On January 5th – 7th, my family and I took a trip down to Los Angeles Universal Studios to celebrate my 18th birthday. I’ve never been to Universal Studios, only City Walk. Universal added a new ride to the park named Super Nintendo World, remaking the video game Mario Kart as a ride at Universal Studios. The first ride I went on was Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash. It was a cute ride, all you did was take a short walk through to the ride, looking at all the pets around each house like how it is in the movie and later on would sit down and continue the ride. Think of it as the Little Mermaid at Disneyland.

The next ride was Despicable Me Minion Mayhem and it was pretty cool actually. The ride had a large screen in front of you, and you are sitting down and experiencing like a VR experience but only with motion. The other rides that were a lot similar as the Despicable Me Minion Mayhem was Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, The Simpsons Ride, and Transformers: The Ride – 3D. Out of all of them I really liked the Transformers one because it was a ride, it was 3D, and it was a lot longer then the other two motion VR rides. Transformers was a ride that you wore 3D glasses and would go against Decepticon. You’ll battle with him and Optimus Prime would come to help you take down Decepticon. It had motion, it was a moveable ride and had a 3D experience.

One of the Harry Potter rides, Flight of the Hippogriff, was one of my least favorite rides. It was slow and very short. So we walked out of Harry Potter land or whatever it’s called and walked to The Simpsons Ride. The ride we went next was one of my friend’s favorite rides called Revenge of the Mummy – The Ride. While waiting in the lines it shows warning signs about motion sickness, the speed, and going backwards. The funny thing is that my parents didn’t know anything about seeing warning signs and not even the ride going backwards. My sister and I decided to distract them to not see any signs and waited till we went on the ride. The ride in the beginning was slow and showing a lot of skeleton like mummies throughout the ride till it gets darker and darker. The darkest part was the part when the ride would hit 45 mph (what the warning sign would say) and it was all dark but only neon lit mummies were above were the only thing that was lit. The ending was hitting a sharp stop and fog blows out and makes you lose your sight and takes you backwards the same speed it took you forward. Scared the living life out of my parents but it was worth the laugh.

The other rides we went on were Jurassic Park and Mario Kart. Jurassic Park is a water ride that takes you around to see animatronic dinosaurs and hit a big drop at the ending. I would recommend going to the back if you don’t want to get wet and *don’t go later at night, it gets so cold.* The ending of the ride is hitting a deep drop with two big dinosaurs appearing. Mario Kart took the longest to wait and was about 2 hours to go through the whole line. It was worth the wait because it was the longest ride at Universal Studios except for the studio tour where it takes you around each movie filmed there. Mario Kart is about a five minute long ride and it’s just like the game where you race with other players. You’ll have to beat Bowser who is the main antagonist in the ride to win the game. Once you walk through the lines and enter the entry way to wait to get on the ride you’ll receive a Mario hat. It’s used to wear a VR headset that you use throughout the game. You go against someone just like how it is in the game and shoot shells to hit other players. You’ll need to collect 100+ coins in order to win and reach the ending of the game. In the headset there would be red arrows pointing left or right to control the kart. You and the other three players in your kart would all have to turn their heads to the right arrow that it is pointing too and if you don’t your kart won’t move. The faster you turn your head to the right direction the faster your kart would speed up and get closer to the finish line. It was a super cool ride they added. There were a lot of people in Nintendo World because it’s new and it was just released last year in February 17th, 2023 and a lot of kids love Mario. I went again this past weekend (January 21st) for a few hours and went back on The Mummy, Mario Kart, and Jurassic Park. I loved my little birthday trip at Universal which also became my first time experiencing Universal Studios. I can’t wait to go back during the summer.