My visit to Hollywood and Universal Studios!

The Hollywood Walk of Fame is a road in Hollywood where the pavements on both sides of the road are lined with stars like these!  Most of these stars are engraved with the names of celebrities (e.g. Celine Dion), and a symbol (e.g. music record) indicating their fields of achievements in the entertainment industry.  Some stars do not have names on them, yet.

Even fictitious but famous Hollywood (e.g. Godzilla) and TV characters get their own stars!  Such others that I came across were those of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Bugs Bunny and The Simpsons! 

This is Grauman’s Chinese Theatre along the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  What’s special about this building, other than its unique oriental architechure, are the floor tiles just in front of it (where you see the people crowding there).

On the floor outside the entrance of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, you’ll see lots of these!  ”Wolverine” was there to leave his marks earlier this year!  On 7 Dec 2009, Robert Downey Jr (2007 Iron Man movie) was there to receive his star, and leave his handprints and  footprints on a tile in front of the Chinese Theatre.  I saw the tents and the area being condoned off from across the road that day, but too bad I didn’t see the actor himself.

An older cast by a Hollywood star would be this one.  Julie Andrews was best known as the cheerful singing governess in “The Sound of Music”.  Other notable tiles I saw were those done by the 3 teenage stars (Harry, Hermione & Ron) of the Harry Potter movies, and the main characters (Luke, R2D2 & C3PO) of the Star Wars movies. 

The next day, I went to visit Unversal Studios Theme Park.  They have a Studio Tours tram ride, that takes you on a tour of the real filming studios there.  The ride lasts around 45 minutes and was very educational!

From the top of the hill where the Theme Park is, you can see the white buildings that make up the various movie studios which are still in use today.  When you get closer, each of these studios are at least the size of a warehouse.

This is the main street scene at the backlot and is currently being rebuilt after a big fire destroyed parts of it in 2008.  If I’m not mistaken, some of the final city battle scenes in the 2007 Transformers The Movie (TFTM) were filmed here.

This is a replica of an old Mexican town.  At first there was artificial rain created by the sprinklers above the tram, accompanied by flashes of “lightning” and recordings of thunder.    

Then you hear the sound of gushing waters and soon you see a “flash flood” rushing at the tram!  Just as you’re about to panic when the water reaches the very edge of the parked tram, the water diverts away in time into the drains beside the tram route.  Phew!

There you see the water leaving by flowing under the bridge, and back up the hill to where it came from.  The “flash flood” scene will then be recreated for the next and subsequent tram loads of visitors throughout the day.  Here’s a video of the Universal Studios “flash flood” in action on YouTube.

There were many other outdoor and indoor movie sets that were shown during the tram ride.  Some of the notable ones are “Wysteria Lane” from “Desparate Housewives” and the passenger jet crash site from “World of the Worlds”.  Iconic Hollywood props like the ’dinosaurs’ from “Jurassic Park”, ‘racing cars’ from “The Fast & The Furious”, and “Jaws” himself are still stored and displayed there as attractions too! 

The rest of the visit at Universal Studios consist mainly of going for the various Theme Park rides, plus browsing at the numerous gift shops.  If you like to collect movie related toys, there are plenty over there.  “Twilight” and “Avatar” toys were quite abundant there, but I don’t see them at mass retail here in Singapore yet.

There are many more gift shops and eating places just outside the Theme Park entrance.  One of them is a collector’s toy shop which sells many movie collectible toys that are popular with toy collectors.  As the only such shop there, it was very crowded.  The Marvel Universe toys sold there were more expensive than the retail ones sold here in Singapore!

That’s my visit for Universal Studios and Hollywood.  Tomorrow, I shall blog about my visit to Disneyland in California!