Universal Studios Hollywood

: Saturday, 12 May 2012 11:45; By Matt Sedlar

Transformers: The Ride opens this month at Universal Studios Hollywood, and I got the opportunity to check it out before the grand opening on May 25. Along the way I hit some attractions that have opened since my last visit and some old attractions that are likely to disappear over the next couple of years. With the addition of Transformers and a certain boy wizard (hopefully before 2016), the park is really turning up the heat on the SoCal theme park competition. It's still not quite as extensive as the Florida parks, but it's getting there.

Universal Studios Hollywood, "The Entertainment Capital of Universal City"

What?! Transformers: The Ride in 3-D doesn't open until May 25?! Good thing we have special lanyards.

Let's go here first.

This tunnel looks suspicious. Let's go into there!

The tunnel broke our tram. Ride's over.

After feeling 'meh' toward The Simpsons Ride last time I was here, it has grown on me a little.

Bad theme Uni ... Whatever. Sometimes you should just enjoy things and not complain.
Reality has a habit of intruding on theme parks because most of us live in it.

Down to the lower lot for Michael Bay: The Mural.

* Insert Wyld Stallyns guitar solo * Excellent!

These guys were walking around, looking cool.

Fact: Autobots like to set up their nests inside active military bases. This makes the military angry and confused, sometimes hungry for churros.

Oops. It's a good thing these guys don't read my blog.

A sneak peak at Transformers: The Ride: The Extended Queue: The Ride. I'm sure this will be open ALL summer.

Translation: You must be this tall to ride.

"Considering this is a war between two races of giant robots, we'll refer to you as 'meat shields.'"

The Allspark. This powers the Transformers ... or maybe it powers the gift shop.

The props in the queue are pretty cool. As someone who has never seen the movies, it does a great job of setting up the story.

Flashing red lights everywhere means something went wrong. Time to ride, meat shields!

Review: If you've been on The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man at Islands of Adventure or The Curse of DarKastle at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, you won't be surprised by Transformers' ride system. But the similarities end there. Transformers is a lot of fun and dare I say, technically superior. I can't get over the fact that the show building is two stories and the vehicles travel on two elevators. It can be difficult to tell when that actually occurs. The scenes blend together really well - so well that during the first ride-through I had a hard time telling the physical props from the digital ones. My one complaint is the lack of physical effects compared with similar attractions, like Hobgoblin's fire bomb in Spider-Man or the various sets in DarKastle. There is a Megatron "figure" at the end, but it's incredibly out of scale compared with his appearances during the ride and you might miss it if you're not paying attention. Otherwise, two thumbs up.

Let's go over here for a second.

Props from the Halloween Horror Night maze The Thing: Assimilation are on display in the lobby. I didn't see the Hollywood version, but the Orlando maze was cool.