JAWS
JAWS… the cheesy, campy ride that everyone immediately thinks of when Universal Studios is mentioned in casual conversation. People have proposed to their loved ones on this thing, for God’s sake. So how is it? Getting on the ride, it actually advertises itself as the Amity Boat Tour. There was no mention of Jaws other than on the warning sign posted at the entrance. We began by boarding a Jungle Cruise-esque boat with our nonchalant tour guide pretending to steer the boat as it glided along a track. The tour was basically structured as a tour of the town of Amity, describing it as the town that suffered the horrible attack of Jaws that the famous movie was based on. Pretty soon, not surprisingly, the tour comes across another tour boat sinking, having just recently been attacked by Jaws. Our boat was called in to help just a little too late. Oh well. Anyway, the animatronic wonder makes his first appearance with a quick splash and an explosion of a gas station before our guide lobs a grenade at him by using a portable launcher.
We then head into a boathouse to take cover. Jaws starts ramming the walls of the boathouse, so we flee only to have him pop out of the water right next to us as the tour guide attempts to lead us to a boat dock. This boat dock happens to be located right next to a power cable, which Jaws stupidly bites into, frying him dead. Everyone cheers and we head back to the beginning. I happened to be sitting on the left side of the boat, which is where you want to be if you want to be splashed or right next to Jaws when he’s at his most “menacing”. Susan and I both had a campy good time on this ride and it should be held as some sort of rite of passage for theme park enthusiasts.
After Jaws, Susan wanted to go see the Animal Actors on Location show since it was closer to starting time. I wanted to ride the Men in Black Alien Attack ride so we decided to split up and meet when I was done.
Men In Black: Alien Attack
A quick note on this one: If you want to get ahead of the line quickly. Getting in the single rider line is definitely the way to go. By this time of day, the lines had started getting a little longer but I was able to get almost straight on anyway.
So MIB: AA as far as I could tell didn’t have much of a storyline to it. Basically it serves as a recruitment training program for the MIB agents. The ride itself is on a track similar to a lot of dark house-style rides with the car spinning quickly back and forth a good bit as you spin around firing at aliens. The firing part is the unique gimmick of this ride as it acts as a sort of shooting gallery with your car being equipped with a gun that you fire at alien targets as the ride progresses. It basically proceeds in this fashion until you come across a giant alien at the end that apparently involves setting explosives in its mouth that are detonated by driving your car in and spinning around a lot. This was a fun ride that was worth taking a little time to try out. For those who get sick on spinning rides like my wife, you might want to stay clear. Since I was able to get through the line so quickly, I decided to head over to Animal Actors on Location to watch it with Susan since it hadn’t started yet.
Animal Actors On Location
This was most likely Susan’s favorite attraction at the park, only trumped by a squirrel that came up to her foot and looked at her outside the E.T. ride. It was basically comprised of some animal trainers showing off some movie animals and how they are trained. It was a pretty interesting show, featuring a bird from Evan Almighty and the lab from Marley and Me, among others. At one point, a volunteer in the audience sitting right next to me had a bird fly up and snatch a dollar out of his hand. It was pretty neat to have something like that as close as it was.
After this I was able to convince Susan to ride the E.T. Adventure as I had mentioned earlier and she seemed to enjoy it, partially because the fake E.T. that sat in a basket in front of the bikes was attached to the bike she was on. After this we attempted to go to the Disaster! Ride but it was having issues, as it had been all day. Instead we decided to go to Shrek 4D.
Shrek 4D
The interesting thing about the fact that we went to Shrek 4D is that neither of us are big Shrek fans. We were mostly doing it to kill time until the next showing of Terminator 3D. The premise of Shrek 4D is that it picks up where the first movie ended. Basically Prince Farquaad has come back as a ghost and kidnapped Fiona. Of course, Shrek & Donkey hop in a carriage to give chase and save the day. So first off, the movie is in 3D, which was very impressive in places. It gives the 3D you would see in a local Cineplex a run for its money. The 4D aspect of it involves the seats they’ve put you in. The seats are positioned in a familiar theater-based setup but each seat has been rigged with some small hydraulics to simulate things like bumpy roads. The show will also spray you with air to simulate bugs crawling around your legs and spritz you with water to simulate donkey sneezing. Overall, it was pretty entertaining and air conditioned but the bumpiness of the seat motion I found a little annoying.
We missed the next showing of Terminator since Shrek took so long, so we went back over to Disaster to see if it was operational yet.
Disaster!
Susan and I both enjoyed this one. The fact that it featured Christopher Walken pretty much made it awesome for me, regardless of the entertainment of the ride portion. So this takes a while to go through. You begin in an initial room where the assistant director of Disaster Studios needs to select a few actors to appear in their next movie. He selects some random volunteers from the audience and everyone goes to the next room. The next room is the director’s office where Christopher Walken makes his grand appearance. The hologram they use to make Christopher Walken appear to be present is so lifelike and seamlessly integrated with the environment that at first I thought it was an actor they hired that just looked and acted exactly like Walken. After the director discusses his next picture, Mutha Nature, and his vision for Disaster Studios, everyone is then lead into the next room which appears to be a movie set with several scenes set up. The actors selected at the beginning are then placed in their appropriate spots and several scenes are then filmed within a brief 6-minute time period. It’s done in a pretty humorous fashion with the scenes coming into play later in the ride. We were then lead into the next room where are herded on board a subway train to aid the director in filming the last section of the movie. For those familiar with the history of Universal Studios, this section of the ride will be familiar as it is essentially the classic Earthquake! Ride that they have re-imagined into a movie shoot. The subway train heads into the next room where an earthquake strikes causing the street above to come crashing down with a semi sliding into the train, water to come pouring into the station and another train to fly off the tracks into the train. The whole time the First Unit Director (or somebody like that) is encouraging everyone to react in terror at the ridiculousness going on around them.
After everything is complete, the subway train backs into the previous room to let everyone out. As the train is backing out, we get to watch a trailer for our newly completed film that includes scenes the actors were in earlier as well as clips of everyone in the subway car. We particularly enjoyed a scene of a grandmother getting struck by lightning and exploding while gardening. Overall, this one is definitely recommended and takes a good 20 minutes total to get through. As a result, you really get your money’s worth regardless of the wait time.
After this we finally decided to make our way over to Terminator 3D since the next showing was coming up.
Terminator 3D
We are shown a pre-show video featuring Cyberdyne technologies and how they are improving the world through their innovations. I found this video delightfully cheesy and outdated, featuring such communications innovations as the ability to tuck a child into bed from hundreds of miles away using bulky robot arms attached to the bedframe. After the video gets interrupted by Sarah & John Connor, era T2, the cheerfully annoying Cyberdyne Director of Human Relations ushers everyone into the theater. At this point, she introduces the latest Cyberdyne technology, a robotic fighting force. Several Terminator robots then are revealed via raised platforms across the sides of the auditorium. At this point, the proceedings are interrupted again by the Connors propelling in from the ceiling. Everything up to this point has been all live action. A three large screens act as the backdrop of the auditorium. While firing their weapons and threatening the human relations lady, John & Sarah are interrupted by a T1000 that first appears on the screen, oozing out in a very cool 3D effect. He then walks through a portal and appears on the stage, giving chase to the revolutionaries and killing the annoying Cyberdyne lady. Arnie then ride a motorcycle from out of the screen, firing a shotgun at the T1000 and spewing cheesy one-liners like there’s no tomorrow. He then grabs John and drives through a time portal into the future. The next section of the show is primarily on screen and Arnie & John are pursued in the future by all manner of evil robot as they seek to destroy the Skynet complex. Through a series of action sequences involving lots more one-liners, they arrive at the center of Skynet where a giant liquid robot mantis thing proceeds to attack them. When John asks Arnie what it is, he replies that it’s the T1000000. Really?
Anyway, at this point the actors are back out on the stage with the bug attacking them via awesome 3D effects across all three screens. This section I felt was very cool and one of the most interesting examples of 3D I had ever seen. Given the age of the ride (mid-90’s), I was very impressed. I can only assume that they’ve probably updated the technology since it first opened. Anyway, they freeze the robot using liquid nitrogen or something and destroy it. Then they blow up Skynet and everybody celebrates. Susan and I both really liked this one, despite the cheesiness of it in places. I definitely recommend it to anyone visiting.
After Terminator 3D we made our way out of the park and ate dinner at Pastamore, a decent Italian place on the Universal Citywalk outside the park.
In summary, I really enjoyed this theme park for several reasons. First of all, the rides were consistently of a high quality and most were pretty lengthy. There’s nothing that aggravates me more than having to wait 40 or more minutes in line for a ride only to have it last a minute and be less than amazing. A second positive point to the park was that it had more shaded areas than many I’ve been to owing to the fact that it was designed like a movie studio with a lot of closely grouped together buildings. A third positive aspect was that many of the rides were indoors, offering a nice break from the heat.
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