Its UNIVERSAL STUDIOS time!

Well I’m going to jump straight in with the spoilers and say that the Studios tour was dam AMAZING.

Our day started off the usual way with a takeaway coffee from our new ‘local’ Mimi’s Cafe, then it was onto the bus and headed for Hollywood. The weather has actually been pretty shitty recently so we were keeping our fingers crossed for no rain and a toasty day.. our luck paid off.

Obviously when we arrived we went straight to Hogwarts right, who wouldn’t??

The place really is magical – from the snow on the roofs of Diagon Alley to the fully ‘kitted out in cloaks’ employees that serve you Butter beer or help you select a new wand from little carts scattered in the street. A real must for any Potter fan.

Oh and our favourite ride was in this area of the park too. ‘Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey’ takes the top spot for us. Chasing the golden snitch through the bleachers, flying with dementors through the forbidden forrest.. what more could you want from a ride? Also, I wouldn’t class this as a 4D ride as such either. You’re actually on a track (kinda) and not just a ‘stationary’ cart so that wins extra points too, you can feel the movements of the ride here a hell of a lot more and this makes the drops soooo much better if you’re a bit of a theme park trill seeker like we are.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is also the home of ‘Flight of the Hippogriff’; one of the few roller coaster’s at the park so make sure you check that out but don’t be expecting too much of a thrill if you’ve been to Six Flags or Thorpe Park. It’s only a diddy coaster so 4/10 for you Hippogriff.

Coming in second is ‘The Simpsons Ride’ – we really weren’t expecting this to be as good as it turned out to be but it was a great backstory, the animation of it felt extremely realistic and it was a good lengthy ride.

‘Jurassic Park – The Ride’ takes third place but I (Lissy) have been to Universal Studios Orlando too and was somewhat disappointed by Hollywood because of this. Jurassic Park at Orlando was so, so good and a hell of a lot longer than Hollywood with a more detailed back story that Hollywood just didn’t compare with. Nevertheless, all water rides are fab, so that’s why this is at number 3.

4D rides are seemingly the direction that Universal Studios Hollywood have went for and you can’t really blame them seen as animation and pyrotechnics are totally their thing and that’s great, it really is, but after the first couple of rides we personally started to feel the repetition and by the time we had done all the ‘big’ rides we wanted to and were just rounding up the day, filling in with all the rides that we were less interested in (Despicable Me – Minion Mayhem.. Sorry Felonius) it actually became a bit less fun for us. Oh and we got a bit queasy too; being thrown around all day and having your head bash around a seat probably doesn’t do you much good after 5 hours.

But, without a doubt, the studios tour really is THEE best thing about being here. PLEASE make sure you allow time to go on it because you will not regret it. The tour is just over an hour long and the wait time to get on is around the same but so worth it so like I said, allow time its DA BOMBBBBB. Not only does it include two mini rides on the tour, you really do go through the working sets so keep your eyes peeled for the celeb spotting because we saw UGLY BETTY, how cool is that!? Real name America Ferrera plays ‘Amy’ in the cast of Superstore and the whole cast were just chilling outside and even came over to the tour to have a chat!

We have some pretty cool Go Pro footage of the whole day, including the tour (but shhhh because you’re not suppose to take any action cam or selfie sticks on the tour with you but we’re total rule breakers so we did anyway) so keep your eyes on the blog because we will be releasing our You Tube videos reaaaaaaal soon.

But for now, have some stills of the tour instead..

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Told you.. AMAZING.

Before we finish there’s one last night to say. Whether you’re a smoker or not, head over to the smokers area on the top level. You do not want to miss these views.

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Head over to out Instagram at @2britsandabucketlist to see more photos of the day.