Our Top 4 rides at Universal Studios

In fourth place (for us but number one for Mum), the Secret Life of Pets ride. Review by Isla.

The Secret Life of Pets ride has a sweet storyline where you’ve been turned into a street dog who gets rescued and adopted out.

For this ride the queue is as cool, if not cooler, than the ride itself. You walk through a bunch of different New York apartments looking at the sneaky things that pets do when their owners are out, like using an electric beater as a butt massager!

The ride begins when you climb inside a box and slowly make your way through alleyways of New York seeing the crazy shenanigans of street dogs and cats. The ride has beautiful design with amazing, motorized animals that are hilarious.

A fun part is where you get groomed and pampered before your new forever family takes you home. This part of the ride has video screens combined with real life water and hot air. You get sprayed and then blasted with hot air, bringing the whole experience to life.

I give this ride 3.56 as it had cool set design but was pretty slow paced and not the most exciting. This was Mum’s favourite ride simply because it was the only one that didn’t give her motion sickness!

In third place, the Simpsons ride. Review by Isla

Step inside Springfield! Lining both sides of the road are all the stores from the Simpsons – Moe’s Tavern, Lard Lad’s Donuts, and Krusty Burger. These places looked cool, but the food was disgusting! We got a hot dog that was mushy, had no flavour and didn’t even come with tomato sauce or mustard. We paid $20NZ for it but I wouldn’t pay a single penny to get it again. Bleh!!

Luckily what the hotdog lacked in flavour and edibility, the ride made up for in clever jokes and exciting thrills. Dad was laughing at the top of his lungs from the start of the queue to the end of the ride.

The ride is a motion simulator ride, with video screens and a vehicle that moves around with water, air, smell special effects (yummy popcorn). You think you are going to go on a normal rollercoaster ride but then Sideshow Bob appears and starts the ride by flipping a switch from “thrilling” to “killing”. An insane ride follows.

I give this ride 4.32. The queue gets a bit boring and I prefer rides that have some motorized effects not just video.

In second place, the Harry Potter ride. Review by Leo

The Harry Potter ride is a magical experience where even when you are in the queue you feel like you’re at wizarding school along with the greatest wizards from the Harry Potter franchise. You are walking though Hogwarts and around you the paintings move and are talking to each other and even to you! It was a 15 minute wait to go on the ride, but it felt like 5 mins of fun!

The ride is one of the scariest there, but if you’re at least 7 years old, you’ll be fine.

The ride is a roller coaster through a combination of virtual reality screens and real life mechanical effects. In the virtual reality you are flying with Harry around Hogwarts, and even go onto the Quidditch pitch with him to chase the snitch.

In the real life parts, there are a bunch of dementors who leap out at you, spiders that dangle around you and the whomping willow that tries to crush you with its branches. Watch out for the jump scares!

I give this ride 4.78 stars because it’s amazing but there are some parts that are more scary than fun.  

And in first place, the Super Mario ride. Review by Leo

Wow!! Woah!! Wow!! Wow!!

I was speechless.

When you walk through the pipe from the studio into Super Mario world you feel like you’ve been sucked into the game. Everything is loud, the colours, the music, the fans dressed up as characters.

You are surrounded by all the cool parts of the game – red toadstools, snapping plants, spinning coins, turtles, bosses and in the centre is Bowser’s castle. The classic theme song plays around you, along with all the sound effects from the game.

It’s loud and energetic, but not too crazy.

Since this world and its ride are really new, there was a big queue. But like Harry Potter, the queue felt fast. The line is like a ride in itself. You walk through Bowsers castle and see all his secret plans to take down Mario. There was a whole storyline to the queue.

The ride is like being inside a 3D game. Four people sit inside a Mario kart with Augmented Reality googles attached to a cool red Mario cap. We each had a steering wheel with buttons for shooting bosses and collecting coins. Bowser attacks you as your travel around the track trying to kill baddies and collect points and ammo.

I give this ride a perfect score of 5 stars as I’m a big gamer and this ride brought gaming into reality.