The Awful Universal Rides That Nobody Talks About

[Music] special shot [Music] oh did you think that we were going to be talking about Fast and Furious supercharged listen it's a bad portion of the Hollywood Tram Tour it is an even worse full moon attraction in Florida however if you've been watching my channel for a while you know I've had a fair amount to say about how this attraction is just so absurdly bad that it has become ironically funny it may not be a good ride but it's definitely a fun one with the Right audience so what exactly are we talking about today when I highlight Universal's bad attractions is it going to be their oversaturation screens that became an unfortunate Trend over the last decade well no Universal Studios Florida in particular does have too many screen-based experiences but other than Fast and Furious I wouldn't consider any of them to be bad I have also seen people Express a negative sentiment about other older attractions located in the Parks such as E.T or the Cat in the Hat I mean yeah I'll admit that they're not well maintained but at their core there's still great experiences so what are these awful attractions and why am I producing a video about them it's no secret that Universal has really been turning their parks around and people have been noticing everything changed for me in 2019 when Hagrid's premiered an Island of Adventure it's a ride that blew me away on my first time riding and it still continues to hold up extremely well since that point though Universal has been on a huge streak of creating exceptional attractions the Jurassic World 3 theme of Jurassic Park the ride in Hollywood is an improvement on the already strong original May the secret life of pets is far more clever and Well Done than it has any right to be Islands of Adventure opened the veloci coaster in 2021 and of the same year so did Universal Beijing sporting the incredibly ambitious Jurassic World adventure where a massive indominus Rex animatronic chases the ride vehicle Super Nintendo World is an ambitious interactive land that I've spoken about at length elsewhere and while the Mario Kart attraction has received a lot of mixed reviews I still think it's incredibly solid if you go in with the right expectation of what it's trying to do Universal has clearly shown that they're taking guest feedback seriously aiming for more ambitious physical attractions even if screens are still used to supplement scenes when necessary it has led me to become incredibly optimistic about the future of their Parks including epic Universe which will open in Orlando in 2025. so with so much to look forward to I think it would be interesting to contrast this with where Universal is failing because they legitimately do have a small selection of truly awful rides that I think are worth taking a look at [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's first talk about Universal Singapore which was definitely not something I was familiar with until researching it recently this is by no means a bad Park but it's very different from what you're going to find elsewhere located on the island of Sentosa this particular Park is part of a larger Resort and Casino complex that is owned and run by Genting group [Music] this is the only Park not owned and run by Universal and Genting group pays to use the universal license that being said a lot of attractions are going to be similar to what you can find in other Universal Parks as this is where Transformers the ride 3D first premiered and this Park's Revenge of the Mummy shares the same track layout as the one in Florida with only minor changes in between the scenes however you can definitely tell that there is something off about this park the animatronics definitely look like they're produced by a manufacturer that Universal doesn't really work with as they're a lot more stiff and have more limited movement this is best exemplified with a rod unique to the resort Sesame Street spaghetti space Chase it's not a bad ride by any means but you're not going to see animatronics with these particular expressions of movement in any of their other resorts on first impression Universal Singapore is going to look a bit cheap in comparison because of this for example puss in Boots's giant journey is going to be a 2015 addition to the Far Far Away section of the park on first impression it's a pretty Bare Bones suspended coaster containing animatronics with rather limited movement while that is true it does actually look to be a pretty fun ride this is where Universal's first awful attraction comes into the conversation what I like about this park is the small but immersive lands and far far away is a great Recreation of the Kingdom from Shrek 2. however the land's anchor attraction when it opened is located in the castle from the film can you guess what's inside yep it's going to be Shrek 4D which is probably the most disappointing attraction reveal ever if you've ever been on truck 4D in the United States you know it was just something to do to Pat out your day the ride film itself is something that you could buy on DVD back in the day which I definitely remember owning and you can now find it included with a bunch of other shorts in DreamWorks spooky stories which is available to watch on Netflix it was never a great attraction as it just shook you around violently in a chair while stuff was happening on screen however it's easy to dismiss when it's just in a small theater alongside much better attractions what makes it so bad in Singapore is just how disappointing it is you enter this impressive facade expecting some sort of incredible shred Dark Ride and yet it's just the physically violent version of the Netflix special however we've all known that this ride is essentially just a meme for the last two decades so I would like to transition to an actual Dark Ride granted this just closed in June of 2022 to make way for a minions themed land and another Super Nintendo World but Madagascar a crate Adventure is legitimately a poorly executed Dark Ride it's been years since I've seen the film but to the best of my recollection the ride does seem to just recreate scenes from it while the concept of the ride itself isn't inherently bad by any means it's the execution that makes it weak because it is a slow-moving boat ride these teams have to be set in a certain way to hide sight lines and create a natural flow between them Disney of the past seemed to master this quite well knowing how to use space effectively to transition from one scene to the next however it's clear that Universal's creative teams didn't really know how to do that here the ride layout doesn't seem conducive to creating a natural narrative flow but instead each scene uses some low-level animatronics and hides them in the dark when it comes time to approach these scenes they will light up in an audio cue will play which gets tedious quite quickly as that's essentially the design of the entire ride it's certainly not the worst thing in the world but it's not particularly strong attraction design either I also won't knock on figures with lower levels of Animation though as I actually prefer this to a lot of ride design today I think it's important for slow moving dark rides to populate their scenes with a lot of simpler figures because it adds a great deal to the atmosphere of an attraction as opposed to the hyper fluid figures that often seem wasted because they don't contribute much to the overall experience still the scenes in this ride lack a much needed kineticism because their figures are often a little too simple there are also a fair number of screens used throughout and while these can be great and supplementing a more physical attraction the execution is also very weak you can see that they just don't blend in with the scenery very well this ride very much reminds me of something that you would see at a park like motion Gates the components are there for an interesting ride but it just seems to be executed in all the wrong ways still this attraction has now codes to make way for new additions to Universal Singapore so let's move on to a more recent attraction that I found to be incredibly disappointing [Music] when Universal Beijing opens I feel that everyone was so impressed by Jurassic world that they forgot to look critically at the rest of the park the anchor attraction is undeniably an industry Game Changer but the park also contains another ride that became the primary reason I wanted to produce this video one of the lanes included in the park is Kung Fu Panda land of Awesomeness it takes place entirely indoors and includes a number of small flat rides in conjunction with shops and Mr Ping's Noodle House however the anchor attraction for this area is going to be a dark ride titled Kung Fu Panda journey of the Dragon Warrior on entering the queue you're going to experience a comically excessive number of switchbacks throughout this massive building I understand that the park will probably see good attendance but I'm having a hard time believing that this is necessary once you reach the load platform you'll step into your boats and be on your way immediately I noticed that this attraction has the same issue as Madagascar and that the space is far too open and that the scenes flow poorly I believe that for the most part if you're going to utilize a slow-moving boat ride you have to design your scenes to be dense with detail allowing writers to study individual aspects of them there is no better example of this than Pirates of the Caribbean however if we want to use a universal Example The Secret Life of pets is good to learn from as well on this ride though the story is very much action oriented which does not work at all for the slow-moving boats and the rather limited movement of the animatronics the lack of kinetic movements from the figures themselves is supplemented with screens and projection effects but something about it just feels rather underwhelming to me even larger scenes like the town containing more figures still seems rather Bare Bones in its design again it feels very much like something you would find in the park in Dubai and not something created by Universal another issue to point out is that roughly half the ride is action on screens I think that screens can't work to portray action if you have a highly Dynamic ride vehicle or in the case of the secret life of pets is used to supplement physical scenes such as the exploding fireworks Factory here though you're just slowly floating by a series of cheap looking vignettes as action scenes play out on a loop it's not particularly interesting or engaging and takes up the entire middle portion of the ride however on going down a small drop and moving through a dome to screen that concludes the action the rest of the ride slowly meanders throughout the town again the animatronics have returns but they're not doing anything particularly interesting other than congratulating you if we return back to the secret life of pets as an example we can see that these scenes are more densely populated with more interesting figures the more you look the more you will notice different gags occurring throughout them I think then that this reveals one of the major issues with this ride a lot of the figures move just for the sake of moving and have no purpose in doing so they're not doing anything that adds to the visuals in a story in action-driven attraction that is already ill-suited to a slow-moving boat ride there is a physical comedy to the secret life of pets that exists within the background of the narrative and that's where Kung Fu Panda fails in comparison boats are one of my favorite ride systems and so that's why it's disappointing to me that Universal can't seem to get them right [Music] [Music] well here we are having circled right back around again to Fast and Furious supercharged it's a bad attraction and I don't need to tell you that it has become a prolific example of what not to do when designing a new ride yet at the very least it's something that you can enjoy ironically since then though Universal has entered a new era that I'm highly optimistic for they have proved again and again over the last few years that they want to impress audiences with great attraction design that's why it's important to be critical they have heard loud and clear that the parks are oversaturated with too many screen-based experiences and they have reacted accordingly it's easy to focus on this one particular aspect of their Parks so that's why I thought it was important to highlight their weaker but less spoken about experiences here to be fair I don't think there's much that can do about strike 4D in Singapore and they've already demolished their underwhelming Madagascar attraction I thought they would be interesting to throw into the conversation but the primary drive behind this video was to discuss beijing's Kung Fu Panda ride [Music] it's bizarre to me that a ride this week exists in the same park as Jurassic world because it feels as if they were produced by two completely different companies as Universal Studios Florida has now closed Kid Zone it has left me a little concerned for the future of this area Universal has clearly teased that there is likely going to be a DreamWorks free theme when it reopens and it makes me wonder if they will add in some dark rides there have long been rumors of demolishing play areas and building a few indoor attractions which is why something so slot together like journey of the Dragon Warrior is so concerning granted permits require construction to be done by 2024 so whatever is going in this area isn't likely going to be a major new ride however with a DreamWorks re-theme it does open the area up to Future additions and I hope that if new plans are eventually considered a lot of effort goes into creating a dark ride more akin to secret life of pets and its design choices and execution this video was a little less substantial than usual but if you got this far you can do me a favor by simply leaving a like as always though if you want to stay notified on new videos when they release I encourage you to hit the Subscribe button with bell notification [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: Poseidon Entertainment

Views: 390,277

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Id: _C9P6SwWVxg

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 29 2023