Studio Tours in Los Angeles: Warner Bros and Universal Studios Hollywood

Two studios, two very different visits

Anyone staying in Los Angeles and looking for “a studio tour” quickly runs into a mix-up that trips up a lot of first-time visitors: there is no single studio experience near Hollywood. There are at least two distinct ones, in two different towns, built around two different ideas of what a studio visit should feel like.

Warner Bros Studios sits in Burbank, just north of the Hollywood Hills. It is a working production lot, still used for film and television, and its tour is built around walking and riding a tram through actual soundstages, backlot streets and sets that have stood in for New York, small-town America and countless other places on screen. There are no rides here — the appeal is proximity to how things are actually made.

Universal Studios Hollywood, in Universal City, is a different animal entirely. It is a full theme park, with roller coasters, themed lands and shows, and its studio tour is one part of a much larger day rather than the whole point of the visit. If a working lot with no rides sounds too quiet, or a full theme park sounds like too much, knowing the difference before booking anything matters more than any other single decision on this topic.

Because this guide is written for someone already based in Los Angeles — staying somewhere in or around Downtown LA, Hollywood, Beverly Hills or West Hollywood — neither option involves a long-distance trip. Both are a car journey away, timed around traffic rather than around booking flights or hotels elsewhere. That is the practical framing that matters here: not whether a studio tour is worth doing, but which one fits the rest of a Los Angeles-based itinerary, and when to drive there to avoid losing half a day to freeway traffic.

Warner Bros Studios: a working lot, not a theme park

The Warner Bros Studio Tour in Burbank is built for people who want to see production, not spectacle. Small groups move through the lot on tram and on foot, passing soundstages that are frequently still in active use, backlot sets dressed for whatever is currently filming or standing ready between productions, and props, costume and craft areas that show the mechanics behind familiar film and television work.

The tour’s identity is defined by what it does not have: no rides, no themed lands, no queues for attractions. It trades that for access to a genuinely working environment. Because the lot is still in production, what a visitor sees on any given day depends on what is shooting, what sets are dressed, and which soundstages happen to be open to visitors that day — no tour operator can promise a specific set or a glimpse of an active shoot, since that depends entirely on the production schedule, which is not published in advance and changes constantly.

This format tends to suit a particular kind of traveller: someone with a genuine interest in filmmaking craft, in production history, or in seeing how a set that looked enormous on screen is actually built. It holds up well for teenagers and adults; it asks more patience of very young children, who may find a walking-and-looking tour less immediately engaging than a ride.

a guided walking and tram tour through the Warner Bros Studios lot in Burbank is the standard way to see the working soundstages and backlot sets. For a visitor who wants to pair that with a taste of the surrounding neighbourhood and its landmarks, a combined studio tour with lunch and a walk along the Hollywood Walk of Fame stretches the outing into a fuller half-day without requiring a separate booking for the Boulevard portion.

Universal Studios Hollywood: theme park first, studio tour built in

Universal Studios Hollywood approaches the same general idea — showing visitors something of how films and television are made — from the opposite direction. Rather than centring the day on production, it wraps a studio tram tour into a full working theme park, with rides themed around major film franchises, live shows, themed lands to walk through, and the kind of queuing, dining and merchandise infrastructure that comes with any large park.

The studio tour element still exists here: a tram ride through parts of the backlot, past sets and effects demonstrations, is part of the standard park experience. But it sits alongside — not instead of — the rides and attractions that make up most of a typical visit. A family with a mix of ages, or anyone who wants a full day out rather than a focused couple of hours, tends to find this the more satisfying option of the two, precisely because it does not ask a young child to be interested in production history to enjoy the day.

The trade-off is scale and pacing. A visit here is built around a long day: arriving with a plan for rides versus shows versus the tram tour, expecting queues at popular attractions, and treating meals and breaks as part of the itinerary rather than an afterthought. It rewards planning ahead for which attractions matter most, since trying to do everything in one visit is rarely realistic.

an all-inclusive pass that bundles Universal Studios Hollywood with other Los Angeles attractions suits a visitor who wants to spread several paid attractions across a stay rather than buying each separately. For someone who wants to combine the park with a broader look at the city on the same trip, a package pairing Universal Studios Hollywood entry with a Hollywood bus tour covers both without requiring two separate bookings.

Choosing between them

	Warner Bros Studios (Burbank)	Universal Studios Hollywood (Universal City)
Format	Working lot tour: soundstages, backlot, sets	Full theme park with rides, shows and a studio tram tour
Rides	None	Multiple, themed around major film franchises
Focus	Production craft and filmmaking history	Entertainment day out, studio tour as one element
Typical visit length	A few hours	A full day
Best suited to	Teens and adults interested in how films are made	Families and visitors wanting a broad day of entertainment
Booking	Advance booking recommended, especially high season	Advance booking recommended, especially high season and weekends

Neither is inherently “better” — they answer different questions. Someone who wants to understand how a production lot actually functions, without rides diluting the focus, is better served by Warner Bros. Someone who wants a full day of entertainment with a studio element folded in, ideal for mixed-age groups, is better served by Universal Studios Hollywood. Many visitors on a longer Los Angeles stay do both on separate days rather than choosing one over the other.

Getting there from where you’re staying

Both studios sit within a manageable drive of the areas most visitors base themselves in. Burbank, home to Warner Bros, and Universal City, home to Universal Studios Hollywood, are themselves close to each other, both tucked into the valley just north of the Hollywood Hills.

From Hollywood or Griffith Observatory, the drive to either studio typically runs in the range of 20 to 30 minutes outside of peak hours, longer once weekday morning or evening rush hour traffic sets in. From Downtown LA, Beverly Hills or West Hollywood, expect closer to 25 to 40 minutes under the same conditions, again with meaningful variation depending on the time of day. As with anywhere in Los Angeles, the smartest approach is to check current drive times shortly before leaving rather than relying on a fixed estimate, and to build in extra time if travelling during a weekday commute window.

LA Metro rail also reaches both areas to some degree — Universal City has its own Metro station, and Burbank is served by regional rail connections — which can work for visitors without a rental car, though a car or rideshare remains the more flexible option for most itineraries, particularly if combining a studio visit with other stops the same day.

Parking is available at both studios and is generally straightforward, though arriving with some buffer before a scheduled tour or park opening avoids any last-minute stress finding a space on a busy day.

Booking ahead and managing expectations

Both the Warner Bros Studio Tour and Universal Studios Hollywood are popular enough, particularly through the summer months and around school holidays, that advance booking is worth treating as the default rather than the exception. Turning up without a reservation risks discovering that the day’s tour slots or park capacity are already full, especially for the Warner Bros tour’s guided groups, which run on a schedule rather than continuous walk-up access.

It is worth being clear-eyed about what a studio tour does and does not promise. Warner Bros markets its tour around access to a working lot, not around guaranteed access to an active shoot — what is filming, and where, changes daily and is never disclosed in advance, so a visitor should expect a look at production spaces and standing sets rather than a promise of seeing cameras rolling. The same caution applies loosely at Universal Studios Hollywood’s tram portion: production activity visible from the tram varies by day and is never guaranteed.

What these studios are not

A surprising number of visitors arrive at Warner Bros or Universal Studios Hollywood expecting some overlap with Disneyland, or assume all three are variations on the same experience. They are not connected in any way. Disneyland Resort is a separate theme park located in Anaheim, in Orange County — a different city, in a different county, generally requiring closer to an hour or more of driving from central Los Angeles depending on where a visitor is staying and the time of day.

It has no shared ownership, ticketing or physical connection to either Warner Bros Studios or Universal Studios Hollywood, and confusing the three when planning a trip is one of the more common and avoidable mistakes in a Los Angeles itinerary.

It is also worth separating “studio tour” from the broader category of Hollywood-themed sightseeing. A bus tour past celebrity homes, a walk along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, or a stop at the Hollywood Sign viewpoints in Griffith Park are all worthwhile but entirely separate activities from an actual studio visit — none of them take a visitor onto a working lot or into a theme park’s studio tram tour.

Pairing a studio visit with the rest of a Los Angeles stay

Because both studios sit north of the Hollywood Hills rather than downtown, a studio day pairs naturally with other stops in the same general direction. A half-day at Warner Bros combines reasonably well with a Hollywood Boulevard walk or a Griffith Observatory stop earlier or later the same day, since all three sit within a similar drive time of each other. A full day at Universal Studios Hollywood is generally better left as its own day, given how much there is to see inside the park itself.

For a broader look at Hollywood landmarks and celebrity-associated sights beyond the studios themselves, this guide to Hollywood Boulevard and this one on celebrity homes cover the adjacent sightseeing that many visitors fold into the same trip. Anyone weighing Universal Studios Hollywood against Disneyland Resort as competing theme park choices may also find this comparison useful before committing to tickets for either.

Visitors building a first full day around Hollywood and Griffith Park landmarks, with a studio stop layered in, can use this one-day itinerary as a starting structure, adjusting timing to fit whichever studio tour is booked.

For a wider sense of what else falls under theme parks and ticketed attractions across the region, this guide to theme park tickets sets both studios in context alongside Disneyland and the other major parks nearby, including Knott’s Berry Farm further south in Orange County. Anyone curious how a Pasadena base compares for reaching Burbank can also check Pasadena as an alternative staging point.