“Not as big a mouthful as when you worked in that chocolate factory,” my lunch date responds. She’s a much bigger “I Love Lucy” fan than I am.

I stand up from the table with my phone in my hand. “Ohh, I see a camera,” Lucy says. “Are we going to take one of those … what do you call them … do-it-yourselfies?” 

You might be surprised that a fictional character was talking to us, but I wasn’t. A few minutes earlier, Doc Brown from “Back to the Future” was conversing with some diners nearby. (Tragically, he didn’t stop at my table so I could use the even-more-tragic response I had prepared — “1.21 gigawatts of food!” — if he asked me what I was having for lunch.) 

On that particular day, which I was spending at Universal Studios Hollywood, I saw a lot of stars: Marilyn Monroe, sitting in her set chair between takes; Beetlejuice, doing his “ghost with the most” thing; Hello Kitty waving and blowing kisses to passersby; and Scooby Doo’s Mystery Inc. friends hanging out by their psychedelic van. 

I tried to spot Dracula, as he sometimes frequents the European section of the Upper Lot, but, well, I should have known better: It was the middle of the day. 

I’ve been to Universal Hollywood many times, but that day was different. That day was my first VIP tour, but after doing the math, it won’t be my last. 

Weekends at Universal are just as busy as they are at Disneyland, and the wait times can easily top an hour for the most in-demand rides, like Jurassic World and Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. The park’s newest ride, The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash, is so popular that busy days require a virtual queue that fills up quickly. 

During the week, though, it’s a different story. I couldn’t ride The Secret Life of Pets on a Friday a couple of weeks ago because the queue was full for the day, but I walked on this past Wednesday afternoon with no wait at all. A VIP tour — which is a small group led by a Universal guide — will get you to the front of the express line at any ride or show in the park, but that’s not why I wanted to go. 
I wanted the one experience you can’t get as a regular park guest. 

Universal is a small park, much smaller than Disneyland, and most of the rides have virtual reality components that make it hard to get on more than two or three rides in a day without my brain getting a little too spinny. 

What keeps me coming back — and what made me invest in an annual pass, which costs about the equivalent of two single-day tickets — is the Studio Tour. The Universal Studios theme park is located within Universal City, a working film studio so big that it has its own zip code, and there are always productions happening there. The tram ride Studio Tour lasts an hour and goes through the front lot of soundstages and the backlot of practical sets. 

Depending on what’s filming that day, you might spot some celebrities (recently, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard stopped to say hello to a tram full of guests when they were leaving a soundstage doing press for “Jurassic World Dominion”) or you might see an actual production happening (this week, I saw the new season of Mindy Kaling’s “Never Have I Ever” filming). 

I truly can’t overstate how much I love this tour. Sure, the attraction parts are always the same. There’s a “King Kong” 3D movie part and a “Fast & Furious” chase scene, in addition to a simulated earthquake in a San Francisco BART station, and they’re cute but not always that exciting on the 100th go-around. 

What I love is that the other parts of the tour are different every time. Sometimes you get to ride through the Old West town, but sometimes you don’t (because, say, Quentin Tarantino is filming “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood” there, and you’re about 50 feet away from Brad Pitt, but you don’t know it). Sometimes you can drive around the suburban cul-de-sac that was the street from “The ’Burbs” and Wisteria Lane from “Desperate Housewives” — though my favorite bit of trivia from that area is that the house from “The Munsters,” 1313 Mockingbird Lane, once stood there. You’ll drive past the Bates Motel from “Psycho,” trudge through the wreckage of an airplane used in Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” and barely escape “Jaws” attacking your tram in Amity Island. 

The major draw of a VIP tour, for me at least, is the much-more-extensive extended Studio Tour. During a VIP tour, you take a smaller, fancier trolley, and you can stop and get out to explore areas in the backlot that aren’t usually open to guests. That day, I found myself standing in Hill Valley from “Back to the Future,” in the exact spot where Biff gets a car full of manure, the same area that doubles as the town square in Ed Helms’ new show “Rutherford Falls.” Around the corner is the New York lot, which was Victorian London in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and destroyed by evil car robots in “Transformers.” (The rule, our guide explained, is that you can do anything you want while filming as long as you fix it, so director Michael Bay literally blew up the street and then rebuilt it.) 

On that cul-de-sac, we got to get out and walk around, even go inside one of the homes. Not all of them have insides — what’s called a “practical set” that you can film in — but the one we saw was fully outfitted like any other suburban house. 

Maybe it doesn’t sound exciting to you, but growing up in a small New England town, I felt so far away from Hollywood that movies might as well have been filmed on the moon. Part of me gets a genuine thrill from getting to see where those movies are made. 

After the Studio Tour, we headed into Hogsmeade, to explore the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. When you buy an Express Pass, you get access to a fast lane for ride queues, but our passes got us front-of-line access to that express lane, walked onto the ride by the tour guide. Then, it was lunch, an extensive buffet with cheese and charcuterie, fresh fruits and vegetables, pasta, a carving station, a crepe station and all the desserts in the land. 

As I sat there eating ginger-soy salmon and chocolate-covered strawberries, I thought about how, though signing up for a VIP tour feels like a splurge, it’s really not much more than a regular day at the park. 

VIP tickets cost $300 each (more on busy days) and come with front-of-line access, breakfast, lunch, bottled water throughout the day and valet parking. On the same day, you could buy a park ticket for $100-$150 depending on the day, an Express Pass for roughly another $100 and regular parking for $30 or valet for $50. It adds up to almost the same cost as a VIP ticket, and that’s before buying anything to eat or drink. Plus, you can ask your guide for any tidbits of park knowledge or movie trivia throughout the day. Trust me: I asked mine a lot of things, and he did a really good job of pretending not to be annoyed by it. 

After lunch, there was the “WaterWorld” show, which is still entertaining even though that movie has seen better days, then Minions, Pets and a trip down a terrifying, dinosaur-filled river in Jurassic World.

Maybe the rest of the group did more — you can basically fit in every ride and show in the park on a VIP tour day — but I wouldn’t know. I headed back to the Upper Lot to find Dracula.