Quiet on set; we’re ready to roll! With the Holidays squarely behind us, we dropped in to see how Universal Studios Hollywood is tackling the switch over to the Lunar New Year celebration, which will take over Universal Plaza soon. Let’s take a tour of the park to see what’s new and good.
Toothsome Chocolate Emporium & Savory Feast Kitchen finally saw work begin last week with the addition of these construction walls. Now, we’re seeing more life inside as construction activity begins.
The Universal Studio Store in CityWalk has replaced their holiday front display wrapping with this bright yellow wrap.
It features the studio logo and several park icons, as well as general filmmaking icons.
The Starbucks in CityWalk is now closed. The Blaze Pizza next door is also closed. The windows are blacked out, suggesting that this is a permanent closure.
Peeking within, we can see that much of the interior of Blaze is being ripped out. Whether this is for a refurbishment or removal is yet unclear.
With holiday crowds ebbing, the vaccine card checkpoint gates have been dismantled and removed. According to a Team Member, the park will only be requiring proof of vaccination on the busiest days, mostly weekend days.
Inside the park, we found these journals from some of the Wizarding World’s brightest at the Universal Studios Store. Newt Scamander’s journal is a beautiful leatherbound book, monogrammed for its original owner.
The Death Eater journal is black all over with silver accents and a super cool metal dark mark emblem.
We found a wave of Lunar New Year merchandise featuring Po, the Kung Fu Panda at the Universal Studios Store. You can see everything we found right here.
Alongside the other merchandise featuring Po, this cotton candy was on display. There was a whole collection of animated character cotton candy tubs at the Animation Studio Store across the way.
The root beer cotton candy sounds like a treat.
Chocolate banana cotton candy sounds like a punishment for your mouth.
On the outside of the Animation Studio Store, we found a meeting of the two festivals. The holiday garlands haven’t been taken down yet, but the Lunar New Year posters have already gone up.
In Universal Plaza, the entrances are blocked off for the removal of the Grinchmas décor and the installation of the cherry blossom tree for the Lunar New Year festival.
In the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, we found a pair of purses from Danielle Nicole celebrating the Hogwarts houses Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
And no trip to the Wizarding World is complete without a visit to Hogwarts itself. We went on Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and noticed a new feature we haven’t covered before.
After exiting the attraction, there is now an on-ride photo booth where guests can take home a memento of their Forbidden Journey.
A Team Member will search the recent photos and select a rider’s photo to show them. They are not viewable without a one-on-one chat with the Team Member, and the only working monitor is the center console.
The photo comes in a neat digital frame with Harry Potter chasing the Golden Snitch. It is available for $19.99 as a digital purchase or, for a few dollars extra, a physical printed copy.
Heading down to the Lower Lot, we get a great peek at the construction progress of Super Nintendo World. Not a lot has changed since our last check-up, but we wanted to show you where it is now.
Revenge of the Mummy — The Ride is now closed for a refurbishment. It happens to coincide with the closure and refurbishment of its sister ride in Universal Studios Florida.
The last of the Universal Studios holiday merchandise is still available at 30% off in the Universal Studios Store Lower Lot.
Thanks for riding along with us on our photo report from Universal Studios Hollywood. That’s a wrap!
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