"The beautiful souls are they that are Universal, open, and ready for all things" --Montaigne

Nate and I went to California around New Year's in 2001, and we had a wonderful time at Universal Studios doing the tour and riding all the rides (I especially liked Jurassic Park). However, we learned very quickly this is not a theme park for young kids. It was very loud and overwhelming for Sofia. She hated the studio tour (we were all disappointed by the many changes toward it being one long commercial for Universal instead of letting you in on the movie magic); she started screaming on the earthquake set and pretty much didn't stop until the end of the tour. Of course, she started up again soon thereafter, but by that time, I was ready to cry too! We ended up leaving after only three and a half hours, but I was so relieved to get away from the noise (both Sofia crying and the auditory bombardment) that I didn't mind.

Despite all this, there were a few highlights for all of us. Ryan is a huge fan of Curious George (note the CG outfit and stuffed George). I didn't realize that Universal Studios had completely overhauled one of its sections (the Nickelodeon Blast Zone) to be the new Adventures of Curious George playground. We got our first sign of CG in the parking lot. I was so excited I had to get a picture!

The elevators also had pictures from the movie, so we thought we'd take a couple more. I particularly like the picture where Ryan put CG on his shoulders to be like the Man in the Yellow Hat.

It was Ryan's idea to meet the Simpsons (they were characters--and who doesn't want to meet a character?). However, they nearly did him in for characters for the rest of the trip. Homer pretended to throttle a guy in the family taking pictures in front of us, which intimidated Ryan. Bart completely did him in by blowing a raspberry at him as we passed. I didn't realize until I looked at the picture later that Bart was trying to pat Ryan on the back to make him feel better; I just knew that Ryan was crying and totally upset. (Of course, Marge smoothed everything over, at least temporarily, by giving him a Simpsons poster.)

Ryan was really scared to meet CG after the above event, but eventually he kissed his cheek. And I was so excited that Ryan was able to meet one of his "friends."


Then it was on to the CG playground. He had such a good time running around and playing on the slides. We even found a cool handcranked trolley that Ryan really enjoyed riding on.
Our favorite place was the ball room. It was filled with foam balls that you could do all sorts of things with. There were air guns that you could use to try and shoot balls through targets (or at people!), vacuums that would suck balls through hoses and deposit them all over the place (including in buckets that people were running around with).

Our favorite project in the ball room was filling a giant hopper that was near the ceiling and that would dump all over when it got full enough. We scrambled all over the room filling up buckets and bringing them back to the tube that was sucking up the balls. Mom broke a sweat, and Ryan kept squealing with excitement. When the balls tipped out, we were well showered (and the picture that Mom got seemed well worth all the effort).


I'm looking forward to going back there when the kids are older. Of course, by that time, it might seem even louder to me!