Universal Studios Hollywood is a film studio and theme park in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles County, California. About 70% of the studio lies within the unincorporated county island known as Universal City while the rest lies within the city limits of Los Angeles, California. It is one of the oldest and most famous Hollywood film studios still in use. Its official marketing headline is "The Entertainment Capital of LA". It was initially created to offer tours of the real Universal Studios sets and is the first of many full-fledged Universal Studios Theme Parks located across the world. Outside the theme park, a new, all-digital facility near the Universal Pictures backlot was built in an effort to merge all of NBCUniversal's West Coast operations into one area. As a result, the current home for KNBC, KVEA and NBC News with Noticias Telemundo Los Angeles Bureaus with new digital facility is on the Universal lot formerly occupied by Technicolor SA. Universal City includes hotels Universal Hilton & Towers, the Sheraton Universal Hotel, and Universal CityWalk, which offers a collection of shops, restaurants, an 18-screen Universal Cinema and a seven-story IMAX theater. In 2017, the park hosted 9.056 million guests, ranking it 15th in the world and 9th among North American parks. History The first studio tour In 1914, German American immigrant Carl Laemmle bought the Taylor Ranch in the San Fernando Valley and founded Universal City as a gigantic studio with a zoo, its own police and mayor and native Americans living on the premises. On March 14, 1915, Laemmle opened Universal Studios in a two-day grand opening event with 10,000 attendees. He later invited the general public to see all the action for an admission fee of just five cents, which also included a boxed lunch with chicken. There was also a chance to buy fresh produce, since then-rural Universal City was still in part a working farm. This original tour was discontinued around 1930, due to the advent of sound films and the stages being not sufficiently soundproofed. Backlot fires Universal Studios Hollywood's backlot has been damaged by fire nine times throughout its history. The first was in 1932, when embers from a nearby brush fire were blown toward the back lot, causing four movie sets to be destroyed and resulting in over $100,000 damage. Seventeen years later, in 1949, another brush fire caused the complete