LOWER LOT - TRAM TOUR

Let's begin our visit with the historic staple of the Universal Studios Tour, the famed Tram Tour which offers guests a serpentine journey through backlot sets and stages plus some elaborate effects shows created just for the tour. Each tram is hosted by a live Tour Guide who, after much training and rehearsing, have memorized the history of the studio and tour in order to provide a fun-and-fact-filled spiel to guests.

At least the good ones, like our pal above, accomplish their intended task. Some Guides use the job as a way to get 'discovered' and their spiels come off more like auditions than insightful tour narration, but the best Guides skillfully mix their enthusiasm and vocal talents with useful, interesting information to exploit the best aspects of the tour. As you can see, Guides sit facing guests in the first tram car, as well as in front of a small control panel and monitor, enabling on-camera Guides to entertain guests personally, and punctuate the tour with many historic movie clips as examples of tour special effects inspired by actual films. The Tour video even includes several taped introductions and greetings from such Hollywood luminaries as Ron Howard, Vince Vaughn, producer Brian Grazer and director Steven Spielberg.

Often you won't get seated in the front car, and since each tram is at least four cars long, you may never see your Guide again once you board (from a 2001 tour, this particular Guide is barely visible here, seated in the first row, far right of the front car), so these in-tram video monitors allow a handy view of your Guide to personalize the experience a tad more, lest the spiel sound like recorded dictation by a disembodied voice as it did for many years.

I'll classify the Tram Tour as a Lower Lot attraction, since most of its action takes place on the lower backlot, but the loading area for the Tour actually stands at mid-level on the east side of the hill now -- it's moved a lot over the years! The loading area, not the hill. Since you still need to descend an escalator to queue up for it, so we'll call it Lower Lot and just move on.

One small caveat: it's rather difficult to present an "official" order to the Tour attractions, since its path and available sights vary from day to day. Depending on which sets and streets are being filmed in productions, portions of the backlot tour may be unavailable or inaccessible for guest viewing. But I'll try to stick to the typical order usually followed, as it was on my most recent trip, hitting as many of the highlights as I can.

Now get your cameras ready, because you never know what famous site or piece of movie magic awaits around the next corner!

© 2002 scott weitz