The famed theme park set in a working movie studio aims to reflect our modern entertainment industry. What are its best and worst attractions?
The strength of Universal Studios is its constraints. This is a theme park set in a working movie studio. While that means space is at a premium, it creates a lively, “only in SoCal” energy that no other theme park can match.Ranking the rides and attractions at Disneyland and California Adventure from best to worst is hard — but not impossible. Here is the ultimate Disneyland ride ranking.
By the mid-1970s, the Studio Tour would begin to reshape the modern theme park industry, not only ushering Universal into the field but recentering the entire medium as one that would be based around film and television franchises — intellectual property, or “IP,” in industry-speak. It’s a bit chaotic when one rides for the first time and is still getting acquainted with the attraction’s layout and its controls, but it can start to feel natural on the second ride-through. That’s because we aim by looking, simply focusing on what and where we want to toss a shell. And augmented reality combined with built sets allows the game to come to our world rather than placing us in an attraction that moves us among screens.
While based on the film and featuring its characters, prior knowledge isn’t needed. This isn’t a “ride the movie” sort of experience so much as one that wants to give us weird, colorful scenarios to imagine our own storylines.
A dragon, captured in CGI cinematics in one juncture, appears in the flesh — well, if theme park creations had flesh — and lurches toward riders in the next. Though the ride features appearances from the cast of the films, what lingers are the physical elements rather than the virtual ones. When all is said and done, there are around 55 pyrotechnic detonations and our heroine survives a number of close calls with the enemy. But more important, Waterworld leans into Universal’s movie magic history. After all, what would a theme park at a working studio be without a show dedicated to stunts and special effects?Throughout Super Nintendo World there are blocks. And those blocks can be hit.
There’s a mini show, tucked into Ollivanders wand store, in which tricks of the light and clever changes in the surroundings — shelves that collapse and then reassemble, drawers that wildly fly open — are designed to showcase the illusion of magic. It’s lightly mystical, and the space, outfitted like a cluttered library dedicated to wands, transports us to an old-world nook where sorcery feels plausible.
The bad: This ride is pure commotion. We’re essentially watching a movie but being whiplashed back and forth and side to side while doing so. Get used to the sound of screeching tires. Where we are from moment to moment becomes difficult to follow. At one point, a robot, Devastator, nearly eats us, but somehow we escape the blades. And depending on one’s tolerance for screen-based attractions, this fictional city may as well be called Motion Sickness, U.S.A.
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