Good thing for season passes

Have you been to Universal Studios Hollywood lately? I think the last time I was there the Backdraft attraction was the new 'it' thing to se. Man have things changed! The first thing you can't help but notice is the price... YIKES! We took the kids here in the summer, shortly after Chris' arrival. We thought that it would be a good way to spend time with the family and have some fun. What we weren't planning on doing was spending almost $300 just to get in the front gate.

I think it was something like $65/person for a daily pass and $70 for a yearly pass. This price was the same for all of us, even 6 year old Raye (wth?). Oh well, we bit the bullet and paid to get in. The plan was to come back as often as possible to get our money's worth (we suck at 'getting our money's worth').

So the Sunday before Raye's birthday we decided to head back up to Universal for some more "fun in-da sun." We decided to skip a day of sporting games and have some good, old fashion family fun.

Boy did it feel good to just whip out those season passes, flash them to the teeny-boppers that work part-time over the weekend, look at the suckers who were standing in line to pay, and cruise into the park, without having to touch our wallet/purse. [Hmphf, take that stupid poo-poo heads that raised the price of admission]
First up... Nickeloden Zone This is where all the kids seem to forget that this place is not a water park. All around us were kids that flung off their clothes (but kept on their shoes) while they ran around to get soaking wet by a giant rocket that gushed water out of it's butt! My kids also participated in this madness, so much so that we couldn't find them for a few minutes and we were getting ready to head into the rocket madness to look for them (lucky for us they appeared - right as the count down began).
Needless to say we were having a grand ol' time waiting around, with the other parents, for the kids to finish having 'self fun,' and for them to want to have 'family fun' (hence the reason for this damn trip)

After the kids dried off, we decided to take a casual walk around the park. This "casual" walk turned into slight chaos when we found out that the park closed at 6:00 pm. Did I forget to mention that this trip wasn't really planned out thoroughly and resulted in us leaving Torrance at around 3:30 pm? Oh well, it was free right? [*shrugging shoulders*] That's all that mattered. To our surprise most of what we wanted to see was closed/closing; we decided to pick 1 ride/attraction and GO FOR IT! I mean, we are going to be coming back, so we can see the rest later. Right?!

Jurrasic Park the ride is what we chose; now all we had to do is find it. 4 flights of escalators riding; 1 quick picture for the hell of it, and 1 crazy "guess that showtune song" music interlude later and we were at the ride. I sat out the ride because 'someone had to watch Chris' while the others made a mad dash into the line. A few minutes later, everyone was standing in front of me because the two youngest kids (that would be Ryann and Raye) were too afraid to get on the ride. The oldest kid (this would be Clif) still wanted to go and had that 'look' on his face. We finally convinced Ryann to ride with him, and off they went (again) like two freed birds from a cage.
While waiting for my two oldest kids to emerge from the mountain (where they'll spring out and then drop into the water) Raye and Chris had a "kodak" moment It's so wonderful to watch these two together. Chris really loves his big brother, and big brother loves to show little brother all the things that 'he'll be able to do as soon as he is 6.' (yay!) Finally off of the ride, wet and looking like they wanted to say "one more time mommy, please?", it was now 5:50. All of the other attractions were (almost) simultaneously closing down, so off we went (again) on the 4-escalator ride journey (again listening to the same showtune contest)
After leaving the park we headed over to EB Games to play around (some more) and fool the kids into thinking we were actually going to buy some Wii games. Little did they know Clif had already picked up some games for Raye's birthday. We're so cruel. Dinner at Buca di Beppo and then it was time to drive home and get ready for school the next day.

Bye USH, see you next time (and by next time I mean some time before the end of the year) :)

(who the hell do they get to wear these costumes anyway? it was like 100 degrees outside)