We spent Saturday the 20th July at Universal Studios, which was excellent. We went on every ride and saw every show.

The Shrek 4D show was excellent. We wore 3D glasses, and when Shrek sneezed water droplets sprayed onto our faces (and the other 498 people in the auditorium). The chairs moved to give effect to bumps, horse rides etc. There was air blasted onto the backs of our necks when the ghost appeared, and air onto our ankles when spiders appeared on screen - it made us jump!!

Some interesting things were:

• Stroller Parking. As we'd seen on a smaller scale at Legoland and the Zoo, there were stroller parks at each attraction, so that people didn't try and take a stroller into the queues. There were sometimes 50 strollers parked at an attraction and they were often covered in personal belongings. I know, it's unlikely someone would steal a nappy bag.
• Escalator. Huge 1/4 mile (4 segments, 3 lanes) escalator chain to get between the upper and lower sections of the park.


• All the people. Upto 85min wait for popular rides/shows. We waited 40/45min for the final two rides - Back to the Future and Shrek 4D. The Shrek ride had 500 people in each showing, which were about once every 20min. This means there would have been about 16,000 people seeing Shrek 4D in one day.
• Back Lot Studio Tour. This was great, we passed through all these streets which were just facades - New York, Europe, Wild West, even a tiny bit of New York's central park. They looked very realistic. There were also separate buildings on a suburban street used in lots of movies/TV including Buffy.
• Intros. Both Terminator and Shrek had an intro show in the foyer. The idea was that they ushered 500people into the foyer, put on a intro show for them and then when the real show finished, they were able to quickly refil the theatre. It was a good way to pass the time before the show started and it was a good intro to the main event. Shrek's was very funny. They had a mirror on the wall which talked etc, and also Dungeon Cam with the Gingerbread Man on the rack. There were also boxes hanging from the ceiling with captives (yes, you need to have seen the movie!!).
• Mummy. The Mummy show was funny. We walked through this maze which was dark and eerie. At times actors would jump out from the shadows with the sole intention of scarying us. And it worked. They were dressed all in black and so we didn't see them at all. It made us wary at each turn and Jo got a great laugh out of watching Rob jump sky high each time it happened.
• Queues. Each queue was mainly covered and had 'misters' which sprayed a very fine mist of water on everyone in line. There were also fans to keep the mist moving and aid in the cooling. It was very effective at keeping us cooler than we might have been. Some queues had drinking fountains, except Shrek which had vendors selling the brand of water which "sponsored" the attraction. Yes, this is the land of opportunity.
• Waterworld Show. Based on the movie (it is Universal Studios) it was a 30min show with explosions, fires, water skis, boats and even an airplane crashing (well, it was on wires). The 3 grand stands had splash zones and in the "warm up" they sprayed people in the splash zones with water, and even threw whole buckets of it at the people. During the show, the jetskis would spin out and a huge stream of water and spray would drench the people. All the fires and explosions, fights were very well done.

We were there for about 12hrs and then the freeway was clogged on the way home, which was a bit painful (11pm Sat night doing stop and go for an hour).