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Travel

Toadstool Cafe Super Nintendo World

During our visit to Super Nintendo World Hollywood, we made reservations for Toadstool Cafe, the only food venue at Super Nintendo World. Because of the park’s attractions and long waits, we made reservations using the QR code at the cafe entrance as soon as we entered Super Nintendo World. To avoid the lunch crowds, we opted for a 10:45am reservation. We had heard that later reservations during peak hours resulted in long wait times and slow or poor service.

Entering the restaurant, choose a queue for a cashier. Make your orders in a fast-food style counter with photos menus of on the wall above. After placing your order, you are given a receipt with an order number and proceed to a staff member at the entrance of the dining room who will bring to you to an assigned table.

A server will bring our food out to your table. During the lunch or dinner rush, there may be delays but our orders came to use in less than 5 minutes. We chose a Toadstool Cheesy Garlic Knot, Piranha Plant Caprese, Super Star Chicken Salad, Yoshi’s Fettucine Alfredo, Mario Burger Kids Meal Set, and Fire Flower Spaghetti & Meatballs. In general, the food tasted good but looked even better than it tasted. Design was fanciful and fun but the flavors were just mid and underseasoned. I found the Mario Mini Burger to be a better deal as it also included a coin-up dessert (a cookie coated in gold colored white chocolate).

Despite the average tasting food, Toadstool Cafe is a worthy experience. While dining, we were entertained by LCD screens around the restaurant showing scenes from the mushroom kingdom, including an attack by Bowser’s airship dropping bombs onto the restaurant and village. The food was filling and pricing was reasonable for a major amusement park. We’ll come back.

MENU

https://www.universalstudioshollywood.com/web/en/us/things-to-do/dining/toadstool-cafe/menu.html

Geek Out, Travel

Kung-Fu Panda Adventure

The Kung Fu Panda Adventure is a motion-simulated 4D, animated theatrical experience ride in Universal Studios Hollywood. This attraction combines animated sequences with physical movement to create an immersive experience. The pre-ride queue includes a presentation with other Dreamworks franchise characters such as Shrek and the animals of Madagascar.

Guests sit in the Dreamworks theatre, whose seats have been upgraded as mini 3D motion simulators. The riders feel motion during the climactic action sequences they see on stage. The designers eventually utilized most of the theatre’s walls, the extent of which isn’t obvious at the start of the experience. The Kung Fu Panda Adventure offers a blend of entertainment and technology, providing a unique and memorable experience for visitors to the park.

Travel

Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge

Super Nintendo World is the Super Mario-themed area inside Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles. This land opened in February 2023 and is a duplicate of Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. The marque attraction is the Augmented Reality (AR) dark ride, Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge.

This ride and Super Nintendo World have had some long lines and waits so I opted to pay an extra $35 surcharge for Early Access to the park, which allowed us entry at 8 am instead of 9 am. This is egregious because back in 2000, $35 was the general entry fee to get into all of Universal Studios.

I’ll leave the debate on the value of this extra fee for later. It allowed us to walk straight up to the entrance of the Mario Kart ride, which displayed only a 15-minute wait. We breezed through rooms that contained the switchbacks for the line cue. The rooms were worth seeing as they were as meticulously designed as the rest of Super Nintendo World.

The cue takes you through the entrance of Bowser’s Castle, decorated with trophies from the Mario Kart races and fanciful workshops showing the construction of the obstacles and baddies from various Super Mario games. If you are a single rider, you can request to go into a shorter bypass line. Whilst shorter, this misses out on the decor and experience of the cue rooms.

Near the end of the cue, guests pick up a plastic Mario Visor Cap, which has a ratcheting headband similar to a modern bicycle helmet. This is the head mounting system for the AR goggles that are hard-wired into the ride karts. There are 4 seats per kart, and each seat has its own steering wheel and a wired set of AR goggles which attach to the brim of the Mario cap via strong magnets.

Hanging in front of you, the AR goggles project images of Mario Kart targets, baddies, and power-ups. Pressing the button on the steering wheel fires a power-up (ie. turtle shell) and turning the wheel aims the shot. You are presented with virtual baddies and allied players through the ride that you can shoot or protect to earn points. Even without the AR visuals and game, the ride itself is fancifully designed like a real-life version of the Mario Kart game.

Your team member’s power-up shots are visible in your goggles as well as your own. During my ride, I found it impossible to play the game while simultaneously filming it because of the position of the AR goggles near my face. For most of the ride, I was forced to take off my goggles and hold them in front of my camera, in hopes of capturing the experience.

The ride simulates the various tracks of the Mario Kart game and ends on the Rainbow Road, and finally, a boss battle with Bowser. You’re presented with your individual and team score at the end of the ride. The ride ends at the same platform as the start, exiting the opposite side of the kart. Pioneered at Disneyland, the ride exists through a large Nintendo gift shop, which is the only gift shop in Super Nintendo World. You can buy souvenirs or a Power-Up wristband for additional fun and expense.