On Saturday Sam and I attended an event at Universal Studios Hollywood for Kaiser Permanente employees in honor of the Permanente Group’s 60th anniversary. The park was open to the public until 8pm, and for four hours after that it was open to Kaiser employees and their guests only. We came early to watch Iron Man 3 at the theater. When we walked into the theater the movie was already playing. It was only then that we noticed the time on our tickets said 11:10 PM instead of AM. I’d already gone through a bit of trouble getting the tickets as the showing I originally purchased said it was assigned seating, but never offered me a chance to pick a seat. I had to call and cancel that showing and get the one that did have assigned seating. What nobody noticed (including me) was that they’d given me the night show instead of morning show for the replacement tickets. Luckily there was another show starting in a few minutes that wasn’t well attended, so we waltzed in and ended up seeing the same movie five minutes later than we thought (and without assigned seats). If you recall, this is the same AMC Universal that had a projector break 30 minutes into Prometheus last July. At this point I’m willing to say that this movie theater is cursed and we’ll avoid it as much as possible.
Luckily the rest of the Universal complex isn’t cursed.
Sammy had her picture taken with two giant cartoon pills.
Our first ride was the studio tour. I’ve been on the tour many times but this was Sam’s first time. The only photos I took on the tour were of the War of the Worlds crash set. No matter how I fiddle with the settings in RAW processing, it all still looks too much like a movie set, except for the very last picture I took. This is the edge of the set with the tail of the plane broken off and separated from the rest of the mess.
After seeing him in action, Sam wanted to get closer to Bruce.
We went to haunted house and then Waterworld.
Next we watched the Shrek short movie and then headed down the escalators, stopping halfway to take some photos of the sunset.
We rode Jurassic Park, the Mummy and Transformers before going back up to the top of the park to eat some fried chicken and pizza. Before going back, though, we stopped by the Transformers photo opp. Don’t ask me what Bumblebee was trying to do, I didn’t find out until I looked at the photo later.
After eating we took pictures with the simpsons kids before getting on their ride. The ride replaced the Back to the Future ride and already almost feels as dated. The projector needs a new bulb, and there’s no real reason why this ride always had the longest wait (except perhaps it’s centralized location in the park).
After the Simpsons we had two hours left in the park, so we decided to go back downstairs, where we rode Jurassic Park again, Transformers three times (there was no wait) and Mummy once more.
After exiting Transformers for the last time we stopped by the little museum and looked at some original movie props on display.
After going back upstairs we watched the animal show and the special effects show before leaving the park at midnight.
