Universal's 'Fast' failure shows importance of fresh starts
The upcoming closure of Universal Studios Florida's Fast and Furious ride - the first one - reminds us of an important lesson in theme park design. The most valuable element in a new attraction just might be a blank sheet of paper.
Fast & Furious Supercharged is closing at Universal Studios Florida next month, with its final day coming August 16. The closure follows the removal of the original Fast & Furious Supercharged encounter on Universal Studios Hollywood's Studio Tour last year.
Universal created a purpose-built space for Supercharged in Hollywood, rewriting its Studio Tour script to set up the encounter. Supercharged used the same 360-3D technology that Universal first employed on the King Kong encounter that opened in 2010.
But in Florida, Universal did not start with a blank sheet of paper to bring the Fast & Furious franchise to Orlando. Instead, Universal chose to "reimagine" a former attraction. For the second time.
Earthquake: The Big One opened with the park in 1990. Like Supercharged, Earthquake was a west-coast transplant, a stand-alone attraction based on an encounter from Hollywood's Studio Tour. In Florida, Universal supplemented the tram encounter with a preshow that explained many of the practical effects used in the 1974 Universal film "Earthquake." As that movie faded from most park-goers memories, Universal decided to change the ride's theme. In 2007, Earthquake closed to become Disaster!: A Major Motion Picture Ride...Starring You! (Theme parks love exclamation points!)
Disaster ignored the 1974 film in favor of a pretend film being shot by a director played on screen by Christopher Walken. The conceit to get park guests on the tram vehicles driving into the mayhem was that they were background actors for the director's new disaster film. It was a silly and cute excuse that leaned into Universal's identity as a film studio. But Universal is also a business that wants to "achieve synergies" (cash in) on its popular franchises, so in 2015 Disaster closed to make way for the east coast installation of Supercharged.
It's one thing to clone an attraction from the west coast. But Supercharged used a completely different show effects system than Earthquake. All the two encounters had in common in Hollywood was the tram.
In California, the original script for Supercharged portrayed the Fast & Furious characters not as actors in a movie, but as real people in real life - a departure from normal practice on the tour. Eventually, the unreliability of the Supercharged encounter in Hollywood led Universal to strip all the scripted build-up and context for the encounter, lest it not be available when a tram arrived. That helped undercut the encounter's appeal.
In Florida, Universal also chose to portray the Supercharged experience as real rather than studio make-believe. Perhaps with a blank sheet of paper, Universal Creative might have envisioned a story and a set-up than would convince Universal Studios Florida guests that they were stepping into the world of The Fast & The Furious. However, saddled with the Earthquake/Disaster infrastructure and media from the Hollywood encounter, reskinned to look like San Francisco instead of LA, Universal's options were limited.
Enter "the party bus."
Yes, there was a party scene in the garage that the Hollywood Studio Tour entered in California. And yes, that was perhaps the weakest, most non-sensical scene in the entire encounter. But Universal seized on that to justify loading Florida guests onto a party bus for, well, a party in the Fast gang's garage.
If Universal had found a way to harness the power of all the eye-rolling that this decision inspired, the company might never again have had to pay an electricity bill. Stripped of the original Hollywood set-up and stuck with a lame premise in Florida, Fast & Furious Supercharged elicited immediate hostile reaction from fans in Orlando. With the Internet spreading that negativity, hostility to the encounter expanded back in California, too.
The reaction was so bad that even Universal Creative's own Thierry Coup had to say something, famously remarking at the Orlando IAAPA Expo that installing Supercharged in Florida had been a mistake. Give credit to Universal. The company learned from its mistake and gave Universal Creative a blank sheet of paper to design and all-new and far more appropriate to franchise Fast & Furious attraction - Fast & Furious Hollywood Drift.
Now that coaster is still not open in Hollywood, in advance of its announced opening in Orlando next year. But fans are awaiting Hollywood Drift with as much anticipation as they had antipathy for Supercharged.
Not every attempt to retheme an attraction fails. But reimagining like what Universal did to Earthquake work only when the new version corrects flaws or errors or irrelevance in the original. I would argue that Disaster did that. Supercharged did not.
So what will replace Supercharged in Orlando? Hopefully, a project that starts with a blank sheet of paper for Universal Creative... and a bulldozer to clear the site.
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Replies (16)
What an utterly useless attraction this is in every respect. Go to the park on any given day and you can walk straight on it. The fans gave their opinion from the onset by constantly shunning it after doing it once. Universal don't get it horribly wrong very often but with this abomination unfortunately they did. Whatever they do to replace it it will be an improvement.
Is it also a lesson about expectations? That rides that promise to be “ fast” and “furious” should indeed be both fast and furious?
As much hate as F&FSC attracted, the only time we rode it became one of my favorite theme park memories. In the second pre-show, there was a girl on stage who ad-libbed her way through the presentation.
She was hilarious.
She played her character as someone terminally bored at work ("I got this job off Craig's list"), who couldn't be bothered to even stand up -- electing to remain flopped in an office chair ("Can I get a raise"?)
This young lady delivered theme park GOLD!
It was never a great ride. It was a lot of space for an underwhelming attraction. And we lost Bettlejuice and Disaster for it. I thought it got a little too much hate, though. It was just OK. But so are a lot of other attractions. They all can't be 300 million dollar blockbusters. With that being said, its time has certainly come and gone at this point.
How about a Frank Kincaid ride to replace this.... (Some will get that reference)
The Preshow was the best part of it. The cars, music and the ad-libbed....
There is not a ton of space there though....
The issue with this attraction was never its conceit or IP. Supercharged failed because Universal phoned it in. I think as part of the USH Tram Tour, the F&F segment was fine, particularly as an improvement on the silly dancing robots that preceded it. The drive-thru 360 sound stage worked fine for the tram and the subpar images and mediocre effects were accepted because they were made to fit to the tram experience.
However, when Universal chose to create a custom experience for USF, they did very little to improve the graphics or ride system to make guests feel like they were getting anything better than what the compromised experience was in Hollywood. UC essentially started with an already nerfed experience designed around the limitations of the studio tram and instead of trying to see what could be done if they didn't have those rigid constraints, they built those limitations into the new attraction in Florida. For me, the worst part of the experience was the poor quality of the images, particularly the CGI used for the individual human characters. It's fine to CGI backgrounds, props, and other objects that aren't the highest quality, because people will usually accept some minor imperfections with those images. But when you start using CGI for people, those images better be as perfect as possible, and what they did with Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel's character) is borderline laughable. It's almost like UC was deliberately trying to be campy with the attraction, and perhaps that should have been the tact here when they realized the CGI presentation of Toretto was going to look so bad.
I actually think the queue and the insertion of live actors/team members into various scenes are both well done. West Coast Racers shows a clear inspiration from the Supercharged queue, and the early looks at the Hollywood Drift queue show a lot of similarities from the USF attraction. The inclusion of actors perhaps was the best part of the attraction, but it raised the bar and expectation for the ride that it could never live up to, and ultimately left guests disappointed when they stepped off the party bus.
I feel that if Universal really wanted to and put their minds and hearts into creating a fun and exciting F&F dark ride, they could have taken the USH tram segment and truly "supercharged" it. Instead, they just went through the motions and did a mediocre job with a couple of cool/clever ideas sprinkled in, resulting in an attraction that couldn't even last a decade in a destination park.
I agree with others that this was okay as part of a tour but as a stand-alone, major fail. Just lazy and slapdash when Disaster was a fun experience. The Superstar Limo of USO.
The best part of the rides- the queue- was already being dismantled for props, so I'm glad it died early.
Now they can start making way for the new Jaws attraction...right guys? Right?
From the attraction's Wikipedia article: "During an interview session at the IAAPA Expo 2021 regarding the creation of Fast & Furious: Supercharged, Universal Creative Senior Vice President and CCO Thierry Coup stated that the approval of the Florida attraction was the 'biggest mistake of [his] career'".
@Russell: The FIFA fans LOVED Buc-ee's. Toss it into Universal's parks and it will be a gatecrasher for international tourists!
Even worse than VillainCon ... LOL
They also loved Hidden Valley Ranch, but I don't see theme parks running to stockpile the condiment in all their eateries just to boost international tourists.
If your Wikipedia reference is indeed true, I would applaud Universal's honesty and humility, something you'd never hear from Disney regarding a failed attraction.
Russell, ha ha ha. Remember, if they do, Disney only ever have small ball failures. Sorry, THC!
@Russell: I remembered that quote because Robert Niles did a TPI article on it back in 2021 ("Universal Executive Joins Fans, Roasts Fast & Furious Ride"
November 17, 2021).
And if NBC/Universal were so honest they would address the Buc-ee's rumor everyone's talking about.
NEXT!
I love the fact everyone whines and complains about this ride, yet it was always packed. Always. Yeah, it was a goofy premise, but it was ice cold in there, and the ride was still fun.
Sure it was far from Forbidden Journey, but I thought it was fun. I did not want me to ride it multiple times a day, but I found it entertaining.
Projection technology has come a long way, and they need to get Jaws back in the park…
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This couldn’t have come soon enough! Buh-bye Supercharged! You were undoubtedly the worst attraction in Universal’s history…and that’s saying something!