As kids and teenagers, all of us have watched cartoons and movies featuring numerous interesting characters such as Mickey and Minnie, Donald Duck, Cinderella, Harry Potter, and the list could go on and on! Back then, who wouldn’t have longed to meet these characters in person? If a time machine that could transport us back to those days existed, I am sure many of us would have loved to use it. Well, who wouldn’t want to relive them? ☺
The good news is that there are two big entertainment parks in Los Angeles in the US that have the potential to make this happen for us- Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? 😀 I got a chance to visit both during my one-month-long vacation in the US, back in December of 2023. There are lots of fun-filled things to try out there. In this article, I will be taking you through a couple of them so please stay tuned!
Disneyland
Disneyland is around 35 miles away from the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). If you are flying from any other airport within or outside the US to LAX, there are many transportation options available for you to reach there. You could use public transportation if you want your trip to be budget-friendly.
If you do not want to travel by public transportation, then you could book an Uber taxi or drive your own or a rental car. Around half a mile from the parking space in Disneyland, there are designated counters from which you would need to buy parking passes. There is usually a long queue of cars in front of the toll gates so please don’t lose your cool if you need to wait for a little longer than usual ☺
The parking lot in Disneyland is distributed over several floors in which there are designated parking spaces. After parking your car, you would need to walk to the entrance gate. Depending upon the floor where you park your car, it could take around 15 minutes for you to reach there if you walk at a decent pace. From there, there are trams available that transport tourists to a point from where they would be able to try out rides and other interesting stuff inside the premises of the entertainment park. That’s cool, isn’t it? 😀
All the rides are accessible against passes which you can book online from the comfort of your homes before planning a visit here. Each pass costs at least $154 and can accommodate one person. It is inclusive of every single ride inside Disneyland, which means that you can try out any number of rides you want once you reach the premises. However, please ensure that you book the passes well in advance since they are always in heavy demand and the entertainment park has a defined capacity beyond which it cannot accommodate more people at a given point in time.
Once you are inside Disneyland, you will be amazed to see how big it is! The choice of rides available for people to try out is plenty (and I am not kidding here). However, before trying out any of them, you would need to wait in a queue. The average waiting time is 20-25 minutes for each ride. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to experience all of them within a single day so it’s recommended that you read about them in advance before planning your trip so that you can decide which ones to try out and utilize your time effectively. The recommended number of rides to try out within a day would be around 3-5 if you want to have decent energy levels after completing all rides.
Oh, wait! Let me mention one important thing about choosing rides. There are rides involving varying levels of speed that you could choose from. But for those who have motion sickness, it is better not to choose high-speed rides. For those who don’t, it is still a good idea to collect feedback from other people who have tried the ride before you, once they come out of the exit area.
Apart from rides, some plays are organized on some days of the week at a gallery inside the premises of this massive entertainment park. They are great to watch and the colorful costumes which are worn by the actors and actresses on stage make it even more interesting.
Food lovers would be delighted to know that the restaurants inside Disneyland have different cuisines to check out. There are resorts inside Disneyland as well, in which you can plan to stay if you have a couple of extra days.
In the evening, you would be able to see your favorite cartoon characters coming to life and waving at you. Weren’t you waiting for this the whole day? 😀 There is a garden in Disneyland, around the boundary of which, a procession of people dressed as different characters from famous cartoons travel in giant-sized trucks at very low speeds and wave at their beloved fans. A lot of people gather here and wait for this moment! As this area is very heavily crowded, you need to finish experiencing your rides and come here well in advance to grab a place in the front row. Unfortunately, no chairs are available here so you would need to stand and watch the different cartoon characters. But the entire experience is so refreshing that it is worth the effort. Kids can surely have a fantastic time here.
Now let me give you all a bit of advice regarding the kind of clothing that you could choose to wear while visiting here. During the day, it’s generally warm so it’s unlikely that you would need much winter clothing. But once the sun sets, the weather becomes suddenly very cold. You would be surprised to see that the weather during the daytime and in the evening are poles apart! Therefore, it is recommended to carry appropriate winter clothing such as jackets and winter caps which you could wear in the evening to avoid getting the flu.
Universal Studios Hollywood
From LAX, Universal Studios Hollywood is situated roughly 26 miles away. You could either choose to avail of public transportation for coming here or you could travel by car. For cars, there are designated parking places near the entrance gate.
To try out the huge list of rides that are offered to tourists here, you would need to book passes online before planning a visit here. It is a good idea to book these passes well in advance since this entertainment park has a limited capacity and the passes, like in Disneyland, are always highly in demand. Here again, each pass can accommodate one person and costs at least $109 if you want to purchase the economical ones. The express passes would cost around $209 per person. These are passes of premium categories and don’t require tourists to wait in queues.
Movie buffs would have a great time here since there are a multitude of rides to choose from. Some of the famous rides that many tourists visiting here generally love to try out are Jurassic World and Harry Potter. A word of caution for folks planning to try the Jurassic World ride- It involves a sudden fall from a height of around 6 feet into a lake and therefore, if you are afraid of heights or have motion sickness, then it would be a good idea to rethink before trying this ride.
There are also a couple of simulation-based entertainment activities that you could choose to try out here. They would require you to be seated inside a theatre in chairs that have simulation models incorporated into them. Different fictional scenes are shown on a giant screen and the simulation models incorporated into these chairs make the experience truly immersive. You would feel like you are a part of the fiction that is being portrayed on the screen in front of you.
There is a short and interesting play that you could plan to watch here. It is organized in an open-air theatre surrounding a lake and has a lot of action-based scenes that will keep your eyes glued to whatever is being enacted in front of you. The whole play usually lasts for around 40 minutes which can pass by in a jiffy due to the very high quality of performance of the actors and actresses. The people sitting in the rows in the middle are at a lesser risk of getting wet than the people sitting in the front rows, since the action-based scenes spill water in multiple directions.
I have good news here for Harry Potter fans out there. There is an entire section in the theme park that is dedicated to making people recall scenes from Harry Potter movies. For instance, there is a replica of the Hogwarts Express. There is also an area representing Hogsmeade village and butterbeers are sold there too! I tried one and it was sweet and tasty. You could try out one too, if you are a die-hard Harry Potter fan like I am 😀
Throughout the entire Harry Potter alley, there were many people dressed in robes and by looking at them I felt that I was a part of the wizarding world too. Gosh! Never in my life had I imagined that I would be able to visit here and come so close to experiencing scenes that I either watched on television or read in novels. There are shops as well from which you could purchase Wands, Robes, T-shirts and much more!
Oh! I had almost forgotten to mention a unique experience that I had here. There is a replica of the Ollivander wand shop -the place where Harry Potter used to purchase wands right from his first term at Hogwarts. Inside it, there is a person dressed like Mr Ollivander from the Harry Potter movie, who could make you experience the scene where Harry did not choose the wand but the wand chose him. The ambiance of the shop, the delivery of the dialogue by the person, and his ability to recreate the scene from the movie made me imagine myself as a student of Hogwarts who wished to identify the right wand for herself! 😀
In the evening, the entire entertainment park is beautifully decorated with a variety of lights which makes the entire place look magnificent. The weather during the day is slightly warmer than in the evening but once the sun sets, you would surely need to wear winter clothing throughout the year. Like Disneyland, the weather here during the daytime and once the sun sets are very different from each other.
The Bottom Line
Whoa! That was almost a virtual ride through Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood. I hope that this article was an interesting read for you all. Whenever you get a chance, please plan to relive your childhood days by visiting either or both entertainment parks. It will surely make you feel refreshed and allow you to be the best version of yourself at whatever you plan to do next. Take care and happy travelling.
