Universal Studios Hollywood history?

[Hobo_n]

I just came back from Universal Studios Hollywood and had a great time. But as I was walking through the place I wondered how it came to be. The park has a very abnormal layout because of where it was built. I was wondering how the idea of the theme park part of the park came to be, how the Starway escalator system was built , what legal issues came up about guest safty , how does the park effect filming, and what is the size of the park (in acres).

[figment1986]

of course the reason for the mega esculator is they needed to expand the park and built backdraft and jurrassic park on the lower lot... since they ran out of room on the upper lot... there is some site somewhere.. but i forgot.. i learned so much about universal from it.

[PirateMickey]

Try...


www.theatrecrafts.com/studiotour/ush/index.html


It's a cool site.

Enjoy!

[william]

Thanks Piratemicky, its a cool site.

[Athlonacon]

Wow, I am impressed by the scope of that site. I've only been to Universal Studios a few times: 1989, 1995 and 2003 and everything I remember is covered under that site. Because my visits there are so spread apart, the entire park changes dramatically every time I visit.

Personally, I like the film lots and movie studio aspect of the park better than the rides. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE their rides, some of them (like T2: 3D) even surpass Disney's recent efforts, but if I wanted to go to ride some rides, I'd go to Disneyland or Knott's.

It seems that the tram tour has become a "side show", barely worthy of a bullet-point in the list of attractions. I think this is really sad because for decades people used to go there ONLY because of the amazing tour. If Florida and Japan want to add tons of rides by all means please do so, but the Hollywood part is not really supposed to be packed with rides in my opinion. I mean, this is a REAL working movie studio, isn't that attraction enough to go to Universal. I guess without the rides Universal is no better than Paramount's studio tour, but I really feel that Universal Hollywood is losing its working-studio appeal...especially since there's been so many fake studios in the past 15 years like Disney-MGM, DCA's backlot and Universal Orlando.