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Feeling that their popular backlot tour was in dire need of some freshening up—visitors, it seemed, just hadn't been responding as enthusiastically to the "Six Million Dollar Man Bigfoot Attack Spectacular" as they had in recent decades—Universal Studios set about reconfiguring their world famous tourist draw for savvier, 21st century audiences. The LAT spent the $99.95 for "front-of-the-line" passes, a no-waiting tram ticket to canned narration by Whoopi Goldberg, updated movie sets, and a thoroughly underwhelming automated stunt show:

The revamped tour, which opened last week, incorporates some of the classic elements while adding several new features, including video narration, large outdoor sets from "War of the Worlds" and the recent "King Kong," as well as a cruise down Wisteria Lane, the home of ABC's "Desperate Housewives."

The centerpiece of the new tour is a spinoff of Universal's street-racing franchise called The Fast and the Furious: Extreme Close-Up. [...]

The sequence lasts little more than one minute. The two cars are far from posing a convincing threat to the tram, and the cars themselves look more like four-wheeled puppies than road warriors.

Better received was the "Teri Hatcher Makeup-Trailer Meltdown Spectacular," in which a 17-foot-tall, aging TV diva on hydraulics roars over loudspeakers about inadequate bronzer application, then stomps towards the terrified tram riders, nearly crushing them beneath her giant feet before tearing open the roof of her co-stars' trailers and "devouring" the stuntwomen within.