Defunctland: The History of Jaws: The Ride

salutations my name is Kevin perjurer and welcome to another edition in defunct land for background flash context on this series please visit the purge comm with the link below today we will be attempting to resurrect our first two non-disney attraction jaws the ride that operated in Universal Studios Florida from 1990 to 2012 this is also our first viewer suggested musician to the park so thank you to cinematic psycho productions for the comment to all of you Disney fanatics that don't care about Universal Studios stick with me because there will be plenty of Disney history read throughout the story so let's get into it in the mid-1950s Universal who at the time was owned by multimedia company MCA completely refurbished the Universal Studios tour creating the beginning of Universal Studios Hollywood as we know it today this put them in direct competition with other LA based amusement parks Disneyland as Universal Studios Hollywood continue to add additions to their park including a jaws encounter during the studio tour MCA kept a close eye on Disney when word got around that Disney was planning on operating a new theme park in Florida MCA followed closely behind with a new studio tour in Orlando in an attempt to attract some of the tourists that would be traveling to Walt Disney World this began the ongoing feud between Universal Studios and Disney I won't die fully into the feud as I would be touching on the history of future tooth uncle and attractions but just to give you an idea yeah they're basically the same thing so disney-mgm Studios began construction in 1985 obviously angering Universal as Disney had copied many aspects of the plan and already existing part however luckily for universal and MCA they had recently found a developer for the oil and also found a creative partner Steven Spielberg that's right if you've watched the first episode of the fungal end you'll remember that George Lucas was heavily involved in the development of attractions for Disney at this time and if you don't already know George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are very close friends who found themselves in competition with one another in the late 1980s due to this feud Universal decided not to make their Lando Park the same as their Hollywood tram to or out of fear being accused of copying Disney they decided to instead focus more on film based attractions such as confrontation and jaws the ride the creative head of Universal Studios Florida was former Disney Imagineer and Steven Spielberg's college roommate Peter Alexander Universal had no experience creating epic attractions like Disney's so the management was worried about the concept of the Florida Park Alexander spearheaded the ride and ride and show engineering agreed to produce it the first version of the ride costs thirty million dollars to make in the late 1980 which factoring in inflation yeah it was expensive and the results were interesting the original jaws ride took guests on a pontoon boat captained by a employee who would guide the boat on a tour of Anna the town and John and shockingly the guest spot a shark shark the shark wouldn't stock you for the rest of the ride even appearing in the boathouse that you're hiding out in in the first version of the ride at one point the robot shark would actually take a bite out of the boat and attempt to spin this will have been amazing except for it almost never works correctly like the robot made for the movie Jaws the Jaws ride sharks experienced a variety of problems first sometimes the robot shark would not lunge out of the water to grab the boat second if it did the robot shark teeth would sometimes damage the boat for some reason they used real shark teeth in the finale of the original ride the skipper would shoot the shark with a grenade launcher it would then explode and chunks of shark would fly out of the water they would fly out of a small air cannon and then will be filtered back in and recirculated the Sharks were guided by computers and could swim at 20 feet per second it was an impressive ride but did it work as they had planned no the answer is No [Music] as we stroll through the streets of Amity this little New England village seems like any seaside resort in summer young men crawling around the shooting gallery people basking in the Sun crowds taking photographs are a great white shark great white shark but this is a movie set and this is where jaws turns an elemental fear of the water into screaming terror but today the sea is calm and a good day for a boat ride [Music] [Applause] [Applause] disney-mgm Studios opened on May 1st 1989 and a year later Universal Studios Florida opened on June 7 1992 a was a star-studded event celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone Steven Spielberg and Bill Cosby were in attendance the opening was a huge success for people that liked to watch everything go wrong I hope it's cut that's the last thing don't we rehearse with the power went out just hours before the opening many of the attractions automation systems were operating and jaws had to shut down due to a thunderstorm after a few hours of operation Ethan Spielberg was rumoured to be stuck on the ride during the time the following few days of opening did not go much better jaws was still not operating correctly one skipper was quoted as saying imagine explosions over there these problems would continue with the ride at times Universal would inform guests in the morning that jaws would not be open that day regardless of whether there was or not Universal tried to stay positive about the ride but it became apparent that it wasn't operating properly on top of this they would be faced with a lawsuit as during one voyage a guest fell off the boat and into the water with jaws he was on a family trip with his children that were obviously mortified that their father would be eaten worse he found one of the 10 feet deep areas where the Sharks are held the other areas of the ride were only four feet deep if you haven't figured it out already this means that he was incredibly close to the mechanics of the ride he even recalled that the shark was swimming right toward him when the employees managed to get him back on the boat the other guests claps thinking it was all just part of the show he sued Universal for 1 million dollars this along with the fact that the ride shut down almost daily helped Universal come to the conclusion that it was time to drastically change the ride the original version of Jaws closed after only two and a half months of operation it is safe to say that Universal and MCA were mad they sued Wright and show engineering for not designing the ride properly ride and show claims that their handiwork was not at fault and at Universal did not give them enough time ride and show even said that they were looking forward to the case so that they could prove that Universal messed up and not them they later settled out of court with ride and show commenting basically Universal didn't have any experience with a ride like this if we had built something like this for Disneyland Disneyland maintenance would have taken it over and made it work oh no they didn't Universal was now determined to get jaws operating correctly as soon as possible and after more delays and more problems they finally settled on a 1993 opening date they hired totally fun company to redesign the ride a company started by Peter Alexander they also hired a variety of contractors to complete the many different aspects of the attraction to ensure that it was done correctly the second time around the new story incorporated elements from both jaws and jaws to in the new ride the shark shark would not bite the boat or be blown to pieces but there would instead be a gas explosion and the shark would be killed after that a high voltage wire such as in the end of Jaws - this was Peter Alexander's final suggestion before he left the project go to the other end of the park and produced shows for Nickelodeon studios the fire scene would have to be impressive and the pyrotechnics testing it purposefully designed it so that the guests could feel the heat without getting burned they definitely accomplished this as guests regularly complained that they had been burned by the fire mostly by those that had already had sunburns from a day at the park the main issue with the original attraction was with the water made it difficult for the robot sharks to build from a complete standstill to lunging out of the water Universal decided to hire ocean air international a company specializing in products with assist in deep-sea exploration to build the Sharks they were able to accomplish this although the detail in the Sharks does not match that of the original attraction but who cares about details if you can't see them because the ride is always closed an interesting aspect of the remodeling was the testing phase because in order to view changes made to the attraction technicians would have to take a round trip on the boat as they cannot go in Reverse this means that they were taking trip after trip through the ride to witness minor changes with all of these contractors on board and 40 million dollars later Universal was able to complete the second version of the attraction for a soft opening in 1993 using the term technical rehearsals until 1994 definitely in hot water now survivors and you thought you saw me happen in the movies these Universal Studios one right is your hook so the final version of the attraction would like this as you waited in line you were taken through the bow houses of Amity including TV screens playing w JW s 13 it had a lot of different programming with numerous references to the film and other movies as well once you were done waiting in line you board one of Captain Jake's boats with the skipper to tour the island Mandy you take off with your tour guide explaining the shark attacks of 1974 that were later turned into a hit movie they also point out the houses of some of the characters of the jazz movies until suddenly they get it called the stress from Amelie three Discoverer tries to see what's going on and find the enmity three sinking then the guests see the skipper pulls out the prayer name Roger not realizing that it is actually loaded at first and fires at the monster of missing the skipper misses a second time before hiding in a boathouse to wait for chief Brody the shark tries to break in and the skipper struggles to escape but does just in time chief Brody tells the skipper that he'll be there in ten minutes the skipper replies with the now-famous line will be shark bait in ten minutes which doesn't actually make sense since technically they are already shark bait anyways the shark comes back and the skipper misses with the grenade launcher once again this time accidentally igniting the nearby gas dock the skippers and explained that they're going to unload the guests onto a fishing dock in an attempt to save them however the shark appears once again but this time it accidentally bites down on a high-voltage power cable frying it the guests smell the roasted shark and it makes one final lunge for the boat but the skipper is able to kill it with the grenade launcher everyone cheers is their return safely to Amity all in all the shark appears five times on the starboard side and only twice on the fore side so you were luckier to be placed on the starboard so that was jaws the ride the hold on because history is not over just yet a few notable events took place with the ride after its second release first every year the attraction was drained and the Department of Environmental Protection was tipped at oil and other toxins from the ride were being irresponsibly disposed of which essentially just meant that they had to change their fuel type and do a lot of paperwork in 2004 hurricanes caused gas prices to increase in Florida to the point that it was too expensive to operate the Jaws ride just causing it to be open only infrequently and seasonally from 2005 to 2007 also the attraction was refurbished constantly to ensure that the ride operated correctly so why was it closed unlike other defunct land entries this one is pretty simple Harry Potter the franchise was going to and did save universals attendance numbers and jaws was replaced with the Diagon Alley attraction Harry Potter and the escape from green gaps while the attraction at Universal is gone there is still a jaws operating at Universal Studios Japan and the short scene during the tram tour is still operating in Hollywood so that is the history of Jaws the ride there are a few more interesting anecdotes the attraction that I decided weren't relevant enough to discuss here but if you would like to read more on jaws visit the links below what is the theme park tourist on which is where I got the majority of my research for extraterrestrial and jaws and the other is to a Reddit and made by a skipper who worked on the ride I recommend checking both of these out as always to learn more about where the remains of jaws are today how I'm going to get them back and where I will place them into funk land please visit the purge calm with the link below otherwise thank you for watching and don't forget to comment share and subscribe

Channel: Defunctland

Views: 2,012,761

Keywords: extinct, defunct, theme park, amusement park, parks, disney, universal studios, universal studios florida, jaws, jaws the ride, universal studios hollywood, disneyland, funny, history, abandoned, attractions

Id: qO7dslkMbF0

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/_piza_]

This is amazing and now I'm hooked on this channel! Thanks for posting!!!

[u/kylebb]

great video thanks for posting!! I miss the ride. Is the Japan version an exact copy?