Right in Hollywood is Universal Studios. The guided tour, a tram ride around Universal's 170 hectares of front and back lots, is a comprehensive two-hour affair. A total of five million visitors took the Universal Studios tour last year. Another favorite is the old luxury liner Queen Mary in Long Beach. Howard Hughes's 200-ton wooden seaplane, the Spruce Goose which was once the main attraction in Long Beach, along with Queen Mary, has been relocated to Washington State.
Movie stars leave their foot prints in cement, and the site becomes a tourist attraction.
There are no figures in LA giving the number of tourists who flock to places like Chinatown and Little Tokyo. Once low-rental urban communities, they have become prime property, and like many cities within larger cities, they have growing pains. Little Tokyo has for many years, probably as far back as the 1880s, staked out an area along downtown's East First Street. Redevelopment projects have turned this slum area into new offices, apartments and hotel highrises, shops and cultural centers, making it, along with Chinatown, a major tourist attraction. At times Thai tourists may wonder if they are actually in the US and not back home in Thailand.