Every attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood

The Studio Tour is what Universal Studios Hollywood is. It started in 1964 as a way of selling tickets to a working film studio, the theme park grew up around it, and it remains the one thing here that no other park on earth can copy. The route runs off the visitor side of the property and out onto the actual backlot — the standing exterior sets that productions still shoot on, with crew trucks and equipment carts parked where they happened to be that morning.

King Kong 360 3-D opened in 2010 on the site of the old King Kong Encounter, which burned down in the 2008 backlot fire. It is not a separate attraction — you cannot queue for it, and there is no way to ride it without riding the Studio Tour. The tram drives into a purpose-built tunnel, the doors close, and you are inside a Peter Jackson-directed sequence projected onto enormous curved screens on both sides at once.

Earthquake: The Big One has been on the Studio Tour since 1989, built around the 1974 disaster film. The tram pulls into a full-scale San Francisco BART station set and stops. What happens next is entirely practical — no screens, no projection, just hydraulics, water, fire and a great deal of steel.

Fast & Furious – Supercharged was added to the Studio Tour in 2015 as its finale, in a purpose-built tunnel near the end of the route. Cast members from the films appear on screens, a chase breaks out, and the tram is nominally caught in the middle of it.

Despicable Me Minion Mayhem opened at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2014, in the building that previously held Terminator 2: 3-D. The premise is a training program in Gru's laboratory that turns the audience into Minions, which is a sensible piece of design — it gives a screen simulator a reason to throw you around.

Super Silly Fun Land sits alongside Despicable Me Minion Mayhem and is styled as the seaside carnival from the first film. The main draw is a wet play area — jets, buckets, sprayers and slides that fire on a cycle — plus a small spinning ride, the Silly Swirly, that lifts and circles on an arm.

The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash opened in 2021 and is the only attraction built at Universal Studios Hollywood in recent memory that is not built around a screen. It is a trackless dark ride through a stylized New York apartment building and the streets around it, populated with a very large number of animated figures.

The DreamWorks Theatre opened in 2018 in the building that held Shrek 4-D for the previous fifteen years. It is a purpose-built effects theater — projection across a wide screen, in-seat motion, wind, water and scent — running a DreamWorks Animation property, most recently a Kung Fu Panda story.

WaterWorld has been running at Universal Studios Hollywood since 1995, which is remarkable given that the film it is based on is chiefly remembered as an expensive failure. The show outlived that reputation entirely. It is a live stunt production in a purpose-built lagoon amphitheater, with performers doing real work: high falls, fire burns, jet ski chases and hand-to-hand fighting, in front of a set that is destroyed and rebuilt daily.

Animal Actors is a live show in a covered outdoor stadium on the Upper Lot, built around animals trained for film and television work. Dogs, birds and a rotating cast of others run through routines with their handlers, framed around how animal performances are actually achieved on set.

The Simpsons Ride opened in 2008 in the building that housed Back to the Future: The Ride, reusing the same style of attraction: a simulator vehicle facing an enormous domed screen, with a motion base doing the work. The premise sends the family through Krustyland, a theme park run by Krusty the Clown, while Sideshow Bob tries to kill them.

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey opened with the Wizarding World here in April 2016 and is mechanically identical to the Orlando original. The ride system is a bench mounted on a robotic arm, which itself rides a track — meaning the vehicle can pitch, roll and turn to face any direction while moving through the building. When it was new it was the most sophisticated ride system in the world, and it still moves in ways nothing else does.

Flight of the Hippogriff is the Wizarding World's junior coaster, tucked behind Hogsmeade village next to a very good recreation of Hagrid's hut with Buckbeak standing outside it. It is a small steel coaster with one lift, a handful of banked turns and a modest drop, and it lasts about a minute from dispatch to brake run.

Ollivanders is a wand shop with a performance attached. Groups of roughly twenty-five are admitted into a dim room stacked floor to ceiling with wand boxes, a wandmaker appears, and one person from the group is chosen to be matched with a wand. Several attempts go badly — drawers fly open, wind blows, a shelf collapses — and then one works.

Scattered around the Hogsmeade village are roughly twenty marked spots where an interactive wand triggers a physical effect: a fountain runs, a shop window lights, a puppet dances, an umbrella opens. Bronze medallions in the pavement mark each location and show the wand movement required.

Mario Kart: Bowser's Challenge opened with Super Nintendo World in February 2023 and is the only ride in the land. You wear a visor clipped to a cap, sit in a four-seat kart on a trackless-feeling guided path, steer with a wheel and press a trigger to throw shells at targets projected into your view. The physical sets are built around you and the augmented reality layer adds karts, characters, shells and coins on top of them.

The Power-Up Band is a wristband sold in Super Nintendo World that pairs with the Universal app and turns the whole land into a game. Punching question blocks collects digital coins. Three Key Challenges hidden around the courtyard — puzzle mechanisms built into the scenery rather than screens — each yield a key. Collect all three and you unlock a final confrontation with Bowser Jr.

Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach appear in the Super Nintendo World courtyard on a rotating schedule, meeting guests against the backdrop of the land rather than in a dedicated building. The costumes are among the better full-head character suits in operation and the performers are well drilled at working with small children.

Jurassic World — The Ride is the 2019 retheme of Jurassic Park: The Ride, which opened on the Lower Lot in 1996 and was for years the most expensive attraction ever built. The bones of the original are intact: a boat drifts through a dinosaur preserve, something goes wrong, and the escape route is an 84-foot drop through the dark. The 2019 work updated the scenery, the animatronics and the story to the newer films.

Revenge of the Mummy opened on the Lower Lot in 2004 and is the only genuine roller coaster at Universal Studios Hollywood. It is an indoor, fully enclosed, electromagnetically launched coaster with a themed first act: you move slowly through Egyptian tomb sets, an animatronic Imhotep threatens the car, and then the launch takes the whole thing from a walking pace to full speed in about two seconds.

Transformers: The Ride-3D opened on the Lower Lot in 2012, using the same ride system as Spider-Man at Islands of Adventure: a motion-base vehicle on a track, moving between enormous 3D screens with practical sets, effects and lighting between them. The premise is that you are riding an autonomous vehicle helping the Autobots protect an artifact from Megatron.

The Raptor Encounter is a character meeting on the Lower Lot near Jurassic World — The Ride, and it is the most convincing piece of live performance in the park after WaterWorld. The raptor is a full-body puppet worked by performers inside and out, with handlers in character managing the interaction as if the animal were genuinely dangerous.

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee appear on a rotating schedule outside the Transformers ride on the Lower Lot. The costumes are large, articulated and genuinely well built, with working lights and processed voices, and the performers stay in character throughout.

The Starway is a chain of four long outdoor escalators connecting the Upper Lot to the Lower Lot down the hillside. It is listed here because it behaves like an attraction in every way that matters to planning: it has a queue at peak times, it takes real minutes, and it is the reason people fail to see half of this park.