Universal Studios Hollywood – WithOUT Our Cameras!!

After a few months of saving and planning, Ash finally got to surprise Randy with his big birthday present: a trip to Universal Studios Hollywood! You see, Randy had never been (despite growing up here in Southern California), and visiting Universal Studios is something everyone should do at least once … especially if you’re a huge movie fan, and love to see all the behind-the-scenes action and fun of film making!

And let us tell you: it was absolutely amazing.

But one thing we did NOT want to do was lug around our camera(s). Most people don’t recognize how hard it is to leave the camera at home when we go on trips – to take pretty pictures in our style, with big pro quality images. To have control on zoom without it being all grainy … to shoot in low aperture and lots of bokeh. But this time, we relied solely on our iPhones to capture everything – so we could be focused more on the experience than the ins-and-outs of photography. After all – we were there to celebrate Randy’s birthday – not work!! Would the photos have been better with a big camera? Absolutely, but, we didn’t have to spend the whole day worrying about our gear getting stolen, damaged or any non-fun stuff like that.

So, the big cameras stayed at home, and our iPhones stayed in our pockets.

^^ Excuse the horrible quality here … 4D glasses were necessary for this to not be totally blurry. ^^

Dom’s Challenger just … chillin’ there. SO COOL!

Noah LOVES dinosaurs and Jurassic Park. The one big bummer of our day was that the Jurassic Park ride was closed (which we didn’t realize until we got there) … but Noah still had fun with the outside parts!

When we first got there, we told them that it was Randy’s birthday and they gave him a little button with his name on it … and from that moment, every 10 feet someone was yelling “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RANDY!!!!” and giving him front of the line tickets, and they even sang Happy Birthday to him at least three times. The workers totally went out of the way to make Randy feel extra special – it was pretty awesome to see how important a great guest experience was to Universal Studios!

We only had one day to spend there, and at the end of it – we realized it wasn’t enough. We didn’t get a chance to see any of the shows because we were always somewhere else in the park when the shows were starting (so oh darn, guess we’ll have to go back!). But! We did get to go on the big studio tour and experience the new(ish) Fast + Furious ride (which was pretty rad, but our favorite part of the Studio Tour was actually the King Kong 4D ride!).

But … nothing was more rad than the fact we got to get a sneak peek at the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter!!!!

Earlier in the day, one of the studio tour guides told us that they might be doing something called technical rehearsals before the grand opening on April 7th (and they were filming Celebrity Apprentice that day, too – we got to see WNBA player Lisa Leslie strolling around) … and to just periodically check back and ask the workers in red shirts. And low-and-behold … they OPENED IT! We got to go in, ride the two new rides (the Flight of the Hippogriff ride was pretty flipping awesome – except it was a little scary for Katelyn, with the flying dementors everywhere), and got to explore Hogsmeade.

^^^ That is Ashley’s “super fan-girling-OMG-is-this-really-happening” face! From right inside Hogwarts!! ^^^

Noah got a pumpkin juice (which was super tasty) and we all split a couple Butterbeers (which really just tasted a lot like cream soda with drizzled cool whip on top).

By the end of the day, Noah was exhausted, haha!

All in all, it was a perfect day out at Universal Studios Hollywood and we can’t wait to go back!!!