Universal Studios Hollywood

A tram rolls past a quiet New England lake. Suddenly the water boils, and a great white shark lunges at the shore. Nobody screams for long, because everyone knows the shark. This is Universal Studios Hollywood, the place where a working film studio decided to let the audience inside. Around you, the park hums with coasters and film scores.

The studio came first, long before the rides. Film pioneer Carl Laemmle opened Universal City in 1915 on a former ranch in the hills above Los Angeles. It was a complete city built for making movies, with its own streets, stages, and workshops. The opening in 1915 was a public spectacle, with thousands of guests invited to watch.

Laemmle understood that people wanted to watch movies being made. In the silent era, he sold tickets and let visitors sit on bleachers beside the sets. Visitors in those years paid about twenty-five cents, and studio lore says they could buy fresh eggs from the lot's chicken ranch. Sound filming ended that experiment, since crowds make noise. For decades the gates stayed closed to the public.

In 1964 the doors opened again. The new Studio Tour carried visitors through the backlot in candy-striped trams, past sets and soundstages where real productions were underway. The tour was a hit, and over time a full theme park grew around it, ride by ride.

The Studio Tour is still the heart of the park. The tram winds for about an hour through a real, working backlot. You pass the courthouse square from Back to the Future. You climb the hill to the Bates Motel and the brooding house from Psycho. You roll through a crashed airliner set built for War of the Worlds. Guides point out which stages held which productions, from classic monsters to modern television.

The tour has its stunts too. Jaws attacks on cue. A desert flash flood roars down a hillside beside the tram. In King Kong 360, added in 2010, the tram stops inside a tunnel of giant wrap-around screens, and a dinosaur battle shakes the cars. The finale borrows from the Fast and Furious films at freeway speed. Drivers time every effect, and the tour guides narrate live, joking with each tramload.

Around the tour, the park splits into two levels. The Upper Lot holds most of the themed lands. The Lower Lot sits far below, reached by a long series of escalators called the Starway. The drop between them is roughly the height of a skyscraper, a reminder that this park is built on real hills.

In 2016 The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened here. Hogwarts castle rises above a snow-capped village of crooked chimneys. Butterbeer foams in the shops. Inside the castle, the Forbidden Journey ride swoops through the books' most famous scenes. The village looks lifted straight from the films because the same design team shaped both.

In 2023 the park opened Super Nintendo World. The land is a video game turned physical, with spinning coin blocks, question-mark boxes, and a Mario Kart ride that mixes real track with augmented reality goggles. Wristbands let visitors punch blocks and collect digital coins, competing with strangers all day. Families compete for coin counts, and the queue itself feels like a game level.

Older favorites carry their own history. The WaterWorld stunt show has run since 1995, with jet skis, fireballs, and a seaplane crash, and it has outlived the film that inspired it. Jurassic World: The Ride sends boats past living-looking dinosaurs before a steep final splashdown.

This is still a working studio. Soundstages line the hill below the park, and filming happens on the backlot most weeks. The tram sometimes detours around an active shoot. That blend is the park's real magic trick. The rides are fiction, but the factory around them is real. Universal's classic monsters were born on these stages, from Dracula to Frankenstein's creature, both filmed here in 1931.

A day here runs on strategy. Crowds build by late morning, so many visitors ride the Studio Tour first and save the shops for the afternoon. Single-rider lines shorten waits on the biggest rides. Next door, the CityWalk promenade offers dinner and neon after the park closes.

More than a century has passed since Carl Laemmle sold his first studio tickets. The cameras changed. The audience never did. People still want to stand where the illusion is made and see the seams. Ride the tram, watch the shark rise, and notice your own smile. Knowing the trick has never once ruined it.