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Expertly peeled eyes will notice the aerial footage was shot before the park ever opened, with a big green hole where An American Tail Theatre should’ve been. By the earliest known 1991-copyrighted cut of Experience the Magic of Movies, the theatre had already been replaced by Beetlejuice’s Graveyard Revue, another curveball since it was added in the summer of 1992. That same footage survives into the 1996 version, where the showcased T2-3D: Battle Across Time is an empty field behind the Hollywood facades. The park’s primordial off-model Beetlejuice still makes a cameo, harassing tourists in a business-casual Hawaiian shirt and trench coat.

Front gate from above
Image: Universal

But that’s the trivia you have to know you’re looking for. There are bigger anachronisms in plain sight. The Ghostbusters Spooktacular was overhauled in 1993 with a new preshow and expanded story involving Louis Tully shilling franchise opportunities. The 1994 cut still covers the show’s earlier incarnation, with a Universal tour guide showing off the movie set as it comes to life. Though the 1996 cut removes that segment entirely since the attraction closed the same year, it still sneaks in a shot of Gozer and a still from the film behind Forsythe as he talks about the “wizard’s wand” of special effects. The Boneyard and the forgotten Production Tram Tour are scrubbed entirely from the 1996 release, as are any references to active production they could easily remove. In a surprising bit of continuity, John Forsythe returns in the same suit and tie to introduce T2-3D and A Day in the Park With Barney against green screen.

Ghostbusters vs Stay-Puft
Image: Universal

The tale of the tape is, well, in the tape. The original 1991 release runs feature-length at 75 minutes. The 1994 release runs about 70. The final 1996 release doesn’t even break an hour at 55 minutes. Universal had survived with a line-up that remained mostly unchanged since the tardy addition of Back to the Future: The Ride. The Ghostbusters Spooktacular was the first major loss, T2-3D the first billboard-worthy addition. The rest of those twenty minutes lost were casualties of Hollywood East. Universal Studios Florida wouldn’t be a national hub of film and TV production, but it didn’t need to be anymore. The most telling leftover in the ’96 cut is Screen Test Home Adventure hiding in the background of a faked stunt outside Kongfrontation. It closed a few weeks before the tape reached gift shops. The following year it would be replaced by the Islands of Adventure Preview Center.

Loading Back to the Future: The Ride
Image; Universal

The blurry lines between each version of Universal Studios Florida: Experience the Magic of Movies are as much an editing shortcut as a mission statement. Trawl any forum and you’ll find threads dedicated to each and every fallen Disney attraction, but you’ll probably only find one for the collective “Old Universal.” That’s not a shortcoming of the line-up - it doesn’t get much more memorable than a four-story-tall robotic ape - but a matter of intent.

The ET Adventure
Image: Universal

More than its rides, which may or may not have been working that day anyhow, Universal Studios Florida sold itself on attitude. Big, maybe brash, but always with the electric pulse of a rolling camera. Whenever I try to explain what the park (singular at the time) was like to friends only familiar with a post-Potter Universal Orlando, this tape (singular because I only have the ’94 cut) is the best I can do. The attractions were each unprecedented in their own ways and, to borrow a filmmaking phrase, put all that money on the screen. The world’s largest Pepper’s ghost effect. A nightly speedboat chase with blank-loaded submachine guns. Monsters, two Dan Aykroyds, and Marilyn Monroe walking around like they own the place. No matter when you tuned in across the early ‘90s, Universal Studios Florida was a place that defied description and justifiable existence. Reckless to theme park standards and reverent to silver screen legends in equal measure. The spirit right there in its original neon marquee - potently of its time and timeless.

Frankenstein with fan
Image: Universal

It was always supposed to be fleeting, successful enough to revise, remake, and reboot. By the end of the decade, Universal Studios Florida would never be the same. In his closing send-off, John Forsythe provides a perfect eulogy:

“First, we watched the movies. Now at Universal Studios Florida, the illusion has become reality. As we go into the future with increasing ingenuity of technological effects, no limits can be placed on the possibilities of tomorrow. For this is Universal Studios Florida. This is fantasy and magic. And now, let’s go ride the movies.”

Seek out this tape. Watch it. Enjoy it responsibly because it may be the only first-hand historical document we ever get on the subject. Feel it, if you can. Then next time you walk the falsified streets of Hollywood at Universal Studios Florida, pay attention to the stars on the ground. There’s one that might inspire some of that old spirit.

John Forsythe star
Image: Universal

 

 
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