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The end

Back to the Future The Ride poster

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.”

 3-D

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 Simpsons Ride

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.

Doc Brown

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

Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye

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.”

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man

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.”

Hogwarts

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

 The Ride

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.

 
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Comments

I am a huge fan of the Trilogy and was sad to see the ride go. It was definitely dated and most new visitors haven't even seen the BTTF movie(s) so I understand why they changed it to the Simpsons. The Simpson ride is great but I will miss the BTTF ride. Now I have a reason to go to Japan to relive the ride with my daughter.

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