Universal Studios Hollywood kicked off its Universal Mega Movie Summer by revealing the ride vehicle for its upcoming Fast & Furious roller coaster.
Fast & Furious Hollywood Drift will open next year. Here is a close-up of the coaster seats, showing the lap bar-only restraints on this 360-degree rotational vehicle.
Themed to Dominic Tortetto's 1970 Dodge Charger, the coaster's ride vehicle is now on display in Universal Plaza at the park, just across from the coaster construction site.
The spinning coaster will reach a top speed of 72 mph, making it the park's first high-speed outdoor roller coaster and Universal's fastest coaster worldwide. The track, which is now installed, is 4,100 feet.
Universal this morning also released the hype video that it showed during this morning's press event. It includes the park's first official animatics of the ride experience.
"Watching the progress of this incredible roller coaster come to life is truly spectacular," Universal Studios Hollywood Executive Vice President & General Manager Scott Strobl said. "2026 is just around the corner and we are equally as excited as our guests to introduce such an inspiring new ride to our theme park portfolio. 'Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift' will be a powerful game changer for Universal Studios Hollywood that will not only transform the topography of our destination but will infuse an entirely new level of adrenaline to our already dynamic theme park. We look forward to riding it ourselves and to welcoming guests to experience it in the very near future."
Universal Mega Movie Summer kicks off tomorrow, with photos ops and character meets celebrating Universal's classic films, including the 50th anniversary of Jaws and 40th of Back to the Future. For discounts on tickets to the park, including a second-day-free offer, please visit our partner's Universal Studios Hollywood tickets page.
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This is how you do a F&F attraction properly!
That is quite possibly one of the coolest looking automobile-themed coaster cars of all time. A few observations...
1. There are clearly speakers on either side of the headrest, which confirms that there will be an on-board soundtrack.
2. There are only 4 seats per car, which likely means 16 people per train. It's possible they mighty get a 5th car on a train, but I think it's more likely to be 4 cars per train since there needs to be clearance between each car to allow for the spinning/drifting. Plus these cars are already pretty long, so I think trying to couple 5 cars into 1 train would be too long to reliably get through the course.
3. The individual cars are surprisingly long, which will mean a pretty dramatic change in force if they do indeed spin around a central axis. The positive and lateral g's could be pretty intense in the back seats depending on how much the car actually spins/drifts.
4. There are a lot of extra bells and whistles on the car, which is great for the theming, but as we've all seen on other coasters (TT2, Italian Job Stunt Coaster, BTMRR, and others) can prove problematic during operations. What looks great when sitting on the track or in front of a ride's entrance may not be very practical when fittings, bolts, and other fasteners are put under high forces and vibration repetitively as trains cycle. Universal will likely need to have a continuous, rigorous inspection process to make sure all these extra pieces stay secured, or eventually strip them off because it becomes too tedious and pricey to continuously tighten these purely cosmetic pieces.
5. The entry to the coaster appears extremely narrow. I wonder if from an accessibility standpoint that there will be one car on each train that has wider entry areas to allow for mobility-challenged guests to get into and out of the seats. I see what they're going for in this design to make it look as much like a real car as possible, but that narrow entry could be really problematic. I find that the design of the cars on Verbolten provides the best of both worlds with a door-like entry, but a space wide enough to allow disabled guests to board without having to contort their bodies in uncomfortable or impossible positions to get into/out of the seat.
What an expensive ride vehicle
I wonder if the on board soundtrack is going to be like GotG cosmic rewind or HMCMA where you have characters shouting and giving you instructions as you drive. Also, to Russell's 3rd point, maybe they won't spin from the middle excactly, and the axle they spin on will be closer to the back to allow for less intense spinning.
just joining the chorus to say how awesome those ride vehicles are. fabulous work.
Well, that's a literal coaster car! One thing nobody can do is criticize Universal for cutting corners on this attraction, as that's some super impressive detail. It's going to be kind of strange seeing such large cars running along a roller coaster track when most rides are a lot more streamlined, but it definitely will enhance the feel of the attraction both on the ride and from the walkway. And in regard to Russell's comment above, I've seen a lot of parks put a removable side panel on a row in a couple trains to help with accessibility, so I'm guessing something similar will be implemented here.
Looking at the rest of the cars in the hype video (artist's conception of course), they don't appear as long as the first car, which would make sense with modern street-racing cars vs. a 1970 Charger. So not too unlike a regular coaster train where the lead car has a longer front end than the rest. Will be interesting to see how the first car drifts in comparison to the others. Either way this looks to be a big, loud, audacious ride. Perfect for this franchise and its fan base. It will likely have its issues at first, but once worked out, Universal and Intamin will have another hit on their hands. Not since Enos and Turk have we seen a duo crank out hit after hit after hit. Grits and greens strike again!
Universal going "we know, we know, Supercharged sucked as a ride so we're making up for it."
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That train car is fire.