By any measure, the debut season of Universal Studios Florida in 1990 was a disaster.
The park’s three headline attractions – Kongfrontation, Earthquake: The Big One and Jaws – all suffered from crippling technical problems for months. Visitors were furious, and managers were forced to sanction vast numbers of refunds and the handing out of free return tickets. Ambitious attendance forecasts were torn up, and revenue targets were missed by wide margins. Meanwhile, rival Disney looked on in amusement as its own Hollywood-themed park, Disney-MGM Studios (opened a year earlier), quickly proved to be a commercial success.
The damage to Universal Studios Florida’s reputation was immense. Fortunately, just as in the disaster movies that Universal was famous for producing, rescue was on the way.
Doc Brown was coming to town – and he was bringing his time-travelling DeLorean with him.
Back to the Future: The Ride opened in 1991, and proved to be just the smash-hit attraction that Universal Studios Florida needed to recover the ground it has lost the previous year. Over the next 16 years, it entertained millions of guests, taking them on a thrilling adventure through time that most will never forget. Even now, it lives on – in the form of a clone at Universal Studios Japan, and in the form of the ride system that still forms the basis of its Simpsons-themed replacement.
In the latest of our In-Depth Retrospective series looking back at classic, lost rides, we’ll take a leaf from Doc Brown’s book and travel back in time to discover how Back to the Future: The Ride became the most technologically-advanced attraction of its time. We’ll explain exactly how it worked, and recall the ride experience that made it a classic. Finally, we’ll look at what became of the attraction, and how it left a lasting legacy.
Let’s stock up on plutonium for the flux capacitor, and set off back to 1986…
The beginning
In 1981, Universal’s parent company, MCA, had purchased 423 acres of land in Orlando, with the intention of setting up a version of its Hollywood studio tour close to Walt Disney World. To the company’s frustration, however, none of its prospective partners came on board. Five years later, it had still failed to secure the finances needed to get the project off the ground. Even worse, it had stoked a newly-competitive Disney into action. In March 1986, construction work had begun on Disney-MGM Studios – a park that bore a striking resemblance to Universal’s original plans for its Florida property.
Luckily, the fate of Universal’s proposed attraction in the Sunshine State was about to be changed by a very famous, very large ape.
The Florida project was on hold, but that hadn’t stopped some elements of the plans from being revisited as potential additions to the existing Universal Studios Hollywood. Chief among these was a section based around iconic ape King Kong, and by spring 1986, an animatronic version of the legendary movie monster was almost ready to begin terrorizing guests on the tram tour.
Peter Alexander, a former Disney Imagineer and one-time college roommate of Steven Spielberg, was working on the figure in a soundstage on the Hollywood studio’s lower lot. Spielberg (who was involved in the planning for Universal Studios Florida) arrived unannounced, and Alexander offered to show him Kong in action. The movie director was suitably impressed, and said: “You guys are pretty good at this. My friend George Lucas [director of Star Wars] told me only Disney could do this. He just took me on Star Tours at Disney. He said, ‘You screwed up going with Universal. They could never do a Star Tours’”. In Spielberg’s mind, he was already wondering what Universal’s creative team could do with another science-fiction property, the Back to the Future series.
According to Alexander, the next day he was called into a “Spielberg Visit Debrief Meeting” with MCA CEO Sidney Sheinberg. Spielberg had called Sheinberg to express his admiration for the Kong attraction, and Sheinberg was excited. He was even more excited when attendance at Universal Studios Hollywood spiked after Kong’s debut, and more convinced than ever that the Florida project should go ahead. With Chairman Lew Wasserman and Sheinberg still infuriated by Disney’s “theft” of Universal’s plans and inspired by Spielberg’s comments, the Florida project – at that point, “dead as a doornail”, according to Alexander – was revived.
On December 9, 1986 came MCA’s grand announcement: it had found a partner to help develop its Florida project. Cineplex Odeon Corp., a Toronto-based entertainment company 50 percent owned by MCA, would be an equal partner in what would now be known as Universal Studios Florida. Sheinberg was on hand to announce that construction would begin early in 1987, with a planned opening date in 1989. The race with Disney was on, and Sheinberg was defiant: “We have every expectation that we’ll do well. We will have something that takes a back seat to no one’s studio tour.”
Spielberg was along for the ride. In March 1987, MCA announced that the director of Jaws, E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial and a swathe of other hits had signed on as a “creative consultant” for Universal Studios Florida. With George Lucas working on attractions for Disney, the pair – long-term friends, and collaborators on the Indiana Jones series – were now pitted in competition with each other. The announcement brought with it the first hint as to the actual content of the Florida park, with MCA revealing that attractions based on three Spielberg movies would be featured. Sheinberg promised that Spielberg’s involvement would not be superficial: “His participation is with the entire attraction. It’s a relationship not limited to one attraction or to attractions based on his films.”
The deal that tied Spielberg to Universal was extraordinarily lucrative for the director. According to executives with knowledge of the arrangement, under the terms of the agreement Spielberg would collect two percent of the gross revenues from Universal Studios Florida (including tickets and concession sales), and this was designed to continue in perpetuity, such that generations of future Spielbergs would also share in the income.
A real-life disaster
The 1989 deadline was missed – by a wide margin. It wasn’t until March 1990 that Universal began mailing out hundreds of invitations to the grand opening of Universal Studios Florida.
By now, delays and cost overruns had caused the budget for the project to balloon to around $630 million. Even with this level of investment, there was widespread speculation in the press that the park’s rides would not be ready in time for its opening day. Tom Williams was forced to deny these rumors, insisting that only a $40 million simulator ride based on Back to the Future was scheduled to open later, in early 1991.
At 8am on June 7, 1990, Steven Spielberg led more than 50 well-known stars from stretch limousines down a red carpet towards Universal Studios Florida’s entrance. Spielberg was at the head of the line, cutting a filmstrip ribbon with an oversized pair of scissors.
Things began to go wrong even before the first guests arrived for the grand opening. At 4.30am, just hours before Spielberg cut the ribbon, a power outage knocked out the software that managed the Earthquake: The Big One’s special effects.
Things didn’t improve once guests were inside the park. The “talkback” software that managed the interaction between King Kong and the tram holding his victims was still not operating properly, and technicians were forced to trigger the enormous animatronic creature’s movements manually in order to ensure that Kong didn’t snap his hand off.
While Kongfrontation and Earthquake were suffering, Jaws fared even worse. The ride operated sporadically for just two hours before thunderstorms in the afternoon forced it to be shut down for the day. Spielberg and his family were reported to have been among those trapped on the ride.
Disgruntled visitors stormed the park’s Guest Relations department. More than 1,000 received either cash refunds or free tickets for a return visit. The following day, Universal was forced to offer a similar deal: everyone that bought a ticket would automatically receive a free ticket for a future visit.
Universal was optimistic that Earthquake and Jaws would be working on the day after the grand opening. Kongfrontation, they said, would be out action for at least a few days. Their optimism was misplaced.
Universal Studios Florida’s grand opening took place on a Thursday, and as it reached its first weekend, Kongfrontation and Earthquake: The Big One were both closed. Although signs warned that it too would be out of action, Jaws did finally open on the Saturday afternoon. Staff, though, were keen to stress that the runs were mere “technical rehearsals.” At one point, a boat’s skipper was forced to say: “Imagine explosions over there.”
Come July – one of the busiest months of the theme park season – Kongfrontation and Earthquake were still closed, and weren’t expected to be open until the end of that month. Alan Gould, an entertainment industry analyst for brokerage Dean Witter Reynolds, said: “The impression that is left by all this is that you have a company that has a park in California and that spent another full year in planning after Disney-MGM opened and then still wasn’t able to open their park well. You expect a few glitches on opening day, but you don’t expect two of the five major rides not to be working.” Even worse, those two rides were the ones that Universal had built its advertising campaigns around.
Attendance was suffering, and appeared to be well below the level needed to achieve the six million target set by MCA. “They’ve kind of lost the summer,” said Morgan Stanley’s Alan Kassan. “What they might wind up doing is having a very slow first year and then having to rebuild a positive image gradually.” Most agreed that Universal had opened too early in its haste to welcome guests for the summer season.
It seemed that there was a real risk of Universal Studios Florida failing altogether. Could the situation be recovered?
The price of failure
Overcoming the problems would be expensive. Dozens of engineers were working round-the-clock to try and get Kongfrontation, Earthquake and Jaws in working order, and the park faced spending millions on advertising to persuade visitors to return once the rides were up-and-running. With fewer guests than had been expected, money for these activities was saved by slashing employees’ hours.
When they were working, staff were expected to conform to “The Universal Approach”. Detailed in an extensive letter issued to all employees, this outlined how complaints should be handled. “Please do not agree with the guest that we should not have opened on June 7 as advertised,” it stated. “People from around the world committed to vacation plans many months in advance to coincide with the opening of our studio. We couldn’t allow them to arrive only to find our gates locked.” By the end of August, 250 of those staff would find themselves unemployed, with Universal opting to cut its wage bill.
While Universal Studios Florida’s image had been damaged, most did not believe that the impact was irreversible. The problems would “affect attendance at Universal, but this is a 20 or 30-year project,” said Kassan. “In that respect, it is not such a disaster.”
Fortunately, help was on its way…
Doc Brown to the rescue
MCA had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that Universal Studios Florida would have a line-up that matched (and its view surpassed) that of Disney-MGM Studios on its opening day. Even if its opening period had gone more smoothly, plans were already in place to invest still more to maintain momentum during the park’s second year. Now, the battering that the park had received in the press, along with Disney-MGM’s successful debut and expansion plans, made the need for bright, shiny new attractions – ones that operated reliably – even more pressing.
In total, Universal planned to add no fewer than six new shows and one new ride in 1991, with a total price tag of $50 million. Shows based on The Blues Brothers, An American Tail and Ghostbusters were in the pipeline, but the vast majority of that budget would be spent on a single attraction. Having been in planning ever since the Florida project was green-lighted, Back to the Future: The Ride was being put together at the then-staggering cost of $40 million. It had to be good, and it had to work.
Back to the Future: The Ride would be Universal’s answer to Star Tours, the hugely popular simulator attraction at Disneyland that had now been cloned at Disney-MGM Studios. Spielberg, who executive-produced the trilogy of time travel movies upon which it would be based, had challenged Universal’s creative team to top Disney’s creation.
Spielberg felt that Back to the Future, which tells the story of the travels of Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) in a time machine invented by his friend Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), would provide the perfect inspiration for a theme park attraction. “I thought that this one was ride that we couldn’t let get away,” said Universal’s creative consultant. “It has the most interactive opportunities imaginable. We actually place people in a DeLorean [the time machine seen in the movies], and we send them shooting 25 years into the future and countless years into the past. It was a natural ride, I thought.”
Universal would push the boundaries of ride technology to fulfil Spielberg’s vision. Ostensibly, the attraction would be similar to Star Tours: a simulated flight through a fictional universe. However, on a technical level, Universal would approach the project very differently to Disney’s Imagineers. “Our philosophy was that Back to the Future would be the most complicated and technologically advanced attraction ever attempted,” said Terry Winnick, the park’s vice president of special projects and entertainment.
The ride’s plot would revolve around the theft of Doc Brown’s time machine by villainous Hill Valley resident Biff Tannen, the movie’s “bad guy”. Riders would assist Doc Brown by boarding another time machine and chasing Biff through the past. The queue would wind through the Doc’s Institute of Future Technology, with riders being batched into groups before watching a short pre-show during which Doc Brown would explain that on a time travel excursion back to 1955, the young Biff had stowed away in the DeLorean time machine. He was now on the loose, and up to no good. Both Christopher Lloyd and Thomas F. Wilson (who portrayed Biff in the films) reprised their roles, with Biff eventually hijacking the time machine.
After viewing the pre-show, riders would enter small rooms where they would board replicas of the DeLorean. The motor would fire and then a cool fog would envelop them as they flew off into Hill Valley, circa 2015, on the trail of Biff. On their travels, they would pass through an ice age and the Cretaceous period (complete with lava falls and dinosaurs) before finally catching up with Biff and bumping him, appropriately, “back to the future”.
The plot intentionally avoided most of the settings seen in the films, such as the 1955 version of Hill Valley or the Wild West town that was the focus of Back to the Future: Part III. “Rather than going back to the old West and encountering stuff you’d already seen, we wanted to give you some experiences that were more thrilling, more emotional,” explained Terry Winnick, also acting as producer of Back to the Future: The Ride. “What is more terrifying, more threatening, more exciting, than meeting a dinosaur?”
Before capturing the footage required for the ride, the production team built a camera-sized model of the exotic locations. The replica buildings were around three feet tall, allowing for a very high level of detail, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex encountered by riders during one of the key scenes was seven feet tall. With computer technology not yet playing a big role in movie production, the model was used in the filming of most of the scenes seen in the attraction. Stop-motion animation techniques were used to create the special effects.
“We’re gonna need a bigger screen…”
Shot on 70mm film, the four-minute movie would be projected onto an enormous dome-shaped Omnimax screen that would be 80 feet in diameter. The DeLorean ride vehicles could hold eight people each. After riders boarded, they would be hoisted into place in front of the screen, nine feet in the air, by an enormous lift. Once there, the screen would completely surround them, with Universal promising that the only way to avoid the image would be to close your eyes. This contrasted with Star Tours, where riders viewed the outside world through a relatively small viewport at the front of their “spacecraft”.
“Because of the curvature and the quality of the film images, you start to perceive that it’s 3-D,” promised Winnick. More than 300 speakers would pump in the ride’s audio, playing 11 different soundtracks simultaneously.
As with Kongfrontation, the Totally Fun Company worked on the attraction with Universal’s in-house team. Intamin, which had missed out on the bidding for Kongfrontation, won the tender to build the simulators. At the time, the company was the world’s leading supplier of such simulators, with over 50 motion cinemas to its name. In order to try out the ride experience before its construction, the system was tested in the Omnimax Theatre at the Expo ’86 event in Vancouver.
Riders would clamber into the vehicles in separate rooms, to give the impression that they were in individual simulators. In reality, though, 12 cars would be arrayed in front of the screen. There were two identical such screens in the show building, accommodating 24 cars in total.
The DeLorean vehicles sat on hydraulically-activated platforms, or “motion bases”, enabling them to pitch and yaw in synchronization with the film to create the sensation of flying. Each was positioned slightly differently to provide the best possible view of the screen, meaning that the ride was slightly different depending on which vehicle riders were in. Riders could look left or right and see other guests gyrating around in DeLorean vehicles, potentially damaging the immersive effect – but most never noticed, instead assuming that they had the screen all to themselves.
As no simulator had been built on this scale before, Universal was concerned about the impact it would have on riders. “We thought for sure we would get a lot of people throwing up on the ride,” said Rich Costales, vice president of park operations and entertainment. That didn’t happen, but at a doctor’s suggestion water fountains were installed at the exits after it was found that guests were working up a powerful thirst.
Staffing the future
Back to the Future: The Ride would require more employees than any other ride at Universal Studios Florida. 35 would be on duty at all times (by comparison, Kongfrontation had only 18 staff), performing tasks such as managing queues, checking seatbelts and watching monitors. Staff could view riders in the vehicles from a carpeted catwalk seven stories above the ground, from which the vehicles resembled “huge, jitterbugging beans” according to one observer. An attendant stationed in this position could stop the ride at any point if someone tried to climb out or stand up. For all its sophisticated technology, the ride was started by the simple push of a button.
Universal hoped to pin its turnaround on Back to the Future: The Ride, reversing the negative perception of the park caused by its early troubles. “This will be a whole new positive swing for Universal Studios Florida,” said Steve Marble, the ride’s senior project manager.
The company had once again pioneered not just one, but multiple new technologies in the theme park arena. “We wanted to take our guests inside the motion picture screen and let them experience what it feels like to ride in Doc Brown’s car through time,” said Winnick. “To do that, we combined the latest technology in flight simulators, hydraulics, pneumatics, control systems, with live effects like wind and fog, gave them vibration like they’ve never felt before…took all of that and combined it with a spectacular motion picture film, the largest image available in the industry.”
You can take a look at the ride experience in the video above.
The big opening
Given all the technological envelope-pushing that was going on, there was a significant risk of a Jaws-style disaster (the full story of which can be found here). Determined to avoid this, Universal pushed Back to the Future: The Ride back from its originally-scheduled opening date of January 1991 to the spring of that year. The attraction did actually begin hosting riders in January, but remained in “technical rehearsal” for three months, making time travelers of more than 600,000 people during that period. Universal was taking no chances, and declared that the attraction would not be ready for opening until May 2, 1991.
On the big day, the movie’s star, Michael J. Fox, was on hand to try the ride out for himself, as was Mary Steenburgen, who played Doc Brown’s love interest Clara in the final movie. Both were impressed. “You feel as though you’re flying, and that you’re flying through time, looking down into a volcano, and being swallowed by a Tyrannosaurus Rex,” said Steenburger. “It’s just extraordinary the way they combined the movement of the DeLorean and the film footage.” Fox, who would turn 30 that June, commented: “I like the idea of having my own ride. My own ride – like I get to go on it whenever I want.”
The star-studded opening ceremony was reminiscent of Universal Studios Florida’s opening day, but the performance of the ride was not. It worked without a glitch, providing a picture-perfect debut for Universal and prompting analysts to predict that the park would provide more of a competitive threat to Disney. The critical response to the ride was very positive, with Fox himself summing up the prevailing mood: “I’m not getting paid for this. This is the best ride. It’s unbelievable.”
Saved
Image: Universal
Following the successful launch of Back to the Future: The Ride, Universal was bullish about its prospects for 1991. “I think we will have a blockbuster summer,” said general manager Tom Williams. “It puts yesterday’s news in just that category – namely, yesterday’s news. We are moving forward. The past is behind us.”
Analysts agreed. “Universal will be much more competitive this summer than last,” weighed in Alan Gould of Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., a brokerage in New York. “It looks like Disney will have to come up with some new creative rides.” After the struggles of 1990, MCA had put plans for a theme park in Japan on hold – even after it was acquired by its new Japanese owner, Matsushita. Now, brimming with confidence, it revived them. Universal Studios Florida, rather than Universal Studios Hollywood, would form the template for the Japanese outpost.
MCA was struggling overall, as Sidney Sheinberg conceded in November 1991: “Some of the businesses that we’re in are very difficult businesses right now, the most difficult that I’ve ever seen them.” Whereas it had been the black sheep of the corporate family in 1990, Universal Studios Florida was now the one bright spot. Attendance at Universal Studios Hollywood was flat at 4.6 million, but the company claimed that visitors numbers at its Florida sister park were “well above projections”. Though many of those guests had received discounted or free tickets as a result of the previous year’s issues, Universal was bullish enough to raise admission prices by nearly 7 percent to $32.86 for adults and $26.50 for children (including tax).
Universal’s success was seemingly coming at the expense of its great rival. In March 1992, the Wall Street Journal reported an MCA official as claiming that the park had surpassed Disney-MGM Studios’ attendance by several hundred thousand guests in 1991. In total, Universal Studios Florida pulled in 5.9 million guests that year – close to the six million figure that Sidney Sheinberg had originally aimed for. Much of that success was down to Back to the Future: The Ride.
The end
Back to the Future: The Ride continued to be a popular attraction at Universal Studios Florida for many years. However, following a takeover of Universal (which owned a 50 percent stake in the Florida resort) by General Electric in 2004, attendance had plunged and new attraction projects had been put on hold. In contrast, Disney had spent tens of millions on major marketing campaigns, had added the $100 million Expedition Everest roller coaster to Disney’s Animal Kingdom and had boosted Epcot’s line-up with a clone of Disney California Adventure’s Soarin’ flight simulator.
In the media, Universal was characterized as having countered Disney’s investment with cost cuts – an approach designed to maintain profits, but one that would result in long-term decline in a business that requires constant evolution to attract repeat visits. A stinging editorial from the Orlando Sentinel’s Mike Thomas in December 2006 summed up the feelings of many at the time: “The once mighty Universal Studios, the park that put Disney-MGM Studios to shame, is being neglected to death…I fear it is only a matter of time before neighboring Islands of Adventure [opened in 1999] is dragged down with it.”
Thomas pointed out that many of Universal Studios Florida’s rides, including headliners Back to the Future: The Ride, Terminator 2: 3-D and Jaws, were based on aging properties. “This is your dad’s theme park,” he continued. “Disney is out to bury Universal, and Universal is not fighting back… Cutting back and extracting more profits is not a viable long-term strategy, not when there is a Mouse nearby that is much scarier than any shark.”
The days of Back to the Future: The Ride were numbered. The attraction operated at half-capacity for the first three months of 2007, with one of its two huge Omnimax screens being closed. It was then abruptly shut down altogether on March 30. Rumors immediately began circulating that, having considered a dark ride based around The Simpsons before building Men in Black: Alien Attack, Universal would now repurpose the simulator attraction as a showcase for the dysfunctional cartoon family.
The Simpsons producers Matt Groening and James L. Brooks confirmed the partnership at a tourism convention in California on April 24, although the announcement was overshadowed by ongoing rumors about Universal’s yet-to-be-announced Harry Potter deal (which resulted in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter opening at Islands of Adventure in 2010). Planning had already been well underway for over a year, and Universal Studios Hollywood’s version of the ride would undergo the same metamorphosis as its sister ride in Florida.
The jerky actions of the Back to the Future simulators would be toned down to offer a smoother ride, but the ride experience would be largely left untouched. The refit would cost around $30 million, which would cover the replacement of the projection system, the installation of new hydraulics and the production of the video footage.
The images would be projected onto two enormous, 80-foot metal screens, with 12 vehicles arrayed in front of each. Four new digital projectors provided by Sony would produce the high-resolution images at eight gigabits per second, using a custom-made semi-circular lens to ensure that there would be no distortion on the dome-shaped screens. Each of the updated cars would boast 12 speakers, while the theaters themselves would host 90 speakers. LED lighting would be used throughout to save an estimated 662,000 watts per day.
The conversion of Back to the Future: The Ride into The Simpsons Ride took a little over a year, with the replacement making its official debut on May 15, 2008, having been in “technical rehearsals” for almost a month. It opened to a largely positive reception, and reached one million riders on July 14, 2008 – achieving the milestone faster than any other attraction in the resort’s history.
Look out for a Doc Brown cameo in one of the pre-ride video sequences, attempting to borrow money to save the Institute of Future Technology.
The legacy
Universal has a track record of not simply discarding its past innovations when developing new attractions. Instead, it absorbs the lessons and builds upon them.
When Disneyland opened Indiana Jones Adventure: Temple of the Forbidden Eye during the development of Islands of Adventure, it set a new bar for the standard of dark rides. Universal had originally intended for Islands of Adventure’s Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction to be a simple dark ride, with a chain of cars passing by a film of some sort. After Indiana Jones’ debut in 1995, it felt it needed to up the ante. “We always try to make things a little higher, a little faster, a little bit more dynamic, so we have something to market technologically,” said Universal Creative’s Ben Lovelace. “Universal pushes the envelope.”
For inspiration on how to top Disney’s creation, Universal looked to its own attractions. The company had just finished work on Terminator 2: 3-D, which had combined 3-D on-screen action with live sets in new ways. Also analyzed was Back to the Future: The Ride, which combined the simulation of motion with huge projected images. The plan was to take the best elements of both attractions, and place them into a dark ride setting. Lovelace describes the goal: “In Spider-Man, it was combining all of that together on a vehicle that moves on a track. Combining every technology we could think of in one show.”
The critical reception justified Universal’s risky approach. “Every dollar they spent on it shows,” said Allen Ambrosini, editor trade magazine of At-The-Park. “It’s at the top of the game. It’s way above anything else out there.”
The Spider-Man system had built upon Back to the Future’s, and Universal’s next iteration of dark rides – Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey – would in turn build upon Spider-Man’s. The ride’s four-seater “enchanted benches” would each be mounted on a robotic arm, which in turn would be mounted on a busbar track. On Spider-Man, the vehicles stop in front of individual projection screens. However, there was a danger that taking the same approach would chronically limit the capacity of the Harry Potter ride, and potentially enable riders to catch a glimpse of neighboring benches.
The solution was to abandon the Spider-Man approach, and instead employ multiple parabolic screens. These would move along in unison with the robotic arms, so that each group of riders had a screen to themselves (but the ride vehicles would never stop moving). Each projection section of the ride would be equipped with a huge turntable, carrying three of the gigantic screens. These would be large enough that riders would not be able to see the edges, enabling them to seamlessly fly off into the physical sets at the end of each video section. In effect, Universal had created a mini-version of the Back to the Future experience, and slotted it right into a traditional dark ride with physical sets.
Share your memories
So, then, Back to the Future: The Ride lives on – in the form of The Simpsons Ride, in elements of the groundbreaking attractions that superseded it, and in the form of the surviving clone at Universal Studios Japan.
It also lives on in the memories of all those who time travelled on it. If you’re one of them, why not share your experiences of Back to the Future: The Ride in the comments section below?
You can learn more about the creation of Universal Orlando’s rides and attractions by reading Universal Orlando: The Unofficial Story, the first full-length history of the resort.
