In December of 1991, my family spent a day at Universal Studios Hollywood. The visit was part of a week-long adventure that included two days in Disneyland, one at Knott's Berry Farm, and one in Long Beach, where the Spruce Goose and Queen Mary were parked.
Knott's was fine -- I'd been there before, at age three, and my least favorite memory of it this time around was riding a loop-de-loop roller coaster. Never again!
Disneyland was amazing, of course. Toontown was a few years away, but they did have Roger Rabbit running around the park.
The Queen Mary was... memorable. My parents booked a haunted tour (but forgot to mention that detail to me) so about halfway through, the doors slammed behind our group and the guide was like, "Oh no, we're trapped!" I'm convinced it's all real because no one tells me otherwise, so I'm silently freaking out. Then our tour guide tells us that an angry ghost child can only be placated if she gets her beloved doll back. We find the doll, and my very own brother volunteers to do the appeasing. My recollection is that he chucked the cursed doll into the ship's swimming pool, which was currently empty of water but definitely (now that I think about it) home to an overworked fog machine.
The ghost got her doll, the fog lifted, the doors opened, and we all got out of the tour alive.
And then there was Universal Studios...
My only foreknowledge of Universal Studios came straight out of Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #5: California Girls! I loved the BSC, so if they went to Universal, I must go there also.
Even though my family was only at the park for a day, I have so many memories of the place, it feels like they couldn't have all happened on the same visit.
My #1 attraction? Fievel's Playland. There aren't enough photos on the internet of this place to do it justice, and my dad took zero pictures of it. It almost feels like a legendary place that possibly didn't even exist. Oh, but it did....
Fievel's Playland was a playground that was built to look like a junkyard. Everything was giant (8-foot tall books, 5-foot teacups, etc.) so kids could get a sense of being mouse-sized. There were tubes, tunnels, bridges, slides (including one shaped like a banana peel and a tube slide that must've had at least 3 curves... it felt endless.) There was also a volcano (maybe 6 feet high?) you could climb up and then GO DOWN INSIDE -- and from the bottom of that, you crawled through a tunnel and ended up somewhere else.
My parents eventually had to drag us away from there.
My dad took my photo with the cutouts from the Back to the Future cartoon. (I loved the movies, but thought the cartoon was eh.)
We rode the E.T. Ride. You gave them your name beforehand, and then during your ride, E.T. would refer to you by name. (Yee-haw.)
We went on the backlot tour. I saw a bunch of sets from movies and shows I hadn't yet seen at that point.
We watched the Adventures of Conan show in a theater. It featured ripped actors covered in body oil and skimpy armor. I loved the show so much I watched it twice.
We attended a Special Effects show. They had half a Delorean on rigging and needed two kids to portray Marty and Jennifer. I about died of happiness when I got to be "Jennifer." I went on stage and got into this contraption. It rocked back and forth and the windshield wipers went back and forth and holy moly, dream come true.
And then there was Candid Camera. This revival of the classic show aired in syndication from 1991 to 1992. It was hosted by Dom DeLuise and Eva LaRue and was filmed at Universal Studios Hollywood. Even though it had probably been on the air for two or three months by that point, I had never seen it, and I had no idea who Dom DeLuise was (although if I'd been told he did one of the voices in An American Tail, I might have been mildly impressed.)
The original Candid Camera aired throughout the 1960s and 1970s. For years it ran as a standalone show. It also garnered multiple TV specials. Candid Camera was one of, if not the first, "hidden camera" TV shows, and it no doubt paved the way for similar fare in the future. In fact, at this very same time, FOX had its own ripoff -- Totally Hidden Video -- which aired from 1989 to 1992.
Candid Camera's gimmick (in case you are not aware) was to engineer a scenario where ordinary people were put in awkward, goofy, or improbable situations. Just when the person was about to lose their mind, someone nearby would point to the camera and say: "Smile, you're on Candid Camera!" Then, supposedly, everyone would have a good laugh, because... haha, none of this is real!
All those segments were filmed ahead of the taping of the show we got to watch, however. Between 1991 and 1992, visitors to Universal Studios could go watch Dom DeLuise and Eva LaRue present those clips. The audience was also put there so the crew could film their reactions (laughter, the crew hoped) to the clips.
So my parents saw they were doing this taping, and since the original show had been part of their childhoods, they thought this sounded like fun, and we got in line. We were towards the front of the queue, and we had quite a while to wait. Then some people from the show came down the line and asked if my brother and I wanted to be a part of something just for kids. We'd get to sit in special seats and do... something. We weren't sure what we were in for, but sure! Sign us up!
A little while later, the people came back and got me and my brother, plus half a dozen other kids who they'd talked to, and took us inside. They had us sit in the front rows. Then they let everyone else in. My dad managed to come over and snap this photo before he and my mom took their seats in a different section....
Once everyone was seated, I remember Dom DeLuise coming out on stage. He might have told some jokes or something. But Eva LaRue didn't come out right away and the crew was ready to start filming. And I remember Eva yelling from backstage about how she wasn't ready, and the crew was like "ooookay...." Eventually, Eva came out, and the cameras started rolling.
They filmed Dom and Eva introducing those pre-filmed prank segments, and then we (the audience) got to watch some of said segments on the TV screens (seen in the photo below.) One of the sequences in this episode featured a young Denise Richards. She played a beautiful college student who flirts with a bunch of unsuspecting guys in a library.
Then came the moment when the kids were needed. The crew brought maybe 10-12 of us on stage and placed us around Dom DeLuise, who was sitting on a couch. Then they mulled things over and decided they needed a few more kids to come up, so they recruited another 5 or 6.
Next we were coached on what to say/do in our scene. Dom would say: "Have you ever heard the expression 'Don't cry over spilled milk?" and we were supposed to say "Yes!" Then he had another line -- after which we were supposed to all chuckle appreciatively.
They had us practice this three or four times. Then they fired up the cameras and started recording. We only did one or two takes. The crew reviewed the tape and seemed satisfied. They thanked us and sent us back to our seats.
When we got home from our trip, my parents told everyone they knew about the show. And of course they wanted to get it on tape when it aired, except they had no idea when it might do so. We started taping the show every night. It used to air around dinnertime, and since we were an eat-around-the-table kind of family, we almost never watched the show. We'd hit record, check once or twice to see if it was our episode, and then, if it wasn't, stop recording.
This went on for weeks and weeks until finally, one day, we forgot to hit record. The show had been on for about five or ten minutes when our cousins called us and said: "We think we just saw you on Candid Camera!" Sure enough, it was our episode! We hit record. We missed the beginning of that episode, but thankfully we didn't miss our "spilled milk" segment...
So that was my incredible, memorable day at Universal Studios in 1991.
#BringBackFievelsPlayland
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