Tour Guide Diaries


Though many believe that being a Universal Studios tour guide is a fun and easy job, what they don’t realize is that each day, a tour guide must engage in several battles with a terrifying creature.

Although Kong never took the lives of any of my tour guests, the emotional scars ran deep. Children cried, parents coughed in agony at his disgusting banana breath.

Often, as the tram passed by this jungle-spawned fool, I would shout, “Curse you, KONG! I would slap in the mouth, but my arms are not long, like yours! Because I am a human, with thoughts and feelings, just like my innocent guests. Not like you. You are a disgusting, stupid animal. You are nothing. And someday, I will seek my revenge.

Today… revenge is mine.

Get used to the heat, Kong, because you will surely burn in hell.

It’s been a little while since I’ve updated you on the goings-on at the good ol’ entertainment capital of L.A. But October is upon us, and that means the end of the tram… and the beginning of the TERROR TRAM! Will Hyler was kind enough to document my spooktacular tour on the night of October 6th:

The next weekend, we were called in for a meeting, where we were told that the ratings for the Halloween tour were through the roof!!. But also some executives took the tour and they got offended and we can’t improvise any more. But seriously, you guys are great! Keep it up!

So the public loves it, but several rich dipshits get offended because we make fun of Whoopi Goldberg and Al Roker (how dare we!), so no fun for anyone. But we are allowed to tell a high-larious anecdote involving a famous quote by moving picture star Lon Chaney. Because that’s just what busloads of drunk Latino dudes want to hear. Ohhh, Universal, will you ever learn?

This week, I accomplished something impressive: 5 days at Universal in a row. This was a common thing last summer, but this summer, it is quite a task to get through. Why? Well, I shall map it out with an equation if you’ll continue below:

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Here’s a followup from the last “Diaries” post. I checked my web stats, and it seems that 200 people have looked at that post. I was impressed that so many people wanted to learn about my Universal experiences. However, when I did some investigation, it seems most people got there because of the picture that I used of 14 year old girls. As it turns out, it’s one of the first things that comes up on Google images if you search for “14-year-old girls”. I guess that’s another reason to hate 14-year-old girls: pervs are searching for pictures of them, and ignoring my hilarious musings, as well as giving me false hope that anyone is actually reading this shit.

So this morning I called in sick, and the dispatcher on the phone responded, “You son of a bitch”. This is the same guy who, when I had to suddenly get off of a tram because I spent 2 minutes gagging and not being able to speak, he responded “Basically, you’re fucking me here”. Thanks a lot, buddy! Nice to feel appreciated at work. What’s great about Universal is that almost all the male tour guides speak in the same jovial announcer-y way that I myself am guilty of speaking in much of the time. So you hear phrases like “You son of a bitch!” said in an enthusiastic Pat O’Brien-esque manner, or people walking past you, muttering to themselves, “Stupidmotherfuckerpieceofshit…”, still in the tour guide voice. A room full of angry, bitter people with confident, crystal-clear voices.

But with recent workplace pressures, I’ve decided to relieve some of my workload by turning some tours over to a guy named Conrad. More about this later.

Things Scott Hates At Universal Studios

While working at the Universal Studios tour has not opened me up to any new sources of hatred, it has helped me clarify why I hate many things. Click below, and I’ll tell you what those things are!

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This week, I’ve gotten both an extremely good evaluation, and a message saying that an executive took my tour and was very impressed. These were great bits of news, because it would be very easy for evaluators and executives to take certain tours and not be too happy. For example, today I talked about “On the Lot”, which is currently filming on our lot, and called it “the Fox reality show where the audience decides which filmmaker is the least horrible”. I also took a vote at the top of the tour to see how many people wanted to not see Whoopi Goldberg for the remainder of the tour. Only about 6 people voted yes. People love Whoopi!

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Here’s the first in what I hope will be a continuing series of entries about my job as a tour guide at Universal Studios. Maybe it’s just me, but I think this job is really fascinating. As a Universal tour guide, you are witness to both the wide-eyed optimism of young tourists dreaming the Hollywood dream, and the crushing depression of adults who have long since given up on said dream.

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