 Yesterday we were invited out to Universal Studios Hollywood to check out their always great Lunar New Year Event and once again it didn't disappoint at all. Back are all of the amazing character interactions, great food and beautiful backdrop. As you'll see below it was an absolutely beautiful day at the park. We'll also take a look at some of the many projects going on around the park. Written by Gregg Condon Happy Lunar New Year!!   It's the year of the Rooster  New characters this year are Tigress and Po from Kung Fun Panda. Tigress is ready to fight, Po is just Po.  For fans of the films there are a few Easter Eggs    Once again you can leave a message in one of the trees, a great touch that we did. Sadly not in Mandarin. We're a bit rusty. ;)  Mandarin Megatron is back and awesome as ever.     Sorry your store got torn down Woody (more on that below) but it's always great seeing you out in the park.  Moving on. There are no major new attractions coming to the park this year, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a plethora of smaller projects going on at the park right now. Cartooniversal has been completely removed as we showed you in our last update, but we figured we'd take a closer look this time since crowds were light.   Taking advantage of these views that we won't get to see forever.  In addition, Waterworld is closed for refurbishment.  Some cement work going on outside of Shrek  It was an absolutely beautiful day to take in the Studio Tour  From the tour you can see all the work being done to add in the 4th Starway escalator  If you haven't seen Kubo yet you really need to. It's so amazing.  Boo, no HHN maze. :(  We saw this a LOT during our Tour. This was the busiest I'd seen the lot in years. So much so that our tour really only lasted about 35-40 minutes.  Not much change in the former location of Stage 28   Production stuff  Sorry for the weird shot here, wasn't expecting Jaws to be closed, but here it is. If you look at the details you can see the shark fins and more. Looks to be a pretty extensive refurb which is odd because it just had one maybe 1 1/2 years ago?  Moving back to the park, work continues for the new Starway    Which means an update for the Mummy Lockers to make room   One last note, they are doing some work on the stage in Hogsmeade.  As always, we absolutely love seeing the characters at the park.  Bello!!  "There's nothing better than a cigar lit with a hundred dollar bill!"   It was a beautiful chilly day in the park which of course meant Hot Butterbeer!!  This was also our first chance to ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey with the 2D 120 Frames Per Second and we LOVED it. Absolutely no nausea for any of us, the sets and screens blended perfectly and it was a great experience. I love that they are making little tweaks to improve an already amazing ride experience.  Out in CityWalk, work continues on Margaritaville. Do have to say, the sign is in a weird place, you really can't see it until you are right in front of it due to the iFly right next to it. But we do hope the restaurant does well.   Finally some work being done on Voodoo Donuts!!   We can't wait for this to open!!  Now that the Christmas Tree is gone we can see the full outside of the new Universal Cinema. It looks amazing!!  Alright, that's going to wrap it up for this update, we hope you enjoyed it. Be sure to plan some time to check out Lunar New Year. It runs now through February 5th. You can find out more information about the event here. Related Updates:  As we ease into the New Year we're starting to get back into our general update pattern and today we've got our first Universal Studios Hollywood Update of the new year. Even though we know/have heard of a lot of new things coming right now it seems that most everything is kind of small. We don't really like to say definitively what's coming until we know 100% but that doesn't mean it's not fun to speculate. ;) If you haven't used Metro to the park yet, it's really easy and the new pedestrian bridge makes it super easy to do.  Wizarding World always looks great, but I think we can all admit there's something special about seeing it in the rain. Maybe because this is really the first time we've been able to see it in the rain was just within the last few weeks? The 5 minute waits for Forbidden Journey don't hurt either.  The employees in this shot almost equal the amount of guests.  Krusty's mouth ... the ride.  A new Starway is being added to bring guests up and down the hill. For future capacity or something or other. ;) Imagine that, a park taking advanced steps and improving their infrastructure before crowds show up.  Of course, any time you have construction and rain you get mud. Wheeeee!!!   Everything is so green in CA right now, it's so nice for a change.  Down at the bottom you can see all of the work being done to add more Starway capacity.  I mean, it's already raining, might as well. =)  Seriously, even cell phone pics of Wizarding World look amazing in the rain.  The cold and rain make cool effects on the CityWalk fountain  Speaking of CityWalk, these pics are a few days old but we figured we'd include them here. Work is FINALLY being done on Voodoo Donuts.  Margaritaville is also looking great, they've been hiring so if you're looking for a job at CityWalk be sure to follow @ushjobs on Twitter.  Alrighty, that's going to wrap it up for this update. We should hopefully be back at the park soon for the Lunar New Year which is beginning soon. We'll be sure to get more pics of the park projects when we do. Related Updates: |
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