11-16-2015 - Wizarding World Hollywood

This past Saturday we stopped in for a quick trip to Universal Studios Hollywood as we were in the area and were hoping to just bring you a short update today. That turned into quite a large update as you'll see below. There's lots of great stuff going on at the park that we wanted to let you know about. 

Hope you've got your red-cup of coffee ready today. ;) 

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Written by Gregg Condon

UPDATE: Universal Studios Hollywood has releases pricing for the 2016 prices, see below. 
http://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/annual-pass/ 
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Note: All of these passes contain blackout days, which isn't a surprise. Considering we'd heard rumors of there possibly being NO Annual Passes for 2016 (or the first half of 2016) this is likely the best we were going to get. 

Also, none of these passes contain parking, so prepare to have to pay or use Metro. 

Gold Pass Black-Out Dates

CA Resident Plus Annual Pass

CA Resident Annual Pass

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Before we get started, I'm not sure if most people even realize USH has a France section of the park. We didn't notice any kind of tribute or anything to the events going on in Paris but we did notice the music a lot more than on previous visits. And it seemed a lot more people were spending time in this area of the park than usual. 

Our thoughts are with all those impacted by the senseless violence. 

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Moving on to Wizarding World, not really a whole lot of change from last week as at this point most of the changes are going on inside and to show elements outside. 

Speaking of show elements, some of the window animation is working now and they are testing pretty much everything that needs to be tested. 

They've also been lighting Hogwarts at night. We'll be sure to get some pics of it when we go for Grinchmas in a few weeks. 

Flight of the Hippogriff was testing. We saw about 4 or 5 trains go in the few minutes we were getting pics.

The greenhouse appears to be done, or very close to being done. 

The Ford Anglia is back and outside the Wizarding World store. 

A view from CityWalk 

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Now that Halloween Horror Nights is over, Christmas has definitely come to Universal Studios Hollywood

The Grinchmas Tree is being constructed

Last week this was all ExterminatorZ and now it's Candy CaneZ ... ;)

On the studio tour they are getting ready for the Whovilation show

It's always so interesting to see the contrast between Whoville and Bates Motel

Even CityWalk is getting ready for the holidays

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There are still a LOT of construction projects going on both inside and outside the parks. 

The retail dining location is starting to get a LOT more detail. 

All of the work going on is creating some VERY narrow walkways

Some nice details seen through the scrim

The Special Effects Stage is closed as they prepare for a new show in the theater next year

Outside the park, the re-design of the front entry of the park is underway. Everything on the right side of the entry is closed, making for a VERY narrow walkway between CityWalk and the park. 

Walls, Walls, Walls ... everywhere walls. 

Even walls around Saddle Ranch, which is still open BTW. 

As you can see, it gets quite crowded in a narrow walkway. 

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Back inside the park, a few remnants of Halloween Horror Nights remains, mostly on the Studio Tour. 

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They were filming on the backlot with a huge US Airways plane set, which led us to the conclusion that it's for the Sully Sullenberger movie starring Tom Hanks. No, we didn't see Tom on set. =(

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And lastly, Jaws recently came back from a refurb and it looks great!! 

Thanks for reading, we weren't expecting the update to be too big this week but there turned out to be more going on at the park than we figured. 

Our next update for USH will likely be for the opening of Grinchmas as we've got Holiday events starting up this weekend with Chill at Queen Mary and Knott's Merry Farm this weekend. 

And don't forget, we'll be at IAAPA all week, so be sure you are following us on all of our social media to get up to the minute updates. Team Park Journey will be working hard to bring you all the latest cool stuff from this years event. 

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