16/11/06 The mummy 3 times

Well today was a big driving day. Not by distance, but by the fact that we had to get across Los Angeles in rush hour. Andrea drove and i navigated as i would of got far too stressed with Andrea's navigating skills ;) Anyway, Andrea did marvelously and happily navigated some of the 6 lane freeways and 5 lane roads!

Right, a bit of background to me here. I've never been to America before and the biggest theme park i've been too has been Alton Towers (the shame) so going to somewhere like universal was new to me. Which is pretty much why i'm writing this and not Andrea. You can get my "innocent" take on it :)

First of all, I did love Universal Studios at Hollywood even if it didn't have enough roller coasters. It only had one, albeit very good, called The Mummy. We started at the top of the park and the first thing that hit me was just how good Americans are at putting "polish" on things. Like the enthusiasm of the attendants, no litter, lots of neon, etc...

The first thing that happened was that i got collared by Marilyn Monroe, via Andrea, for a photo opportunity. Then we shot off to watch Shrek 4d, which was pretty amazing (Just loved the bits with Donkey sneezing and the spiders). Then Terminator 2 3d and that back to the future ride. Incidentally, I struggled to get Andrea on to the front of the back to the future ride, but managed to. That pretty much set a precedent throughout the day of getting Andrea on rides that she wouldn't normally go on...ie: the fast ones, more about that in a mo. The next thing we did was go on the Studio tour, which i must admit did it for me. Really good to see the outdoor sets of all the past films. The tv's on the bus would always tell you what films were filmed at that location (past and present). Then we went past stuff regarding special effects, the odd thrill ride on the tour (like the flood, king kong, jaws) They even had the entire set from Psycho ! very cool. Andrea was more wooed by the cars from "The Fast and the Furious"...but then again she does own a burberry baseball cap and is a secret chav (She would say Posh Chav).

Then we moved to the fast rides. I managed to get Andrea onto the Mummy (a pretty darn fast roller coaster) three times by the end of the day! This was mainly because she wanted a good photo of herself to come out that made her look like she was actually enjoying herself ! It never happened. I was even more impressed by the Jurassic Park ride. The shear drop at the end was breathtaking. Andrea was more scared of the plastic dinosaurs that popped up periodically. *sigh*

After that was two shows. I must admit that normally this sort of thing just would not interest me but i was completely wowed by these two shows. The first one was animal actors. Just a load of animals that acted. These little fellas were all the "star" animals from tvshows/adverts/films and must admit, acted a lot better that some of the cast of Eastenders. The next one was Waterworld. All of the people that were in this one were in shows like CSI and a load of other American dramas. Although we sat two rows behind the "soak zone" we still got wet. Andrea got absolutely soaked through because she only had a child in front of her to hide behind. If any of you go to this show, go to the earlier viewing and not the later one as at least the sun can dry you off during the day and not the moon freezing you. This show was much better than the flop of a film it was based on.

So the day came to the end and the park booted us out. We went back a simpler route than when we came here as there was less chance of us ending up in the "wrong" side of town. Still Los Angeles in the evening rush hour was ten times worse than during the day. It took us three of hours to get across the city. Even at around 9:00 at night Los Angeles is like Manchester in rush hour. Admittedly, we needed to find a printer and some internet access do do some bits for our next leg and Fiji. We just used one in some random hotel by the airport which was manned by a big black American lady who was lovely. She kept calling Andrea "Sugar" and "Girl", it was straight out of Jerry Springer!

PS. Simon wrote this