Universal Hollywood and Running Universal TR - May 10-11

Neon Cactus

Old Run Disney Addict
Joined
Feb 10, 2016
I grew up in Southern California and was fortunate to go about once a year to Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knotts and Magic Mountain. Now that I live in Dallas, I generally focus on Disneyland or Knotts Halloween Haunt when I go back and it had been about 10 years since I'd been to Universal in Hollywood. I've been to Florida a couple of times since then, but it's even been a few years since I've been there. When I saw that Universal was doing a Minion themed 5k as an inaugural event for their Running Universal division, and it worked out that I was able to get cheap airfare and a free hotel night at the Universal Hilton, I was in.

I really knew very little about what to expect for the run. The map they gave was pretty basic and they didn't have packet pick up info until a couple of weeks prior to the race. The information they did give was that they would have packet pick up Thursday or Friday, but didn't list times for a while. I made sure to fly out Thursday night so I could get my packet. They ultimately had an option to pick the packets up the early morning of the race. So I flew out Thursday night and a friend picked me up at the airport. I was able to get a great deal on airfare into Burbank, which is much smaller than LA Airport and much closer to Universal. So we went to Tommy's, my favorite restaurant in LA. If you haven't been there before, it's a local chain of greasy chili burgers, but it's great. Several locations are open 24 hours and they're often packed at 2 or 3 in the morning. I got in close to 8 pm and really just needed a basic hotel fairly close to Universal, so I found a hotel in North Hollywood on Hotwire for a good price and my friend dropped me off there. He had to work the next day, so I was on my own for a while.

Friday morning, I took an Uber to the Universal Hilton around 7:30 AM. They had a room ready but wanted to charge me $25, so I just left my bag with them and went up to the park. The park didn't open until 10, and because I bought my ticket online, I could get their early entry, which was at 9:30. I wandered around the Citywalk shops and only a few were open for breakfast, so I went back to the park area about half an hour before we got in. Then it started to rain. I was so happy I was in sunny Southern California. And there wasn't a whole lot of cover in the area right outside the gates so quite a few people crammed into a very small space with an overhang right by the gates. And of course, once the park opened and we had an option to buy a poncho or have more cover, it stopped raining and the rest of the day was actually nice. Because it had been so long since my last visit, the only two rides (besides the tram tour) that had been there before were the Simpsons and the Water World show.

Universal Globe.jpg

I downloaded their app while we waited and I had this great plan made up to whip through the rides and shows...and then on their app I saw they staggered their rides, so that their three most popular rides didn't open until 11. So we got in the park and they escorted everyone to the Harry Potter area, which was the only area open until 10. So I quickly got on the Forbidden Journey ride. I'm usually very good with motion rides but forgot how dizzy that ride makes me. So of course when I got to the end, they asked if I wanted to stay on and ride it again. That would have wrecked my day, so I went instead to the Flight of the Hippogriff, basically a kiddie coaster but with a cool view of Hagrid's Hut.

Universal Hogwarts 2.jpg

Universal Hagrid.jpg

By then, it was close to 10, when the next group of attractions would be opening. They have a Kung Fu Panda motion theater, a film where the seats move with it. I got in there right as it opened.

Universal Panda.jpg

Close to that was the Walking Dead attraction. It's a walk through experience, very much like a Haunted House maze around Halloween, and was very well done. They do a very good job of distracting you with video screens while a live person sneaks up behind you.

Universal Walking Dead.jpg

The only other ride open at that time was the Simpsons ride, so I got in line for that and it was pretty long, so the other rides opened while I waited. Two of the rides, Transformers and The Mummy are in their lower backlot, so you take four very steep escalators to get there. Transformers is very similar to the Spiderman ride in Orlando, where the vehicles move while the action is on screens on the side. I haven't seen the movies, so I didn't really know the storyline, but it was still fun. The Mummy was great, and it had a pretty long line, but they had single rider, so I got on in under 10 minutes. It was my favorite ride in the park. After that I went back up the escalators and decided to do the tram tour. It's an hour long tour and is the flagship attraction of the Studios. They take you down to the backlot and past a lot of movie sets, and included is three different soundstages. One is King Kong, one is Earthquake and the third is the Fast and the Furious. Quite honestly, I was disappointed in the tour. There were a lot of experiences they no longer do (the collapsing bridge, the parting of the Red Sea and the Flash Flood) and both Kong and Fast and the Furious are similar in that they are all on giant movie screens on both sides of the tram. Earthquake has some good effects. The other thing I didn't like was that the tour always primarily featured a guide who talked about everything you were seeing. They still had the guide, but they didn't talk as much and they had a lot of scenes on video, which then distracted us from seeing the actual props and sets.

So I hadn't eaten yet, so when I got back, I had to get a Homer Simpson giant donut.

Universal donut.jpg

I then realized that if I ate the donut really fast, I could make the next Water World show, so I did just make it. The show is corny, but has some good stunts and effects. When I got out of there, the only things I hadn't done yet were two shows and the Despicable Me ride. That had a 40 minute wait and the two shows were on a break until late afternoon, so I went back to Hogsmeade and got some candy at Honeyduke's and some butterbeer and then took a break. A great thing about the Hilton is that it's about a five minute walk from the entrance. It's on a steep hill, so they have a tram, but I never saw the tram, so I never bothered to wait. I walked to the hotel, checked in and got my room and got my paperwork and walked back up the hill to check in for the race.

There was no expo for the race (then again it's only a 5k race) and it was very easy to check in. They were on the lower level of a parking garage right in the middle of City Walk. When I got there, there wasn't a wait to get my bib and then I just had to go to a separate station to get a Minion bag with my shirt. They also had a merchandise cart if you wanted to buy shirts, hats, jackets, water bottles or other souvenirs.

Universal swag.jpg

So I walked back to my room, dropped the stuff off, I'd been charging my phone while I went to check in and then went back to the park. I saw the Special Effects Show, which was better than I expected, and immediately after that and next door was the Animal Actors show, so I saw that. Despicable Me had been 40 minutes wait still, so I was going to pass, but then the last Water World show started and most of the ride lines emptied out and I walked on Despicable Me. So I was able to do all of the rides and shows, so after that, I just enjoyed seeing what characters were out. They had Krusty the Clown, the Mummy, Shaggy and Scooby Doo and the girls from Despicable Me.

Universal DM girls.jpg

I had some friends meeting me at City Walk, so I headed out. I passed Dracula near the main entrance and he was talking to two young boys wearing Disney shirts with Mickey on them and I heard him say so why do you have a rodent on your shirt? I went to dinner and had some beer at Karl Strauss. The Simpsons Donut and butterbeer were the only things I'd eaten all day, so my stomach was happy to have real food. We saw a few runners there but otherwise City Walk was very quiet compared to every other time I've been there. So I ended up calling it a night around 11, with a 3:30 wake up call looming.

NEXT: MINION 5K
 
PART 2: THE 5K

I woke up at 3:30 to get ready. They were opening the parking lots at 4 and then the corrals would open at 5 and placement was first come, first serve, not based on time. Since I had a very short walk to the start, I got there just before 5. I thought that Universal did a very good job on the organization. We went through the metal detectors but it was a very quick process and then we got into the corral area. I really couldn't see a lot outside our corral, but I think they had mentioned they were having three. I could see them directing people in and they seemed very organized and well planned. I talked to a few people and could hear a lot of conversations by people who had done RunDisney races. It was kind of funny because the people who hadn't done a Disney race would comment that it was so crowded and those of us who have would tell them that this isn't crowded. As it turned out I was in the first corral, which wound around several barricades. At first they didn't have a lot of pre-race entertainment and I was thinking that there's not much entertainment, but on the flip side, there's no Carissa to annoy everyone either. And right as I was thinking it, the perky announcers started talking. But from where we were, we still couldn't hear what they were saying most of the time. Finally, at 6, the race started. I was in the second wave and it was kind of nice as we moved up, instead of a red carpet, they had a yellow carpet for the minion theme. They started the second wave 7 minutes later and we were off.

Universal start.jpg t

I thought the course was excellent. At the very beginning, it was very narrow as we ran through the main entrance area but once we turned towards Despicable Me, it widened out. We wound through the entire upper lot of the park, through the Simpsons area, then into Hogsmeade and out past Kung Fu Panda and then Water World. Then we went backstage around the Water World theater and down to where the trams pick guests up and ran around the entire loop and then down the hill to the backlot. I noticed that they changed the course map. Originally, it had us going down and into their suburban street set (Wisteria Lane from Desperate Housewives). Instead, we didn't go down the street, but instead turned and went around Jaws Lake. The hill down to the lake was very steep and I was making great time. I wasn't worried about overall finishing time, since I was going to stop for characters when the lines weren't bad. but I was tracking my pace and where I'm usually about 12-13 minutes per mile now, I was just over 8 going down the hills. I ran those hard because I knew what goes down must come up later.

Universal Hogwarts.jpg

Universal Jaws.jpg

Once we got around the lake was the steepest uphill climb to the sets from the Grinch and then around the corner past the Bates Motel and further up the hill where we got to run by the Psycho House.

Universal Psycho.jpg

Right past the house was the War of the Worlds set.

Universal War of the Worlds.jpg

And from that point on it would be short flat stretches followed by more hills until we got up to Citywalk where they had the finish line. They had two water stops on the course and I counted five character stops, all with Despicable Me characters. They had Gru and his brothers, then the three girls (they had a long line so I didn't stop), then three different minions and I stopped for a couple of those.

Universal Minion 1.jpg

Universal Minion 2.jpg

I thought it was pretty well done. They were well organized at the start, and after the first part of the course, it never felt crowded to me. Getting around people (and people getting around me) was very easy. If anyone is interested in doing one of their races, I'd recommend it. It was great running through the park and the movie sets. I wish that they'd had more characters along the way, and include some that weren't from Despicable Me. They could have had Frankenstein and Dracula, Harry Potter characters (though they may have licensing issues there), the Blues Brothers, maybe some rarely seen characters like ET, that would have been cool. But I had a great time, met some fun people, there were a lot of great costumes. The results from Saturday show that there were 3,733 finishers, and they closed registration for Saturday, so they weren't trying to squeeze as many people as they could into it. Their next race is in November with a Jurassic Park theme, which could be amazing (and the Jurassic World ride will be open by that time). For me, if I lived where it was easy to get there, I'd sign up for it. But unless they have a completely unique course or something that makes it worth it for me, I probably won't come back and do that one. But again, I definitely recommend it.

My flight home was that afternoon. So I went back to the room, showered and rested a bit and got packed and then I took an Uber a couple of miles away to Bob's Big Boy, since that sounded better than eating at the airport. I was eating and checked something about my flight and noticed that it was now delayed an hour and a half, due to bad weather delaying the plane coming in. So I was thinking of how I could kill some time before going to the airport and it was only a little more than a mile to the Disney Studios. So I found a way to get Disney into my trip somehow.

Disney Studios.jpg

So I walked around the perimeter of the Studios lot and then took Uber to the airport and just made it home tonight. And now I'll probably spend the next couple of months debating whether to go back out for the Jurassic Park 5k.
 


Thanks. It was even more fun than I’d expected. I prefer Orlando for the theme parks, but for a 5k, Hollywood has the iconic movie props and sets. I just wish they had the space for longer runs.
 
I'm glad you wrote a race report! I was really curious how the first races at Universal would go and it sounds like it was a lot of fun! I think you should probably go back for the Jurassic Park 5K for the sake of a race report ;)
 


I'm glad you wrote a race report! I was really curious how the first races at Universal would go and it sounds like it was a lot of fun! I think you should probably go back for the Jurassic Park 5K for the sake of a race report ;)

Thanks! I've already looked at airfare. If I can talk some friends or family there into doing it, I might go back. If it's just me, probably not. But it's six months away, so there's plenty of time for me to talk myself into doing it. I do like the theme... I do like that Universal was asking a lot of people for contact information so they can get feedback from the race, so they seem very interested in improving the experience.
 
Thanks! I debated going out there for just a 5k, but I was glad I did. The course was great. One of my friends that lives near there was supposed to do it with me but "forgot" to register before it sold out. If he'd have done it, I was going to bring shots and make a video toasting you since you couldn't be there.
 
I heard him say so why do you have a rodent on your shirt?
While part of me understands why Universal does this, I also have to say that it does lessen my enjoyment of the experience there. Universal has a lot of IP that I really enjoy, but I've found some of the character interaction there to be off-putting because of moments like that.

Now in all fairness, the team members I interacted with at Universal Orlando loved my shirt that said "My Patronus is a Wookiee." That shirt was my way of showing that I truly enjoy both franchises.

Their next race is in November with a Jurassic Park theme, which could be amazing (and the Jurassic World ride will be open by that time).
I really liked your report. I didn't love the Minions theme enough to really want to make the logistics work for this race weekend, but Jurassic Park is a very different story.

While I know that they may change up the course again (and I really hope a Jurassic Park race will figure out a way to go by the Jurassic Park area), I like where this course went. I really want to find a way to make that race weekend work.

I am so glad you did this race! I wish I could have! But I am definitely interested in the Jurassic World one so maybe I will see you there!
Might see me there too. And possibly my little sister. She wore a Raw Threads "On Race Day I'm a Nervous Rex" shirt during the 2019 Marathon.
 
I really liked your report. I didn't love the Minions theme enough to really want to make the logistics work for this race weekend, but Jurassic Park is a very different story.

While I know that they may change up the course again (and I really hope a Jurassic Park race will figure out a way to go by the Jurassic Park area), I like where this course went. I really want to find a way to make that race weekend work.

Might see me there too. And possibly my little sister. She wore a Raw Threads "On Race Day I'm a Nervous Rex" shirt during the 2019 Marathon.

Thanks! I hope you do it and I think that if they started with the run through the upper part of the park, then through the tram area and down past the Jaws lake, if instead of going up the big hill to Psycho/War of the Worlds and ending at Citywalk, they could route by the city street sets and soundstages, they could find a way to end the race in the lower backlot by Jurassic World (and eliminate the big uphill climbs). They were doing a lot of construction down there. It would be great to end it in that area.
 

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