Auntie Heather and Uncle Andrew was gift certificates for the girls to Ollivander's Wand Store. This is probably what they were most excited about, so we stopped there first. We began this experience with a magical presentation on how important it is to get the right wand. A secret passageway then ushered us into the store, where an Ollivander's employee spent a good amount of time with each girl assessing their personality and finding out answers to questions from everything like "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" to "What is your favorite ice cream flavor?" (Ella and Delia had different people helping them and they did get totally different interviews!) After learning about the kids, the wand makers then let a wand "choose" them. Another immersive experience that made us feel just like we were in our books!
The wands have "magic" (or a computer chip) in them that allow them to do special stuff all over Hogsmeade! There were about 10 windows the girls could wave their wands in front of to turn on lamps, make cauldrons stir, make quidditch balls bounce, unlock trunks, move tea cups, even light a fire in a fireplace! It was cool.
The headline ride at Harry Potter World takes you on a broomstick flying adventure with Harry where you encounter pretty much every scary thing from the books-- giant spiders, the Whomping Willow, dementors, a basilisk, dragons, etc. I feel like this post has turned a little review-like, so I'll honestly report here that the idea of ride was neat, but it made Ella and I feel kind of ill. We could only ride it once. The wait for the ride is actually the best part! The line you stand in takes you all around and inside the Hogwarts castle and it was awesome! Outside we saw the bewitched car Harry and Ron flew into the school in the second book. We saw the greenhouses growing all sorts of magical plants.
Inside the castle we saw the Mirror of the Erised, the house points sand collector (above), Dumbledore's office (below), the potions classroom, and, my favorite, a whole hall of portraits that moved around each other's frames and talked to each other! After meeting the fat lady, you enter the Gryffindor common room and learn the premise of the ride-- to win a quidditch match for Gryffindor, while dodging dangers. The ride is boarded in the Great Hall with all the floating candles above you. Like everything else in Harry Potter World, it transported you straight to the pages!
Another ride had us bowing to and then flying around on a hippogriff. For this ride we got to wind around Hagrid's hut while we waited.
Here are a few pictures of that great attention to detail. Above, the owl post, where animatronic owls sit on their perches and hoot.
The Dervish and Banges Shop, where you could buy all your school robes and supplies-- including the locked-up Monster Book of Monsters, which would growl and snap at you!
The snow covered rooftops of Hogsmeade, which included Zonko's Joke Shop and Honeydukes, The Three Broomsticks, and Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop.
You know we had to try to butterbeer! Here's another tip if you ever go-- buy one and share it! It's super delicious, but super sweet and a few sips are all you really need to get the experience! (The picture above is our 20 year anniversary picture, by the way, which we celebrated with our girls and Harry Potter on this day! A bit unconventional, but kind of awesome in a way too!)
Harry Potter World was, by far, the best part of Universal Studios for us! We spent several hours in the morning and later in the evening there. The more we wandered around, the more little special details we found!
But, other parts of this theme park were fun too! I won't go into as much detail because we just didn't give them the same amount of time. Super Silly Fun Land from Despicable Me was really cute and we got to meet Gru!
The famous tram ride was cool too. Here we got an hour long tour of the Universal Back Lot and saw all the studios and a lot of real things that were used in movies, like Jaws and this plane crash scene below.
We also drove by the Bates Motel and his creepy house, which included a tram chasing scene by a knife-wielding Norman Bates! We got stuck in a San Francisco earthquake and a flash flood. We almost got eaten by King Kong in 3-D and squished by a gas tanker rolling towards our tram.
We went to 3 different stunt and special effects shows too, which showed us everything from how they train animals for movies to how they light people on fire.
For the sake of a fair review, I'll admit that a good amount of Universal Studios was not for us-- like the Walking Dead or Mummy rides and attractions, or really any sort of 3-D motion simulator type ride (which half of us are just too prone to motion sickness to enjoy). But, we had no problem filling a whole day with things that were just right for us. In many ways the girls were actually a perfect age to appreciate this behind-the-scenes peek at movie-making magic while not being too scared by the sometimes intensity of it.
The next morning we started making our way out of LA and towards the desert. On the way we found a free parking spot and spent about an hour strolling around Grauman's Chinese Theater and the Walk of Fame. As we start to watch more real movies with the girls, they were adorably star struck to see the wax figures, hand prints or stars of some of the actors they recognized from their movies-- like Lucy or Ron, Harry and Hermione, or Iron Man, or the voice of Emmit from the Lego Movie!
Hooray for Hollywood! These 2 days were the perfect amount of time to spend here. We were excited to get to our next stop in the desert, which would provide even more unique and fun sights and experiences!
