Universal Studios Sneak Preview

Kijubi Julie and I

Last night the Kijubi team was invited to a special preview event for Universal Studio’s new King Kong 3d ride. Also, it was an extra special event for me because it was actually my first time at Universal Studios. The reception was splendid, lots of schmoozing with other travel industry folks and, I must say, the food and drinks were quite adequate to ensure a great night no matter how the ride turned out

After socializing for a bit, Kijubi Julie and I jumped on the studio tour and headed out to the ride. The King Kong 3d ride is actually part of the studio tour. You sit in the same train of cars that serve the tour and they take you to Skull Island — a huuuuuge jungle themed sound stage, where  you are enclosed in a gigantic 3D movie screen bubble. Moreover, according to Peter Jackson, who narrated the event, the largest 3d screen in the world!

My best King Kong impression

So the ride is actually not really a ride at all. You stop on a hydraulic platforms that moves around — the ones where you stay in the same place but the seats and screen trick you into thinking that you’re moving. However, instead of just facing forward, you’re free to look in all directions since the screen is all around you. However, the best part is definitely that you are provided with those futuristic fancy specs and everything is in the most stunning 3d! Just think of being in a 360 degree Avatar movie where the seats move with the action. And yes, it really is as fun as it sounds! Actually, it feels much more real than that — so real that you actually get wet!

After the journey to Skull Island ends, you continue the studio tour which is what you would expect, you meander through movie sets and learn a good deal about the film making process and Universal history. After the studio tour, on Julie’s recommendation, we ran to the Mummy. Thankfully the park was closed to the public, no lines for us! I’m going to be pretty jealous of my experience the next time I go to any park.

The Mummy ride was great, very Indiana Jones-esque. I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve been to a theme park, most likely before college (which is probably the reason why I can’t remember), so The Mummy brought back some long awaited nostalgia. We then headed out to Jurassic Park — a pretty fun log-style ride, meaning a big drop and some splashing. Thankfully an employee must have taken a liking to Julie because he directed us to the middle seats of the car which made us (almost) un-splashable.

As you can see, Julie is a huge Jaws fan

Julie and I then romped around the park a bit, took some interesting pictures and slowly made our way to the exits. It was 10pm which meant closing time and we had a long 60 mile drive ahead of us. Plus, we decided to do some Hollywood site-seeing* along the way so it was time to say goodbye to Universal Studios and hello to the road.

*On the topic of what happened in Hollywood — I must leave that information for another time and definitely another blog.