After being closed after over a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Universal Studios Hollywood was finally able to reopen its doors starting April 16, 2021, with limited capacity and strict state guidelines. You can find Universal’s safety guidelines here.
Arriving at the Park
After parking in the Jurassic Parking structure ($28 for regular and $50 for in front of the park), an employee took everybody’s temperature who was entering through the CityWalk. Now, they say that admission is for California residents only, but other than entering my address when purchasing tickets, they did not ask to see ID or anything like that. Do with that information what you will.
Being at limited capacity was a godsend for a smaller amusement park-like Universal. We literally walked onto every ride beside the Backlot Tour and Jurassic World. The tour wait was about one hour. Jurassic World was another story: Initially, the wait was around 3 hours. I spoke to an employee working the attraction and they told me that it was temporarily not running in order for them to add another ride vehicle to get more people on, as they can only fill every other row in the boat, depending on the size of the party. This limited ride capacity holds true for every other ride in the park as well. We returned towards closing (park hours are 10 AM – 6 PM) after it resumed operation, and waited in line for around 90 minutes.
Safety Precautions
Universal did a stellar job of keeping up with their safety guidelines. Employees were extremely vigilant about ensuring guests maintained distance in and out of ride queues, which had floor markers measuring about 8-10 feet, which I assume is to account for larger-sized parties. Eating and drinking, including just lifting your mask to take a sip of water, is only permitted in designated dining areas, of which there are plenty. Right before getting on each attraction, a team member is there to greet each guest with mandatory hand sanitizer before boarding. Maneuvering around the park was a breeze as well, as they had divided walkways with “keep right” signs posted to ensure people did not walk into each other. Overall, it felt very safe and well managed.
General Preparedness
There were a small handful of slight hiccups, although nothing too terrible. For certain high-speed rides such as Revenge of the Mummy – the Ride, guests are required to store their bags, purses, etc. in lockers just within the queue. These lockers are free to use, ranging from 90 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the ride. The interesting part is that lockers are opened via fingerprint scanner for security, with employees forming lines and giving out hand sanitizer before receiving your locker number. After getting off of the ride, you had to get back in line to get sanitized again, which was nice. However, using a fingerprint scanner felt counter-productive in terms of maintaining their safety guidelines.
We did also have an issue with the mandatory lockers for the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey attraction. There were no issues storing our bags and opening the locker, but upon returning to the locker area we found that every locker in that particular section was sealed shut. A team member was there to explain the situation, that they did not know what was causing the issue but they were working on it. Eventually, what I assume to be their I.T. guy came and tried resolving the issue as well. No luck. They were able to manually open the locker with our possessions in it, and we moved on before I knew what the resolution was.
Overall, it felt as though opening might have been a bit rushed, with small oversights, lack of quality assurance, and possibly forgetting to update software after being closed for over a year being the biggest things holding the park back. I say “biggest things”, but these issues are definitely minor in the grand scheme of the whole park; worth mentioning, and worth overlooking. Hopefully, as time goes on, they fix the locker issue and figure out a better system than the fingerprint scanner.
Missing Attractions
Despite all rides being open, most stage shows and performances were not. This includes:
- Play areas for small children
- Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem
- DreamWorks Theater Featuring Kung Fu Panda
- Water World
The Animal Actors attraction was still open, however, due to limited hours of operation, we, unfortunately, had to skip it.
At the end of the day, going back to Universal Studios Hollywood felt safe and secure, despite questionable uses for some of their amenities. We are fully vaccinated, but for those who aren’t and are wanting to go, Universal does a good job of making sure that your safety is their number one priority. I am interested to see how they plan to reopen certain attractions and plan for future events. So far, there has been no news about events like Halloween Horror Nights, but I imagine they have something cooking.
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