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Happy Monday everybody, hope you had a great weekend. It was mostly a quiet weekend here except for a quick visit to a couple of parks on Friday! First up we've got an update from Universal Studios Hollywood and a look at Halloween Horror Nights prep! Also some updates on a couple of projects around the park! Let's head in!  It was a gloomy morning at the park, we are definitely in our "May Grey" period.  They've finished work on the Universal Plaza where they have completely removed the water fountains and have done some nice brick work around the plaza.  It looks like they may have a bit more work to do on the walls around the outside, but it looks really great! There's also a couple of ODV carts that are usually here that aren't back yet.  I'm guessing they wanted to get the plaza open to show off some of these Fast and Furious cars since FastX hit theaters over the weekend.  El Camino with some cannons or something?  Ford Fairlane  Datsun 240z - I think this is my favorite one  Construction on the upper lot HHN House is moving along quite nicely.  No idea what this house is, but there have been rumors of a Universal Monsters Paris house, that would certainly seem to fit this area of the park.   Walls are now up around the Animal Actors and Special Effects stages for the rumored Fast and Furious coaster.   As of now, Production Central is still open.    Work extends to the exit area and you can see some workers up on the roof there. Still not sure the park needs to attempt a 3rd Fast and Furious attraction, would rather see the coaster be Back to the Future or even Bourne.  Moving down towards the lower lot, the backlot house is progressing nicely.  I didn't do the studio tour, but it doesn't look like any thematic elements have been added yet.  You can see the façade to the right, looks like a window and doorway. This was the entrance for the Killer Clowns house last year, so that seems to be the entrance for this years house.  The house behind Mummy is also under construction. This was the entrance last year, not sure if that will be the case this year. We'll have to see once a façade goes up on either side of the house.   I did give Simpsons my once-a-year courtesy ride. And that's really all I have to say about that. =)  I did take some pics in the pre-show.   Wouldn't surprise me at all if this is the next attraction that is replaced at the park. Both because of Disney owning The Simpsons now, but also because this ride system is now almost 30 years old. And it shows.  No indication of any HHN progress near Waterworld. Looking back on last years update, the first pics we have of progress here was our June update.  Of course it's possible there will not be a house here this year.  The park has some Pride merchandise, and until August 100% of the profits will be donated to the Los Angeles LGBT Center.    Out in CityWalk, walls are around the formers Starbucks and Blaze Pizza. Will be interesting to see what this ends up being. Related Videos
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 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:  Sometimes life throws you a curve ball ... and such is the case that led up to this trip report. When you have to put things aside for awhile or experience things differently than you ever had before. But on the flip side, sometimes when you have to do things a bit differently it gives you a chance to do a different kind of report if you're a blogger, and this is absolutely that kind of report. Written by Gregg Condon Some of you already know this, but for those that don't, in August my wife Kristi had to have major back surgery, her fourth major back surgery since 2008. Which has meant a big change in our theme park going life and which meant a HUGE change in our 2016 Haunt Season. So much so that it necessitated a cancellation of our first trip to HHN Orlando and Howl-O-Scream this October (don't worry, plans are already being made to go next October). This also meant that our SoCal Haunt Season was very different, one of us couldn't do, well, anything and one of us felt incredibly guilty for doing things. Such is the nature of almost 21 years of marriage. But, as luck has it, Universal Hollywood extended their event for the second time this year which meant that she was well enough to go to the event, but would have to do so in a wheelchair. Not only due to the walking, but to help control any scary "jerky" motions in mazes. So hopefully this report will be beneficial to somebody who may want to do HHN 2017 but has otherwise been wondering if they can do so. So we'll DEFINITELY be re-running this update next October, well, September. ;)  I'll also point out that we did attend Fright Fest in October but at the time it was kind of a "test" so we only did the Scare Zones and Aftermath 2. But all indications are that that event and I'm sure every other theme park event would be just as awesome to navigate for somebody in a wheelchair.  Wheelchair view ... a bit different Once we arrived at the park we picked up our Front of the Line passes and headed into the park. You don't need to have a Front of the Line pass to do the event in a Wheelchair, they will simply give you a return time at each maze, but we were able to get Front of the Line passes at the last minute, so we did. And it made the night awesome.  Our first stop of the night was Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and if you saw our initial HHN review you'll remember this was down at the bottom of the list. Not so much this time. Such is the curse of going on opening night as you'll see in this report. We had a great time in this maze and because I was pushing her and not worrying about picture taking and filming I got to enjoy the maze and see all of the amazing detail in all of them.  Next up was The Walking Dead which we've of course done before, which also turned out to be the easiest maze to navigate due to it's permanent nature. It was also the only time ALL NIGHT that I ran over somebody's foot (one of the security guards in the maze). Sorry about that.
Because it was the last night of HHN they were running a test and had Wizarding World open. Because we hadn't tried the hot Butterbeer yet, well, duh, we had to spend some time having Butterbeer and dessert because we didn't think Butterbeer would go very well with Fish n Chips. Grandma would be proud that we had dessert first.   One of the other HHN experiences that was kind of low on our list from opening night was Terror Tram. First off, the tram attendants are AMAZING when it comes to guests in wheelchairs. So HUGE kudos to all of them. The other thing we noticed very early in the night were the monsters were actively going after Kristi. A LOT. I can't count how many times she got her "throat slit" during our night, but it was at least 25-30. The Terror Tram also produced the best "scare" we had at any event all year. We were going through one of the "rooms" and came out and got bombarded by chainsaws from three different directions. It was amazing. Too bad we weren't filming.
After a quick dinner in Springfield we made our way downstairs. Because Kristi is mobile enough to use the Starway we went that route to leave the shuttle for those who aren't able to transfer out. It was interesting taking an empty wheelchair down but after the first level we had no problems.  Down on the backlot mazes we were able to do Krampus and Freddy vs Jason 2 times each, both were AMAZING and FvJ in particular was so much more improved than opening night. So much so that it was probably my second favorite maze of the night, after Krampus.   AHS was also really solid again, but I really would love to see them just limit it to one season of the show. I'd love to see it come back and go that route in 2017.   After a quick break down on the lower lot we made our way through Exorcist, and this was the only maze all night I actually ran into a wall pushing the wheelchair. It's just REALLY dark in this maze and I literally had no idea where I was going. But it was funny and we all laughed. Oh, and the maze was of course amazing.  Last but not least was Halloween which was, duh, amazing.  Going up the starway with the Wheelchair was significantly easier than going down. We spent some time going through The Purge which was literally on fire that night, being the last night there's just a different kind of energy, this is true for all Halloween events. I really hope they bring the concept of the "Gauntlet of Fear" back in 2017. It was a test that worked out REALLY well and everybody seemed to enjoy it. I just hope the theme is something actually "horror" based next year. Would be a GREAT fit for the Shawn of the Dead scarezone again (hint, hint).  Overall our night of going to HHN in a Wheelchair was a VERY positive experience. There were only a couple of times we got stuck or ran into lots of hanging corpses (FvJ) but all of the staff in every maze, in every line, at the tram was amazing. You can tell that HHN and Universal goes above and beyond when it comes to taking care of all their guests. And because in some mazes there were parts where I literally couldn't see in front of me, it turned out monsters were kind of waiting for us, which was of course amazing. Yes, parks are required to be accessible due to the ADA but you can tell Universal has taken special care to go even beyond that. And it's very much appreciated.  Thanks for reading and we hope this report will help some of you as you make plans for next years Halloween season. Related Updates: |
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