We’ve just got 5 days left at Universal Studios for their Lunar New Year offering for 2018 and we have to say it’s a must do for locals and theme park fans. Universal Studios Hollywood was one of the first theme park locations to celebrate the Lunar New Year at its park with a seasonal offering taking advantage of the large amount of Chinese tourists that visit the park each year. Since then, other parks such as Disney and SeaWorld had started offering something similar, and while those events have grown over the years, the Universal original had for the most park remained scaled back with limited offerings, until this year.
This year the event was completely re-imagined to now feature a stage with live entertainment, additional meet and greets, an area where you can learn to draw you favorite Kung Fu Panda characters and Mr. Ping’s Noodle Stand where you can interact with Mr. Ping, as well as order authentic Chinese food, another first for this year.
The new show features a few new entertainment offerings including the tale of the first Lunar New Year where small children can take roles to help tell the story, and the larger scale Kung Fu Training Academy, which is very similar to the Jedi Training Academy found just down the 5 freeway.
Mr. Ping’s Noodle Stand is by far the most popular of the new offerings feature an interactive puppet of Mr. Ping (similar to Donkey near Shrek 4D). The meet and greet area also has a Chinese food stand on the side. It’s an awesome new offering and the actors portraying Mr. Ping are spot on with the voice and personality.
The food was pretty good, I recommend the Egg Rolls and Pot Stickers though they were hit and miss with the group I was with. I enjoyed them though.
If you want to sit back and learn to draw a Kung Fu Panda character that opportunity exists with this very talented artist.
The minions have also made their Lunar New Year debut wearing Chinese wardrobes. Minions are always a popular photo op at the park.
Finally it wouldn’t be Lunar New Year without Mandarin Speaking Megatron, one of a few small things to survive from the prior incarnation of Lunar New Year at Universal Hollywood. It’s always entertaining to watch.
That does it for this look at Lunar New Year, will you be visiting this year? Let us know in the comments below.
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