It’s been a week since our last Universal Studios Hollywood Update. Which was a rain-update with quite some interesting content, this update is the follow-up update thereof with lots of interesting progress! Here’s a more sunny Universal Studios Hollywood Update including Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Jurassic Park The Ride progress!

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Let’ start near the entrance and look at the progress being made with the new dining and retail center. The pavement in front of it (still behind the walls) was being worked on today. In addition, they’re still adding detail to the front buildings. It’s cool to notice that this front part of the new complex pays homage to an older (now gone) Universal Studios visitor center. Roofing on some parts of the complex continues. Now more colors and trees are being added to the other side, it’s looking absolutely phenomenal. I am not a big fan of all these new restaurants and shops (rather than rides the park needs), but I must say this has already exceeded my expectations. It looks wonderful really! Also on the Upper Lot, and dining related, is the fact that Krusty Burger has reopened after some fix-ups inside. After an interesting winter so far, with the Super Silly Funland water play ground being closed for a while, it has now reopened. It can still be pretty dang cold out, so I find it interesting they reopened it. Next to the Universal Plaza, like MANY parts of the park, heaters and canvases will be found at the seating areas surrounding it, for the possible rains and cold. Be aware, Universal Studios Hollywood has changed their rain-check policy, so they’ll do everything to keep the guests warm, because tickets to return some other time (rain checks) are no longer given. It’s still not very warm out, but now all Grinchmas things have been removed from the plaza, the fountains in the plaza are turned on again as well.

On the side of Universal Plaza there are a bunch of digital kiosks, they’ve been covered most of the time, and were most of the day. Though this morning it seemed that the park was working on them/ testing them. For anyone interested they run on Windows 😛 These may be kiosks regarding Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Speaking of Wizarding World of Harry Potter, I wanted to get some ‘no rain’ shots this week from the Shrek 4D queue, but a wall has now been placed surrounding the Wizarding World, so I wasn’t quite able to get the shots I wished for! Nonetheless here’s yet another look at the pushed back walls and Hogwarts towering over Hogsmeade, this time with blue skies. The green-house is getting more and more complete with the addition of plants hanging from the ceilings, in case you have yet to figure what’s inside the green-house; it’s basically a bunch of switchbacks housing the line for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey! Though some serious awesome landscaping has been done to this hill in the past 2 years to accommodate the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and a small forest to go with it, landscaping touch-ups continued today near the rock-work. The outdoor area behind the Three Broomsticks is being cleared and some construction workers were making some final touches. OH LOOK, it’s HOGWARTS (again) 😀 From the Shrek 4D line I managed to squeak in this picture in the small gap between the wall and the roof, just to the right of which The Flight of the Hippogriff was testing again.

Let’s move to the Studio Tour where all traces of Grinchmas have been erased! The skywalk to the escalators to the trams has received back its promotional signs promoting the park’s (as well as the Studio Tour’s) attractions! On the Studio Tour, something I touched on a few weeks back, the activity within Stage 55 (former Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift) continues. Another tram (in a different position than last time) is positioned in the ‘Stage’, I’m very curious what we’re going to see here. There’s too much activity for it to be nothing. Hopefully we’ll see some sort of additional attraction coming to the Studio Tour soon!

Moving to the Lower Lot, there’s still some Grinchmas lighting to be taken off the buildings! But way more interestingly… Jurassic Park the Ride’s refurbishment is quite a big one as we mentioned last week. As I was coming down the star way for a ride on the Mummy, I noticed that a large drop-track piece was being transported towards the back of the Revenge of the Mummy building. There it stood parked for a while. The piece was either BRAND new, or it was freshly repainted. (After what they did to the Incredible Hulk, this may very well be a new piece of track). Next to the ride’s show building a lot of metal prep work went on. Same counts for in the lagoon where construction workers were welding on pieces of side-friction pieces. There’s an immense amount of activity going on around the ride. On the backside of the ride, near the sound stages (Sadly do not have a picture) there were containers filled with trash, and what seemed to be vegetation. Hopefully this means that there’s a significant upgrade in theming as well, as we all know Jurassic Park- The Ride NEEDS! Here’s some more new/refurbished track. These are the tracks of the splashdown lagoon, where the magnetic breaks are located. You may notice that the color is a color they had before last year’s ‘murky upgrade’, and are bright dark green! See the pic below for what it looked like up to March 2015, it seems they’re going back to this color!

That was it for this Universal Studios Hollywood Update! Thank you for checking it out! DON’T FORGET THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER IS OPENING APRIL 7TH!

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