I'm now a Universal Hollywood passholder!
What started as a two day ticket (straddling a tour of the Walt Disney Studios) was upgraded to an AP when a return trip in October became official. The first day (Monday) had the added fun of being a heat advisory day; not so much today, although it was still plenty hot.
Mario Kart: this ride was a blast! I didn't watch a single thing beforehand (and I'm glad I didn't), so the only thing I knew was that the ride was slow and something something AR. I had hoped to buy Early Entry to SNW to hopefully get on the ride with a shorter wait...alas, I waited too long and it was sold out for both days I visited, so my actual time in the land ended up being a bit limited. The queue is great, and even though I was a single rider I wanted to do it properly in the main line first. I would recommend this to everyone at least once, because it's a fairly engaging queue, the single rider line bypasses the bulk of it, and the SRL doesn't really get a good explanation on what the heck you're even supposed to do on the ride. I was expecting it to be confusing how everything worked/fit together, but I actually feel like they explained it in a way so that it was shockingly intuitive. I was able to do the attraction three times (twice in the SRL) over the two days, and I think it's one of the best attractions in SoCal.
SNW: I got a power up band and was able to get some coins, but it's so crowded in the actual land that it didn't seem practical to do any of the mini games. I got in line for one of them, but it was moving so slowly that I actually left halfway through, feeling like there was no way the game would be good enough to have felt worth it to me (especially knowing that recovering ankle only has stamina for so long before problems would begin). The land is fun but chaotic and there's no room to move. The Cafe filled for the day 20 minutes in both days. It's a fun land, nostalgic, with a great anchor-but it makes Hogsmeade feel roomy and makes you wonder if it's fine, actually, that GE is as big as it is.
The setup of USH when combined with the location of Nintendo also leads to the most comical running of the bulls I've ever seen. Because everyone needs to get down to the lower lot on the same two down escalators (x4), it's not a run or a sprint: it's a slow trudge, sometimes even shunted into overflow Transformers queue (complete with preshow video playing!) before even entering the land.
Other things done/thoughts/etc:
-Jurassic World's SRL is in a bad spot. For some reason the queue is designed so that the regular line is the last one you encounter, so some confused families get into the singles line because they see others entering it and assume that it's the regular line.
-USH Mummy is probably my second favorite coaster station (DL's Space is #1). I don't even know that I can fully explain/justify why, but I do love the slide in/out dividers and the atmosphere. AC helps too (especially on Monday, during the heat advisory).
-USH had a ton of water bottle filling stations, which was much appreciated over the past two days.
-Studio Tour: For not having Earthquake running, I had a blast on this both times I did it. We didn't go through the Nope set either time, but so far as I know we did everything else. FATF though? It's not just bad, it's LONG. I didn't remember that there were THREE different stations within the show building. I suspect my first Tour spieler was over FATF too, because she made several announcements to the effect of "we know it's hot, so if anyone feels like they need to skip FATF, please pull the cord and let us know." Regrettably, no one did.
-Transformers: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
-Maybe this has been ongoing and I just didn't notice it, but there was a fair amount of signs and mentions from the Studio Tour spieler to upgrade your ticket to an AP. Not bad necessarily, but a bit jarring because I wasn't expecting it.
-Worst experience of the trip was 100% Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. I entered a line advertised as a 25 minute wait at 8:30 PM. It ended up taking more than an hour as the line simply crawled. There were a fair amount of Express people, but I figured they had to only be running one theater because of how long it was taking-only to find out later that they were, in fact, running both theaters. When I finally got to the first preshow, I discovered that they were only loading two rows out of six. I wondered if it was staffing or a mechanical issue, but no-there were tons of staff members running around in the actual attraction room, and every single motion simulator appeared to function flawlessly. It's not just Disney doing nonsensical, guest unfriendly operational choices!
-I was surprised to see that the Harry Potter nighttime projection show had been updated from last year (I want to say that was the last time I saw the show?) and now includes drones! Their projections have come a long way from the relatively basic shows they did a few years ago.
-The Special Effects Show was sorely missed on such hot days at the park (incidentally, there are construction walls blocking off the area, but they're not big enough to disguise the empty husk of the old theater).
-Restaurants: Toothsome was fine. I still love the chocolate appetizer bread, but both the entree (Chicken Bercy) and Shake (Strawberry Cheesecake) were a bit wanting-not in portion size, but in quality. Antojito's Birria tacos similarly were just so-so. The standout was Vivo-the Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza was shockingly good, and I say that as someone who isn't normally an arugula person.
-Missed rides: Simpsons (indifferent), SLOP (wanted to ride, but the timing/wait balance never worked out), Forbidden Journey (too nauseating), kiddie rides. By contrast, Kung Fu Panda, normally an easy skip, became essential because it offered blissful AC (the actual film mostly has you just watching things happen to the movie characters, so it's hard to get invested in what's happening).
This really should be brought to Universal Studios Hollywood. Even though it still needs tweaking, and the app features still aren’t up and running, the guests are loving this thing. Lines were long all day without any advertising; all based on word of mouth and the very eye-catching facade. And the line still moves fast: even though the wait was often posted at 40-45 minutes, I rode when the queue was packed and only waited about 15 minutes.