The reason why I didn’t do reviews for each week of Summer of Steven was because I was on a trip to New Port beach California. Every two years my family from my Dad’s side would stay at a beach house (it’s been the same one for the last four times I’ve been there).
I love swimming at the beach with my cousins. I also love boogie boarding too. Now there was good news and bad news on that vacation. The bad news was that my brother had to head back to Salt Lake City for exams and wouldn’t be back until the day we left the beach house :(. The good news though is that I learned that some of my cousins actually watch Steven Universe :). We watched some of the new episodes and even a DVD I bought from home.
After the beach house and picking up my brother we went up to Los Angeles and stayed at a hotel called The Garlan. After we put our suitcases in the room we drove down to Hollywood to walk around. It was amazing to see the Chinese theater and the El Capitan theater for the first time. While waiting for the tour around Hollywood we visited Madame Tussaud’s wax museum. On the tour we drove around many celebrity’s houses and down famous streets of Hollywood.
On our last day of our trip The next morning we got up to head up to Universal Hollywood. We got front of the line passes and headed straight down to Harry Potter first. We rode all the rides and saw many of the shows. We also visited the From Coraline to Kubo: A Magical Laika Experience. While we were inside my Mom and I talked to an actual person from Laika. I wrote my name on a piece of paper which could me I might work at Laika some day. It was really awesome to see the puppets from the Laika movies.
Here’s my ranking of the rides.
8. Flight of the Hippogriff: A small ride that’s good for kids. Cute animatronic of the hippogriff.
7. Jurassic Park: The Ride: The details in the ride really make this ride memorable. It’s near the bottom because some of the animatronics seem stiff and i’m not a fan of the drop at the end. Still a good ride to cool down.
6. Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem: A fun improvement of the Jimmy Neutron Blast ride from Florida. This ride replaced Terminator 2 3d. So by closing down Cyberdyne systems the minions saved the future from Skynet 🙂
5. Studio Tour: An interesting tour around the studios.
4. Revenge of the Mummy: The version in Orlando used to scare me. The first time when I saw the part with the fake exit area shocked me because I actually thought it was over. This version however feels more smaller, shorter and less scary. It’s still fun to ride though.
3. The Simpsons Ride: Never rode Back to the Future the ride but I can see why people would be upset. I love the Krustyland map in the front of the ride.
2. Transformers: The Ride: Supposed to be the California equivalent of “The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man” (my favorite ride from Orlando and all of Universal).
1. Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey: The Wizardly World of Harry Potter is amazing to walk around and the centerpiece to this land is the best ride in the park. I love Harry Potter. I love the books, the movies, and I love this ride. The details around the queue are amazing. The ride itself is amazing. It really does feel like your flying around Hogwarts. Much like Spider Man and Transformers this ride combines a simulator ride with a dark ride giving it more a experience.
The next day we went home, at the airport the gate was celebrating its first flight straight to Portland. They gave out cake and gift baskets. I had a fun time in California and I hope to return soon.
