Universal Studios

Today we went to Universal Studios in Universal City. As we were walking in we saw the iconic rotating globe. Once we were in we walked down the red carpet and straight to the Harry Potter part of the theme park. There, we got on a ride that took us through Hogwarts. The ride was a mix of videos that gave us simulated motion and brought us through some of the iconic parts of Harry Potter like the Whomping Willow and the Quidditch match where Dementors came in. I really liked that ride and I ended up riding it 6 times. Next we went to the other Harry Potter ride which was very small but was the closest thing to a conventional roller coaster there. My brother got some frozen butter beer that we shared and it was very good. We then went to the studio tour.

The tour said it was going to be guided by Jimmy Fallon but was instead guided by a guy who was more of a try-hard Jimmy Fallon. We got to see the filming of a Spanish music video and we got to drive by the set of Psycho and Jaws. I was surprised when a shark popped up and got me soaked. We also got to go in a sound stage that was meant to look like a subway but almost immediately things went wrong. There was an earthquake, things went on fire, and because the water lines broke there was a flood. Luckily we were able to get out before we got impacted.

After the tour we waited in line for the Simpsons ride which was not as cool as we thought because we were just in a little car that shook while a video played on the hemisphere screen that went all around us.

We went down a couple of escalators to the lower lot where they had more rides. The transformers ride was similar to the Simpsons ride because we mostly just sat in a shaking car while a video played on a big screen, the Despicable Me ride was also the same thing. I really liked the Revenge of the Mummy ride where we sat in a car and went through the pyramid. Suddenly the car shot forward and went super fast with twists and turns. It then stopped and it felt like beetles were coming up my leg when really it was just puffs of air. It then went backwards until the ride was done. After that we did the Jurassic Park ride where we went through the jungle with dinosaurs and we went down a big drop with water splashing us.

Later in the afternoon we went to the Walking Dead attraction which was basically a haunted house with Walkers. It was scary but it wasn’t too bad because the zombies didn’t pop out at me – but they popped out at my mom! I thought the “hospital” we walked through was cool because all of the equipment that was in it was very accurate. When we were done with the park we walked through the shopping mall adjacent where we had supper and after that we went home and fell asleep almost immediately.

On another note, a professor of anthropology from Tennessee recently re-examined bones found on a pacific island that were determined in the 40s to belong to a man and he found that they were actually Amelia Earhart’s bones. He also had his findings published in the University of Florida’s Forensic Anthropology Journal. These bones along with other artifacts found on the island that were thought to be on Earhart’s plane will help in piecing together this mystery. (AT)