Universal sets summer debut for new Fast & Furious coaster

The recent testing definitely got people excited for a opening perhaps in time for Spring Break (late March/early April). My fingers are crossed for an opening at least before early-mid June since we're planning a SoCal trip around the USMNT opening World Cup game at SoFi on June 12th.

If this were "Fast & Furious: Hollywood Rush," it would be open by now. It's the novel drifting effect that seems to be the challenge, as so many technical innovations are.

If what I've been told is accurate, apparently the internal target for this one was early April, but they've been encountering quite a bit of difficulty with the trains and Intamin told them in mid-January that they weren't confident in meeting the timeline. Supposedly the new target is late June, with technical rehearsals beginning sometime in May if the attraction is signed off by that point. Definitely not unusual for a prototype like this to run into issues during testing, but it's unfortunate that the ride is going to wind up being over a year later than initially intended.

Superficially at least the tech for this ride looks very similar to that used on Disney's Guardians of the Galaxy coaster. Is there a material difference that is causing issues with this coaster?

It's a first-of-its-kind intamin- it's gonna be delayed.

This looks Awesome...

Sounds and cars drifting on a coaster.

@Bryn - GotG:CR had a prototype track that Disney used to develop the technology used to rotate the cars, which I believe are modifications to track/trains originally developed by Vekoma (at least that's what RCDB credits the coaster as), but with significant modifications with patented technology from WDI. Mack has been working on motorized spinning for a quite a while now with Euro-Mir being the original prototype, which opened in 1997 (and was announced last fall that it would be replaced).

This is the first attempt from Intamin to create a controlled full-circuit spinning coaster. Previously, Intamin had its Surfrider model, which rotated the train as it went back and forth along a u-shaped track as well as the Ultra-surf, which rotates 2 circular sets of seats while a static train cycles back and forth along the track. It is understandable that they are encountering some hiccups even though the trains have been testing for nearly 2 months now, but I am a bit surprised that they're having so much trouble with something that isn't that novel of a concept in 2026.

FWIW, Premier had hinted at attempts to create "drifting" coaster cars when they installed what was originally called "Italian Job Stunt Coaster" attractions in 2005/06 at Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, and Kings Dominion (now known as Backlot/Queen City Stunt Coaster), but the cars don't actually drift on the portion of the track that swerves back and forth by police cars - I assume the idea was to have something similar to how 7DMT tips back and forth, putting each car on an axle that would allow it to rotate slightly around tight turns, but that concept was never brought to fruition in the final design.

I do think executing these drifting maneuvers is pretty complicated, especially since the motions are being managed and not "free spinning", so it's critical for those rotations to be perfect every time to prevent forces from feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Disney indicated that they went through tons of testing on the prototype track long before GotG:CR's track at EPCOT was complete to get a feel for how the spinning would impact the experience. Also, I'm guessing that being fully enclosed helps that coaster to fool the senses when riders are in full darkness as opposed to F&FHD, which is completely out in the open.

Russell, there are a few inaccuracies with your post regarding Intamin.

The first Intamin coaster that utilized controlled rotation was actually a previous Universal project, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts. For that attraction, Universal Creative was chiefly involved in the design work, with Intamin serving more in an engineering and manufacturing capability. Hence, while they didn't pioneer the vehicles themselves, they were still the ones who put them together and ensured that they worked.

Using what they learned from that project, Intamin developed their own controlled rotation technology and debuted it on Objectif Mars at Futuroscope in France. On that coaster, the vehicles rotate while traveling through a dark ride section similar to the way Escape from Gringotts's trains behave, then are released to free spin during the coaster portion of the attraction. Unfortunately, this design was problematic and never caught on. Intamin revised their design and debuted it on Uncharted at PortAventura in Spain, which features controlled rotation throughout the course. Parc Asterix in France is currently building a new coaster for 2028 that will use the same technology as that ride.

For Hollywood Drift, the platform is similar to what Intamin has used on those attractions, but it has been modified to run on an extreme high-intensity coaster rather than the family-friendly coaster/dark ride hybrid attractions on which it has been applied in the past. As a result, the rotation needs to be much more precise than past projects to ensure all forces match up with how they are intended to be experienced, and it is also necessary to account for the variations in ride speed that come with a large outdoor attraction exposed to the elements. The rotation aspect is also a condition of the attraction in order to mitigate noise concerns from neighbors to the park, so it is not possible to open the ride without that feature fully implemented. On a technical level, it is indeed similar (though not identical) to what Disney and Vekoma developed for Cosmic Rewind, but it is being applied to a much more aggressive thrill ride, and that's causing much of the complications with ironing out all the kinks that don't show up prior to on-site testing.