Common Studios Hollywood is simply as well-known for its rides and theme park lands based mostly on leisure powerhouses like Super Nintendo World and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter as it’s for its blockbuster motion pictures. That is due to one iconic attraction: the world-famous Studio Tour.
The Studio Tour turns 60 this yr, and the Southern California theme park is marking the event with limited-time experiences, merchandise and meals choices.
Because the Studio Tour celebrates 60 years, this fan-favorite attraction that’s virtually synonymous with the park itself will host particular leisure throughout the spring and summer season months. It can commemorate this milestone anniversary by mixing the attraction’s nostalgia with a glimpse of what is to come back; it is set to be an iconic peek backstage of movie-making magic.
Historical past of the Studio Tour at Common Studios Hollywood
Since opening the attraction in 1964, Universal Studios Hollywood has taken greater than 200 million visitors behind the scenes of actual, working TV and movie productions for an inside take a look at how film magic is made.
The favored manufacturing spot, then Common Metropolis Studios, invited visitors to tour its movie set on board “Glamor Trams.” In its inaugural yr, the trams took visitors on two-hour journeys by way of the studio’s numerous movie units. (The Bates’ home from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film “Psycho” was a preferred cease.)
The tour additionally revealed moviemaking secrets and techniques with a particular results make-up demonstration, costume show and stunt efficiency. Common repeatedly added staged occasions alongside the tour because it launched new movies and developed new particular results.
By the late Nineteen Seventies, visitors might expertise the parting of the Purple Sea from “The Ten Commandments,” an encounter with a runaway prepare and an assault from none apart from Bruce, the shark from “Jaws.”
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Because the tour grew in dimension and recognition, Common Studios Hollywood added new sights, staking its declare as a full-fledged theme park. After debuting reveals just like the Star Trek Journey and meet-and-greets with He-Man and the Transformers within the Nineteen Eighties, Common noticed a serious enlargement within the early Nineties.
Common Studios Hollywood opened its first conventional theme park trip, E.T. Journey, in 1991. It added extra sights like Jurassic Park — The Experience, play areas for teenagers and stunt reveals based mostly on “Waterworld” and “The Terminator” by way of the following decade.
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This era included the opening of Common Studios Florida (now Common Orlando Resort) in 1990. The Florida park drew inspiration from many staged results in Hollywood’s Studio Tour, together with stand-alone rides based mostly on movies like “Jaws” and “King Kong.”
Sixty years later, the Studio Tour takes visitors on an hourlong tour by way of well-known units from motion pictures like “Again to the Future” and “Warfare of the Worlds.” All this comes alongside different iconic particular results demonstrations which were thrilling visitors for many years — together with that freakishly lifelike run-in with Bruce the shark.
There are additionally moments impressed by newer movies, like a high-speed automobile chase with the celebs of “The Quick and the Livid” and, extra not too long ago, a go to to the Jupiter’s Declare set from “Nope.” Some days, you might even catch a glimpse of a dwell manufacturing.
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Common is usually touted because the theme park the place you possibly can “trip the flicks,” and no trip embodies that sentiment greater than Common Studios Hollywood’s Studio Tour.
Studio Tour anniversary celebration
The Studio Tour’s limited-time celebration will run from April 26 by way of Aug. 11, and visitors who trip the attraction may have the prospect to expertise it like by no means earlier than.
Though Common is changing its fleet to fashionable electric-powered trams, a number of red-and-white stripe trams with ruffle awnings (harking back to the unique Glamor Tram design) will make the rounds by way of the tour.
Company also can step off the trams onto one of many tour’s iconic film units, the place they will see a completely restored unique Glamor Tram and larger-than-life photograph alternatives. These embrace the first-ever approved duplicate of the unique Hollywood signal, a large King Kong and the park’s unique hanging “Jaws” shark.
Even on board the tram, there will probably be loads of new (and previous) issues to see.
In Courthouse Sq., the filming location for the well-known clock tower scene in “Again to the Future,” visitors will drive previous an unique time machine automobile and see Doc Brown strolling across the space.
Common can also be including props to the tour, together with a large Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur show used to advertise the “Jurassic World” movies.
Common may even convey again Studio Tour moments from years previous, together with the “Earthquake—The Massive One” attraction. Debuting in 1989, this attraction simulated a sensible 8.3 magnitude earthquake; the 2024 model may have new know-how and aesthetics.
Different nostalgic moments embrace the short-term return of the 1976 Runaway Practice and clips depicting former Studio Tour sights on the tram’s screens.
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Common Studios Hollywood can also be providing unique merchandise and themed meals and beverage gadgets throughout the celebration.
Company can rock retro Common Studios gear and buy a Glamor Tram-shaped popcorn bucket. A number of of the park’s eating areas may have specialty menu gadgets, as nicely, together with retro dishes that hark again to the lunches served on the lot in its early years.
If you wish to strive all of them, Common is providing a sixtieth anniversary Eating Move that can permit you to select six menu gadgets: two entrees and 4 snacks, sides, desserts or drinks at choose areas.
Backside line
The Studio Tour has modified an awesome deal throughout its 60-year run. Nevertheless, at its core, it’s nonetheless a singular and pioneering look into how motion pictures are made.
Studying a few of these insider secrets and techniques, like how Common can create an earthquake over and over each day or make only a few buildings appear to be a New York Metropolis road, does not make watching motion pictures any much less magical.
In truth, it makes them extra magical when you possibly can see the creativity and technical know-how that goes into constructing the units and creating the results you see on the display.
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