I plan on going to Disneyland at the beggining of December for 11 days. I am thinking of renting a car for the whole trip. I'm thinking of starting at Universal Studios as our tickets say they are good for two days. I was hoping to get off the plane and start at Universal for two days before heading to Disneyland. Does Anybody know of any good hotels around that Area or who has done this as well?

I got a great deal on Priceline - averaged $60/night for four nights in Downtown LA - it's about 10 miles from Universal Studios. I got the Westin Bonaventure Hotel - a 4* hotel! (of course they charge for parking, and I'm not sure how much that is).

You don't need two days to see Universal Studios Hollywood.
There are only a handful of "must-dos" on the whole lot.
A half-day should be fine.

But tickets for television shows (free) are available at USH.
You may want to sit in on JAY LENO or ELLEN or any show which tapes locally.

But if you are renting a car, you CAN spend time in and around Hollywood.

• Grauman's Chinese Theater (cement footprints/handprints)
• El Capitan (across the street from Grauman's) is Disney-owned.
• Studio tour (NBC in Burbank is good; Sony in Culver City ought to be good since Sony was M-G-M; Warner Bros. ("the WB") in Burbank is good.)
• Cinerama Dome (famous for wide-screen format movies)
• Hollywood Stars homes in Beverly Hills -- tours are available. Maps for self-drive tours are available.

We just did that last Friday - flew into LAX and drove to Universal Sheraton (took us longer than my directions said due to traffic @ 1:30/ 2 PM on a Friday- I think it was a bit over an hour). Not the greatest Sheraton I've ever stayed in, but I stayed 'free' on spg points and the room was clean- bed was comfy - nice area - staff was friendly and helpful. There is also a Hilton right next door which looks nice and is newer. We valet parked our car and just walked over to City Walk the first night (about 5 -10 min walk - no problem for 8yo and me) for dinner. We did USH the next morning and found plenty to do from opening (9AM) until we left at about 7:30 - in fact there were several big rides DNeph did not want to do (mummy/ van helsing/ back to the future) - so we could have spent more time if we included those. We really enjoyed the tram tour!!
If you want to see Grauman's or the ElCapitan, there is a metro stop at the bottom of the hill (again, short walk) and they are just one stop over - we didn't go (travel fatigue and time change adjustment), but got the directions from concierge. There are other hotels within driving range of USH, but I think these two are the easiest (if not only) in walking distance.

For tickets to tv tapings, go to tvtickets.com, tvtix.com, or hollywoodtickets.com . All of these sites will have free tickets to tv shows and usually put out schedules for tapings at least two to three months in advance. Usually there will be instructions with regards to shows that are particularly popular.

USH is not just a Half Day park...

As BonK said, you can spend all day at the park and still not do everything.

The nice thing about USH, most every offering would be called an "E" ticket. Take your time, and make sure and check out the entire park.

We live fairly close to Universal and had to go to a hotel for a night earlier this week due to a water problem at our house. We ended up staying at Beverly Garland's Holiday Inn, which is on Vineland Rd., just around the corner from Universal. They do run very regular shuttles up to the park/Citywalk. We were very impressed with the hotel overall. The property is very attractive, with something of a park-like feel.

The room we stayed in was a "KidSuite" room, which is a fairly large room with a partitioned off section for children. The partitioned kids area includes twin-sized bunk beds, a boom-box type CD player/radio, and a TV with a Playstation 2. For guests staying in those rooms, video games and DVDs (which the PS2 can play) are available for complimentary check-out from the gift shop. Of course, the kid's area is decorated in a very kid-friendly fashion and, in fact, the entire room was decorated with Universal and Nickelodeon theming. Of course, they have a full range of regular rooms available as well, although we obviously didn't see any other rooms.

They have a nice restaurant as well and we had a really good dinner there. The hotel offers a "kids eat free" deal for guests staying at the hotel, which consisted as a coupon for a free child's meal at the restaurant. We only stayed at the hotel for one night, so I don't know if they give you one of those for every night of your stay or not.

On a related note, I would strongly advise against the Holiday Inn Express near Universal. We initially went there and were so displeased with it that we ended up turning in the keys for a refund and switching to the other hotel. Right off the bat, we were pretty irritated by the fact that, unless you are arriving via the freeway, the signs for the hotel are impossible to see until you have already passed the entrance. Once we did get there, I was immediately a bit concerned that the property seemed kind of run-down and wasn't in a great neighborhood.

I still went ahead and got the room, which they were billing as a "junior suite". When we got up to the room, it was extremely small even for a regular motel room. In fact, I've seen walk-in closets bigger than this room. Apparently, they felt that they were justified in the "junior suite" designation by the fact that there was a mini-fridge and a microwave in the room, even though many motels now have those as standard items in every room.

Since there were only the two double beds in the room and no pull-out sofa or anything, I called housekeeping to see if they could provide bed rails (something I would expect a motel next to a theme park to have...) since we were concerned about our nearly 3-year-old son falling out of the high bed. They said they would bring us something, but what they actually brought was a roll-away bed instead (which was going to cost us an additional $15). With that in the room, there was pretty much no room to move. I had to rearrange furniture to open it up at all and, even then, the only place it would fit was right next to the air conditioner. We basically were stuck with a choice between being way too warm overnight or having our son end up getting sick from sleeping with cold air blowing on him all night.

It was at that point that we decided this wasn't going to work and get a refund. In all fairness, the motel staff was very courteous and didn't give us any argument at all when we requested a refund. I still wouldn't recommend this motel at all, though.

-Jeff