The World-Famous Studio Tour

What it is

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.

You pass Courthouse Square from Back to the Future, the New York and European street sets, the Bates Motel and the Psycho house on the hill, the Jaws lagoon, the crashed 747 fuselage built for War of the Worlds, and the Wisteria Lane houses from Desperate Housewives. The guide talks the whole way, the on-tram screens cut to clips of what was shot where, and the whole thing has the pleasant quality of a very good behind-the-scenes documentary you happen to be sitting inside.

Built into the route are three purpose-made attractions: the Earthquake: The Big One subway set, the flash flood, and King Kong 360 3-D, a Peter Jackson-directed tunnel sequence with 3D screens on both sides of the tram. They are the parts of the tour that read as theme park rather than studio, and they are also the parts that startle small children.

The backlot is a real production facility, which means the tour is not identical twice. Sets get struck and rebuilt, routes get diverted around shoots, and what you see depends on what is filming. That is a feature. It is also the reason a second ride on a different visit is worth doing.

What riding it is actually like

You board a long articulated tram from a covered platform near the entrance, sitting on bench rows facing forward with screens overhead. The guide sets the tone in the first two minutes, and a good one makes the whole hour. The tram noses out of the visitor area and onto the lot proper, past soundstages with call sheets taped to the doors.

The middle third is the backlot itself, and this is the part people remember. Street sets that look like Manhattan from one angle and plywood from the other. A European village with the same facades used in twenty films you have seen. The flash flood, which fills a street with several thousand gallons of water and drains it in under a minute, close enough that you feel the air move.

The set pieces punctuate it. The subway station goes dark, a train derails, the ceiling opens and a tanker truck comes through it. King Kong 360 3-D puts the tram inside a tunnel between two enormous screens with the vehicle rocking, and it is genuinely disorienting. The Fast & Furious finale closes the tour with a projected chase along both walls.

Sit on the left-hand side of the tram if you can choose. It gets the better angle on the street sets and the Bates Motel. The front cars have the guide's live commentary at its clearest; the rear cars sway more on the turns.

Is The World-Famous Studio Tour scary?

The tram itself is gentle throughout, but three sequences arrive without warning and startle children badly: the subway earthquake, the flash flood, and King Kong 360 3-D in a fully dark tunnel with the tram pitching. None of them can be opted out of once the tour is moving. Children who handle a loud cinema handle this; children who do not will want the aisle seat and a hand to hold.

Scores are editorial, on a 1–5 scale, judged against what frightens a typical four- to seven-year-old rather than an adult.

Accessibility

Designated trams carry wheelchair-accessible cars that load from a separate position — ask at the boarding area rather than joining the main queue, and expect to wait for the right tram rather than the next one. The tour is narrated throughout, which makes it one of the most rewarding attractions here for blind and low-vision guests.

Full Universal Studios Hollywood accessibility guide →