Los Angeles – hardly worth posting about
Seriously, this is the home of the rich and famous?
Since getting to my hostel in Santa Monica turned out to be such a drama, I cancelled my reservation and booked another hostel in Hollywood. I promptly got a taxi from Hollywood Boulevard after escaping Trek America and it was just a short ride to the hostel. Once checked-in, I had the room to myself and wasted no time making use of the ensuite. Since I had virtually no clean clothing, I spent the evening doing laundry and just fluffing about in the hostel room. One girl in my room, TallPommieGirl, was particularly chatty with me and when I mentioned I would be going to Universal Studios the next day, asked if she could tag along.
I wanted to be at Universal Studios close to opening time to beat the crowds and also see as much as possible since the park was only open until 5pm. TallPommieGirl and I purchased our 2 days for the price of 1 tickets at the hostel before making our way to the train station. Since the weather wasn’t terribly nice – overcast and threatening rain – we were hoping it wouldn’t be terribly crowded. We took the train to the Universal City station and then got the shuttle bus up the hill to Universal Studios. There were a few people about but I’m sure it was a pretty quiet day compared to crowds in peak season. The longest lines were to purchase tickets and since we already had ours, by-passed the long lines and were inside the park fairly promptly.
Maps in hand, our first stop was the famous studio tour. This was quite enjoyable although not as exciting as it looks on TV – but I suppose that’s the name of the game in Hollywood. There were some interesting stops along the way including Jaws terrorising the waters of Amity Island, psycho Norman at the Bates Motel, Wisteria Lane and the plane crash site from War of the Worlds.
After the studio tour and a bite to eat, we headed down to the lower lot of the studio. Two rides are located here – Jurassic Park and The Mummy. We did both of these and they were good fun. I wanted to see the Backdraft set so we did that and saw the Special Effects Stages. With the back lot done and dusted, we headed back up to the upper lot to watch the stunts of Waterworld. It was a good show although I think the pre-show entertainment was better than the actual show. The seats in the stadium are labelled ’soak zone’, ‘wet zone’ and ‘dry zone’. If you were unfortunate enough to sit in the soak zone, you did indeed get soaked – pre-show, a couple of the actors would grab buckets full of water and hurl it over unsuspecting audience members. It was funny. TallPommieGirl and I were smart enough to sit at the back of the wet zone so no water on us. Last on our to-do list was The Simpsons ride and Shrek in 4D. These were good although I was a little anxious about Shrek after my painful poke in the back at the Shedd Aquarium 4D show in Chicago. I checked the seats before the show started and there were no holes so I was safe. With everything on our to-do list completed, we headed back to the hostel to be home in time for the BBQ. It wasn’t free but for $6 it was all-you-can-eat and that’s still pretty bloody good.
Next day, TallPommieGirl abandoned me for a Dr Phil show taping, so I decided to do one of those tacky hop-on, hop-off tours to make the most of the little sightseeing time that I had. I decided to go with one that was recommended by one of the girls in my room as being very good. The tour was made up of three loops – Hollywood, Santa Monica and downtown Los Angeles. The tour buses were the red double decker buses from London – right-hand drive, open top and all. They also usually come with commentary, whether that be a real person speaking, headsets with pre-recorded commentary in selected languages or in the case of this particular tour, just English commentary over the bus speaker system.
I did the first part of the Hollywood loop which took me to Sunset Boulevard, Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills. Perhaps it was the weather, but the entire time I couldn’t help but think, THIS IS IT? It doesn’t seem nearly as glitzy and glamorous as the media makes it out to be. The bus commentary was a bit lousy too – there must have been a problem with the sound system, as the commentary kept breaking up - a bit like a CD skipping – so missed half of it or didn’t get any at all. After Beverly Hills, I had to switch buses for the Santa Monica loop. The commentary was working a bit better on this bus, however, the significant landmarks were few and far between so you didn’t learn much anyway.
I hopped off the bus at the Santa Monica Pier for a look around. It is a pity I didn’t get to stay in Santa Monica as I had originally planned as it was quite nice. Since the sky threatened a serious downpour and I was starving, I made a stop at Big Dean’s Muscle Inn Cafe. The area in front of the cafe is where the body building movement began and so-named Muscle Beach and was the setting for the film Pumping Iron starring the Governor of California himself, Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Although the Muscle Beach at Santa Monica has since closed and relocated to Venice, you can still see a few posers, er I mean fitness fanatics, actually no, I do really mean posers, working out here. Since I prefer a burger and fries washed down with a coke, I pulled up a chair at Big Dean’s. It was gooooooood too.
Although the downpour was done, it was still raining a bit so instead of sitting up top in the open air and get wet, I decided to sit downstairs. If the commentary on the first bus was intermittent, then the commentary on this bus was non-existant as the speakers downstairs didn’t work at all. Also, they had all their advertisements painted over the windows and although not completely opaque, the windows were far from clear. I’m sure in fine weather the tour is quite enjoyable, but that day it was a complete waste of time and money. I didn’t even bother with the downtown Los Angeles loop as that was in a totally open vehicle – no covered area at all – and I wasn’t interested in paying to get wet so I gave it a miss.
Back at the hostel, there was another all-you-can-eat for $6 but this time it was pasta. TallPommieGirl and I, still impressed with the BBQ of the previous evening, decided to hook in again. Bad idea. The pasta was shocking – it was so salty that most people could not eat it. TallPommieGirl gave up after a few mouthfuls but I wasn’t going to pay $6 and not eat dammit! As we left, the girl who cooked asked if we liked it. I told her it was terrible, far too salty. She claimed that was a matter of opinion. Obviously she hadn’t noticed that the majority opinion had dumped it in the bin and paid for the priveledge. I think they should just stick with the BBQ.
Since the weather was so shit and Los Angeles just generally overrated, TallPommieGirl and I decided to hit Universal Studios again and make full use of our tickets. It was supposed to be raining all day so we figured that the park would be all but empty – turns out we figured right. There was seriously fuck all people there. The first day we went, we had to wait 20 minutes in line for The Simpsons ride. Not this day – we went straight on and even got a full 8 seat car to ourselves. Since there was still no line, we decided to have a go again. Then we went down to the lower lot for The Mummy ride. Again, there was no line so we got straight on. We wanted to go again and thought since there was no line perhaps we could just stay on? Nope, stupid Universal Studios wants you to line up again. No matter, as a nice lady reminded us of the ‘child switch’.
As the rides have height restrictions, some little people cannot ride and therefore need to be supervised while those that do meet the height requirments enjoy the ride. So a clever person at Universal Studios created the ‘child switch’ – a little playroom near the lining up area where one parent supervises the short ones while the other parent rides with the not-so short ones. After the ride, the riding parent goes to the ‘child switch’ room and swaps with the supervising parent and the supervising parent gets to ride but doesn’t have to line up with the common people. Instead, they go through a little detour and basically go to the front of the line. So, TallPommieGirl and I exploited the ‘child switch’ for all it was worth – the staff didn’t seem to mind – so we rode The Mummy 3 times in a row.
After that we hit Jurassic Park. Again, no lines. Although there is no child switch on this ride, it wasn’t needed. So we did Jurassic Park a few times and one of the staff told us that the record for consecutive rides is 12 times. We can beat that we said – and we did, we rode Jurassic Park 13 times. We went back to The Mummy as well and rode it a few more times. In total, we had 26 rides that day – 2 on The Simpsons, 11 on The Mummy and 13 on Jurassic Park. So we certainly got our moneysworth at Universal Studios and were very pleased with ourselves.
Peace out.
Just as well you’re a level headed Aussie who is not the least bit star struck by an obviously over-rated LAX. Thankfully you had fun at Universal Studios. Go the rides and congratulations on the record set.