Day Seven - Universal Studios

Lol its funny, when you think about vacation you think you'd be well rested and sleep in and so on.  But we have been up everyday around the same time we would if we were going to work.  But we are enjoying ourselves and are oh so busy.  Did two loads of laundry last night.  Our hotel is fully equipped and it was nice to be able to do it.  Only $5 and we will be good till we get home.

I have to admit that I am enjoying the waffles every morning a little too much.  They are tiny like dollar pancakes but delicious.  Kels finally had some this morning and agreed.  Weather has been cloudy every morning but the sun burns off the clouds and it blares down pretty good.  Mel honey you'd be in heaven down here.  I'm trying to enjoy it for your sake 😊 

We both have been using sun screen religiously but yesterday managed to get a little bit burnt - kels on his feet, back of his legs and forearms and I got it on my nose, neckline and forearms too.  Not badly but just enough that it looks bad lol.  We covered up today real good and slathered on the sun screen before we left the hotel.

Traffic has been not too bad in the  mornings, even though it takes us an hour to get to Los Angeles every morning so far (San Diego starting tomorrow).  Kels has been doing awesome with getting us to where we need to go, parking and dealing with crazy drivers (oh look people are just as crazy at driving as they are back home).  I feel very fortunate to just "be along for the ride" so to speak and be able to enjoy the sights on the side of the road without having to worry about traffic or driving.  However this morning seems to have caught up with us.  Boy did we hit traffic.  But we were also going literally downtown LA.  It's a good thing universal isn't as large as Disney.  It took us 2 1/2 hours to reach Universal.

Upon arrival we opted for the preferred parking and save ourselves a 20min hike to the park.  Once inside the park we headed down to the lower lot (outside escalators.  Seriously I still cannot fathom this) to some of the rides.  First one up was Jurassic Park.  Seriously Mina you have ruined me for life.  I was scared crapless again.  Poor kels got drenched.  The next ride we did The Mummy.  And I pretty much kept my eyes closed the whole ride.  Didnt...do...well.  Then I got to meet Bumblebee from Transformers (he's my fav) and got my pic taken with him.  Then we did the Transformers ride.  Which was 3D and very cool.  Booted it back up the 3 very long escalators to the main part and decided to have lunch.  Kels grabbed a Krusty burger and I had a chicken and waffle sandwich and we took our food and ate in Moe's.  Yup there's a Simpsons land at Universal.  Right down to a Kwik-E-Mart.  After lunch we headed over and watched  a very cool special effects show where they show how they do things like sound effects and  lighting people on fire in the movies.  It was extremely entertaining and the ending was a riot of laughs!!  After that we went and saw the live Waterworld show and it was fantastic.  Then we headed over to Universals newest attraction Harry Potter world.  Now I've never actually watched the movies or read the books but I've seen snippets on TV and head people talk about it and from what we saw they created an exact replica.  There was a roller coaster (super short) that we tried and we awed at how many fangirls and boys (mostly adults) we wandering around.  But then again I probably mirrored them at Disney so who am I to judge?  Then we watched a fun animal actors show that kinda talked about how they trained animals for movies, what queues they use from behind the camera and showed us how they did things like getting birds to soar.  It was pretty cool seeing tons of different animals. Then we got in line to do a studio tour.  There was about a half hour wait for it.  The tour was about an hour long and they drive you all around the different sets that some are used constantly and told little stories and they also took you through some garages that had 3D videos that you watch but the whole tram moves with the movie as well.  It sure was entertaining and enlightening how they go about getting different shots for different parts of movies, or TV or commercials.  Then after the studio tour we did one last ride and headed back to Oceanside.

Traffic was again ridiculous and it took us