The stars

Universal rolled out the red carpet for its grand opening, sparing no expense for a truly star-studded gala. With more than 50 names on its roster, the park was filled with Hollywood royalty. Just a small sampling of the invited guests included Jimmy Stewart, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Perkins, Sylvester Stallone, and Charlton Heston.

The first murmurs of dissatisfaction among park guests were heard early in the morning. One at a time, white limos rolled into the Hollywood section of the park, and the celebrity guests disembarked. They made their way up a red carpet to gather on a makeshift stage for the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Unfortunately, only a chosen few had any real view of the proceedings. The stage was surrounded by grandstands occupied by media and VIPs, while the rest of us “commoners” lined the sidewalks a good distance back from the festivities. We were able to catch glimpses from our vantage point to the side of one of the grandstands, and even hear three or four words of Jimmy Stewart’s speech. For the most part, though, we had to settle for watching the limos go by. We couldn’t see the ribbon cutting at all. The general consensus among the gathered crowd was that TV monitors should have been mounted strategically to let us see and hear what was going on.

Universal made up for this in some ways later in the day, when some of the celebrities gave talks and signed autographs at select spots throughout the park. Unfortunately, these were not advertised, and communication was poor. We happened into a few events by simply being in the right place at the right time, and I managed to get Michael J. Fox’s autograph by running alongside the golf cart that was spiriting him away. Overall, though, the celebrity encounters felt very overhyped and under delivered.

The attractions 

Above is a 75-minute promotional video released by Universal in 1990. To get a feel for what the park was like in those days, I encourage you to take a look.

Universal Studios Florida actually opened with 12 attractions, not a huge number, but double the six that opened with Disney-MGM Studios. The park had a heavy emphasis on not only allowing guests to “Ride the Movies” (its long-running tag line), but also to experience the behind the scenes secrets of filmmaking. Consequently, five of its opening-day attractions were theater shows, one was a production tram tour of the park and soundstages, and one was a walk-through tour of Nickelodeon Studios. There were only five rides on the opening day roster. Of those, the so-called Big 3 - Earthquake: The Big One Kongfrontation and Jaws - all opened in Technical Rehearsals, which meant that they could and did close down without warning throughout the day.

All nine of the remaining attractions were extremely well-conceived and were well received by park guests. The lineup included: Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies, Animal Actors, E.T. Adventure, The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera, Ghostbusters, “Murder She Wrote” Post Production, and The Phantom of the Opera Horror Make-up Show, in addition to the aforementioned Production Tour and Nickelodeon Studios. What was then the world’s largest Hard Rock Café was connected to the park via a guitar neck bridge from the back of World Expo (where Woody Woodpecker’s KidZone is today). Along the way, park guests could view the Psycho House and Bates Motel, built especially for that year’s in-park filming of Psycho IV: The Beginning.

The technical meltdowns

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.

As the Big 3 continued to close for long stretches, the queues for everything else grew exponentially. Adding to the problem was the reality that then, as now, theme park visitors wanted to see the headliners. Universal had gone all-out with a promotional blitz featuring Kongfrontation, Earthquake, and Jaws, ticketholders had paid good money to see them, and they simply weren’t cooperating. By mid-afternoon, tempers were rising along with the temperatures.

So what went wrong? Why couldn’t Universal get its headliner attractions working reliably? The answers are highly technical, and blame could be laid at the feet of people across the board. What it all really came down to, though, is that each of those attractions was a first of its kind in one way or another.

Kongfrontation presented a realistic attack by a 30 foot ape, culminating in a near-drop into the East River. Earthquake was like Disney-MGM’s Catastrophe Canyon on steroids, placing guests frighteningly close to derailed subway cars, a falling propane truck, explosions, and 60,000 gallons of dumping water…and that’s after they survived the special effects on the soundstage! Jaws put park guests in the water with a demented Great White shark bent on destruction, who actually put the bite on the boat.

These were major attractions doing things that had previously been unimaginable, and it took some time (and in Jaws’ case, a complete three-year redesign) to get it right.

Of course, no explanation excuses what happened that day. The company made a promise to the public, and it failed to deliver on that promise. Even worse was the lack of communication. Universal might have covered itself legally by placing big “Technical Rehearsal” signs outside of each headliner attraction, but it owed a little bit more to its paying guests.

As my father and I made our way around the park that day, we tried to ask different employees what was going on with the headliner attractions, and everyone we asked seemed to have a different answer. We spent better than two hours camped out in front of Kongfrontation and Earthquake respectively, because rumor had it that the attraction *might* open relatively soon.

We were lucky enough to ride both of them that day, but even when the doors opened the process was hugely disorganized. Outside of each attraction, team members had been actively discouraging the waiting masses from forming a line, instead trying fervently to make us go away. It appeared that the employees dealing with the crowds had little or no communication with the team inside the building, because at both attractions, the employees seemed shocked and ill-prepared when the doors opened.

So as you might expect, mob rule became the order of the day, as large numbers of hot, hungry, cranky, tired guests who had been waiting for hours, afraid to run for a snack or bathroom break for fear of missing their chance to ride, all tried to make it through the doors before they closed again. To my knowledge, no one was trampled, but the free for all felt a bit alarming at times.