California Dreamin' - Part 3: USH and VIP Tour

July 1, 2026, 5:11 PM

Our next 2 days would be spent at Universal Studios Hollywood. The park was running a buy one day get a second day free promotion, and with the potential of F&FHD being open when we locked our plans a couple of months ago, having the second day was a bit of insurance in case the coaster happened to open on the last day of our trip. Ultimately, F&F never opened to guests while we were there, but we did see it test plenty of times and observed team members and maintenance walking the tracks and doing what appeared to be safety drills. While we were spending 2 days at the park, we still wanted to splurge and decided to upgrade our first day to the park’s VIP Tour Experience. We’ve done various behind the scenes, special events (HHN), and other tours at both WDW and Universal Orlando, but this is the first time we’ve done a full day VIP Tour during normal park hours.

The USH VIP Tour is a bit expensive (starts at $359/day), but for comparison, the cost of the VIP Tour and a second day of regular admission to USH, which was free with the promotion, cost us less than the 2 days of park hopping admissions with Lightning Lane – Multipass at Disneyland that we would use at the end of the week. No there’s not nearly as many attractions and things to do at USH as there are at Disneyland and DCA, but I had to do a bit of a double take when we looked at the prices side by side. I know we weren’t purchasing the cheapest tickets for Disneyland, but with a private event limiting Disneyland’s hours on our first day at the park and a holiday (Juneteenth) on our second planned day, we felt park hopping and LL were necessary upgrades at Disneyland. Nonetheless, the VIP Tour was a bit of a splurge for us, but was not as expensive as we expected, and overall was a great experience.

Guests with VIP Tour tickets receive complimentary valet parking and are instructed to arrive 30 minutes prior to their tour time to enjoy breakfast in the VIP lounge just inside the park gate. The breakfast included various pastries, yogurt, fruit, and breakfast sandwiches along with coffee and juices. The VIP lounge features photos, memorabilia, and awards from Universal’s history, and is a comfortable place to relax and prepare for your day. As you enter the lounge, you are assigned and introduced to your tour guide for the day who will lead you through the park. Like most VIP theme park tours, this one includes exclusive access to the park’s rides and attractions, but the USH tour also includes a more in-depth tour of the actual studio beyond what is offered on the tram ride. For the studio tour, VIP guests ride in smaller trollies that can carry about 15-20 guests, and while the trollies follow a similar path to the traditional tram tour, there are various stops along the way that make this experience more like a traditional Hollywood studio tour than the tram. On our tour, we stopped to walk through an empty soundstage, got to walk around a couple of backlot locations, including the Hill Valley set, and the studio’s prop warehouse, which was the only location where photography was prohibited. As with the normal tram tour, the VIP tour around the studio can be highly variable, and will often stop at a fully dressed set, but given the time of year and most television productions wrapped up for the year, the closest we got to a fully dressed set was the outside of exterior of the soundstage where America’s Got Talent was preparing to film. The prop warehouse was definitely the highlight for me of the stops we made, but it was also pretty interesting to go through the various effects scenes with a little trolly versus the massive tram – all the motion effects work the same for the smaller vehicles as they work with the standard tram. When you consider how much other studios charge for tours, just this part of USH’s VIP tour helps to justify the cost.

Then there’s lunch, which is timed about halfway through the day at the Moulin Rouge, where we were taunted by test runs of F&F. The food during lunch was amazing, and spans a wide range of cuisines with spaghetti, lobster rolls, sushi, carved beef, charcuterie, canned soft drinks, spa water, juices, coffee, and more. The only drawback is that guests only get about 45 minutes for lunch, which is probably enough to grab 2 plates of entrees and a plate of desserts. Also, as guests enjoy their lunch, characters walk around and interact with diners. We saw Doc Brown (Back to the Future) and a Jurassic Park trainer with a baby velociraptor.

Aside from the studio tour portion, guests are also led onto many of the attractions around the park. A few of the rides we were brought through the Express line while a few others we went through an alternate entrance to expedite getting on and off the ride. Of the attractions, the only ones we didn’t see as part of the VIP tour were Kung Fu Panda and WaterWorld, though I think tours that start later in the day drop one or more of the rides in favor of preferred seating at the stunt show. However, it’s advantageous to schedule your tour as early as possible, because after your tour is over, your VIP Tour lanyard becomes an unlimited Express pass for the remainder of the day. I thought that would be a pretty valuable perk of the VIP Tour, but we quickly figured out that we could ride Mario Cart (consistently the longest line in the park) even faster through the single rider line than you can through the Express line because single riders skip the 2 pre-show rooms. I cannot recommend the VIP Tour any more, because I do think it’s a great value even if you’ve been to USH recently.

For us, it had been 6 years since our last visit to the park and Super Nintendo World was completely new for us (haven’t been to Epic or USJ yet), in addition to Kung Fu Panda and Secret Life of Pets. I’m not a fan of upcharge attractions in theme park, but resigned ourselves to buying a Power-Up Band. We also bought a Harry Potter wand long ago, but feel that upcharge item has more style and can be shared across multiple guests (at least the old generation wands can). The Power-Up band is linked to an individual, so all the activities and games associated with the band are linked to that person’s account. Also, while guests not wearing Power-Up bands can participate in the various games and activities, but they can’t score points and when you hit bricks, they make a low-pitched, negative sound effect instead of the happy, coin sound. I also don’t feel the Power-Up bands are very attraction or have any utility like the wands, which at least are an attractive display piece. Nonetheless, we spent a lot of time exploring and playing all the games and performing all the activities within the land, and it was fun. All three of us are a bit OCD, so completing various badges and tasks was exciting and drive us to try to improve our scores and find hidden items throughout the land. Universal clearly knows what they’re doing and have tapped into gamers’ desire to constantly “level up” is an excellent revenue generator.

Speaking of gaming, the main attraction in Super Nintendo World is Mario Cart. I’ve often professed my love for shooting gallery-style dark rides, and this one from Universal was a ton of fun. I know a lot of people complain that this attraction doesn’t feel dynamic or like a real Mario Cart race, but I would respectfully disagree. Sure, you’re cart is crawling along, but the melding of AR images in the cleverly-designed headset (we never had a single technical issue with these, which I found surprising) and screen images and real props did an excellent job of creating the illusion of more dynamic movement. My only technical qualm with the system was that you had to look down to see your score and how many shells you had since those displays are positioned near the well on the AR screen. Also, we had a lot of difficulty getting our Power-Up Band to synchronize with the car so we could get credit for our score (had <30% success rate). While we were waiting <10 minutes to get on the ride through the single rider line (when it was available – it would randomly close throughout both days we were riding), if you were going through the standby line (rarely dropped below 60 minutes) or even the Express Line (took @15 minutes to get on the ride), it’s frustrating to not have your score recorded in your app. Universal posts a live scoreboard in the land as well as in the app, so if they’re actively encouraging guests to be competitive, the technology has to perform flawlessly or guests will just give up, undermining the biggest appeal of the land.

Aside from the competitive aspect, the land is spectacular with an overall look that is straight out of an NES Console. I could not believe how true to life everything looked as well as all the motion and kinetic energy created by the many animatronics everywhere. On a brilliant cloudless Southern California day, the bright blue sky almost felt unreal as the background to the look of the land. Consider me impressed with UC’s design work, and curious to see how much USJ and Epic’s designs differ. I guess my one critique with the design is that it is very small and with such high walls surrounding the land, it could feel a bit claustrophobic and stuffy, particularly on a warm summer afternoon. On our second day at USH, we decided to eat lunch at the Toadstool Café. I would say this highly themed eatery is probably a 1-and-done, but everything we had was tasty. My wife and son split a Bowser’s Fireball Challenge, which is a giant meatball (1 pound) with spicy tomato sauce and a Bowser-shape pastry. I was quite surprised with the spice on this dish, and guests should not ignore the menu noting the spiciness. The portion size was perfect for sharing, though I do think it might have been nice to have some veggies or pasta as an included side since the plate is just a giant ball of meat covered in sauce and the pastry – not a very balanced meal IMHO. I ordered the Super Mushroom Soup, which comes in a souvenir mushroom-shaped bowl. The soup is topped with cute crackers with images of Toadstool on them to maintain the theme, and is an excellent dish full of umami flavors that I enjoy. My one complaint with this dish is that Universal forces you to buy the bowl if you want the soup (they also serve tomato soup). It’s believed that this decision was made because guests were helping themselves to these cute serving dishes, so to avoid shrinkage, the park added the cost of the bowl to these menu items. Another issue is that you have to separate the lid from the bowl in order for it to fit un the new skinny ride lockers. For dessert, I ordered the Mt. Beanpole cake, which was really good with just a hint of matcha flavor in the creamy mousse layered between rectangles of cake. The presentation of this dessert is also cute with the layers stair stepping up to a Mario flag-topped toothpick on the highest level. As with most in-park themed restaurants, you’re paying for theming as much as you are for a meal, so the prices are pretty high, but as a 1-time meal, I didn’t have too much of a problem spending nearly $100 for 3 dishes and a boba-pearl drink. Prices aren’t keeping people away as the restaurant was packed both days we were in the park, and despite an army of staff delivering items around the dining room, it took almost 15 minutes after we were seated until we received our order. That meant that we saw 2 full loops of the show that plays out on screens around the dining room – not sure if that’s by design or if guests should only see one loop of the show. However, unless Universal changes up the menu, I probably wouldn’t eat here again, but Toadstool Café is clearly a hit with guests.

While we spent most of our time outside of our VIP Tour in Super Nintendo Land, we still made sure to experience all of the attractions around the park. We only rode Secret Life of Pets once during our VIP Tour and we thought this dark ride was very well done. However, for an omnimover attraction aimed at the entire family, the capacity is extremely poor. I think if Universal ever chooses to clone this attraction in Florida, they would seriously need to consider modifying the ride system to increase the number of guests in each box or double the number of vehicles on the track. We also experienced Kung Fu Panda, which I feel is a downgrade to Shrek 4-D, and probably why UC went another direction at USF when they retired the motion theater.

While everything else in the park is most unchanged since our last visit, I’d be remiss if I did not mention WaterWorld, which is STILL one of the best live theme park shows in the world. This stunt show never fails to impress me, and any visit to this park is not complete without it. Because we did the VIP Tour, we probably didn’t need a second day at USH, but it was nice to take time to explore Super Nintendo Land more deeply and to ride the normal studio tram. When Fast and Furious Hollywood Drift finally opens, USH will be even more worthy of a multi-day visit.

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