EDITOR’S NOTE: This was supposed to be a sponsored post until we sent them the working title and, after a 23 email exchange, they scrapped the deal.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: There’s (almost) nothing in this piece about theme park rides sucking you off. That’s clickbait. This is a mostly sincere complaint and reflection on the modern theme park experience, mixed with some casual essaying about family vacations. Like the shit John Hughes wrote before he made all those movies about teenagers smoking weed, or the stuff John Hodgman writes when he isn’t on every podcast I listen to.
I recently went to Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure. My cousin works at Epic Universe, the newest theme park in the Universal Orlando family of thrilling adventure zones, and was able to get me and some of my family passes to park hop for a random Sunday. I know this sounds like some “my dad works at Nintendo” nonsense, but it is actually true, and I have the sunburn to prove it.
The needed context here is that I went to both of these parks as a child three times, on three separate family vacations. Some of my most visceral memories are from these trips. This park has a real claim for my favorite place I’ve ever been. I cannot stress how much fear, wonder, and excitement I felt as a kid, going on the Jaws ride, or riding the Jurassic Park River Boat ride. It’s important to note that I did not think the big robot shark or the animatronic dinosaurs were real. I was very aware this is a ride. I am smart enough to know that the real dinosaurs are kept inside Jurassic Park on Isla Nubar and the Universal park is a fictional recreation. I’m also aware the actual Jaws shark was blown into a million pieces by Sheriff Brody. I was no fool.
While in line for the Jurassic boat ride this trip, I was talking to my dad about how scared these rides made me on those original trips. He asked if it was because I thought the robots could malfunction or break and fall on us. I explained that I had never considered that the massive robot T-Rex on this ride could snap off some hinges and crush me to death. He then asked, if not the ride messing up, what was I scared of?
I don’t know! There’s something undefinable about old amusement park rides. There’s an uncanny valley element that somehow makes my brain feel like I’m no longer in reality in a way that’s scary and fun. Maybe I just appreciate that people built what I’m seeing? Maybe it’s because I’m famously terrified of water and all these rides are on god damn boats? Probably!
On my first trip to Universal as a kid, the last ride we rode was Spider-Man. It was the newest and most popular ride, and none of us could believe it. We had on 3-D glasses, and half the ride was fake walls and half was screens. At the end of the ride (SPOILERS AHEAD), when Spider-Man catches you in a web after you fall off a building, we all literally cheered. Innovation was happening.
The next trip, the newest ride was The Simpsons coaster. A clever and funny ride that loads you into a small roller coaster car that appears to be on a track, only to then put you into a giant movie theater that goes around you and conveys the entire ride. This also blew kid me’s mind, and also made me kind of sick. A sign of things to come?
This brings me to my recent weekend in the park. These weird outliers are now the norm, and things like E.T. or The Jurassic Park River Ride are now the weird old thing that is still there for some reason. On this trip, we rode Spider-Man first. We walked in and walked right onto the ride, with no wait. It was still very good, if not slightly disappointing because my memory of it was so skewed.
Then we rode some roller coasters, and made our way through Jurassic Park.
Then we rode the following:
King Kong
Harry Potter Hogwarts
Harry Potter Gringots
Transformers
Jimmy Fallon’s Race Through New York
Fast and Furious
Minions
Simpsons
Every single one of these rides is a screen ride. Meaning you’re in a cart of some sort that moves, along with a big screen, to convey movement, air, water, fire, etc. Like a 4D movie on rails. The thing that blew my mind twenty years ago is now overwhelming.
These rides aren’t necessarily “bad” (except for Jimmy Fallon and Fast and Furious. Those rides genuinely suck to a comical degree. I’ll have to let my cousin know he should work on those.), but it gets a little redundant. Transformers, a ride where Optimus Prime (leader of the autobots) tells you he’s proud of your bravery (I needed to hear that) has the exact same ending, where you fall then they catch you, that Spider-Man does. Fast and Furious uses the same bus and structure as King Kong, which is particularly confounding.
Innovation has been replaced by iconography in a way that makes me wish an actor like Vin Diesel would just refuse to show up for a theme park ride shoot, forcing them to do something bizarre or new. I feel like a shitty fake car moving along a track through a shitty fake Tokyo or Rio as other big fake cars “race” next to it would be way more fun that having a Jpeg of The Rock next to your bus shooting a mini-gun. Hell, make an animatronic of The Rock. It’d be the same size as the King Kong robot probably, and that seems cool and scary!
I wish that I could ride through a beautiful recreation of Hogwarts without 2D holograms of dead actors showing up to talk to me. I get that people want that, and it’s cool that they actually got them I guess, but I don’t need to see a group shot of the cast on a big TV clapping for me. I want to see real stuff, like the Dragon head that tried to bite me, or the dementer that shot out of nowhere right before my dad threw up.
Transformers should be legally required to build a big robot that doesn’t quite move right and makes me laugh! King Kong used to be a big robot and now isn’t, and that’s a bummer! Jimmy Fallon having a “ride” where he’s riding a rocket ship in 3D makes my head hurt in a way where I’m not sure if I dreamt that one or not.
Minions gets a pass. They can do what they want.
It’s wild to me that these rides are just franchise short films that spray you with water. I can’t imagine a kid being scared of any of them. Maybe that’s fine? I’m old! I get a little sick when I play a VR game too long. Kids these days grow up with ipads and bitcoins. These rides probably feel super normal to them. I don’t quite know how to articulate this argument without self-realizing that I’m now an older person yelling about wanting something niche that I like to be the way it used to be.
Maybe that’s true and it’s not even about the rides. Maybe I don’t long for when the actor on the Jaws ride pretended to shoot at the shark with a fake grenade launcher, I long for the stable family dynamic I had at that time. Maybe time only moves one way and I want back things I didn’t know would suddenly go away. Things that I felt were actually good, so how could they be replaced?
Nope, it’s just that 420p Vin Diesel telling me I’m part of the family after fist fighting Luke Evans on top of a truck slightly outside of my field of vision from the middle of a packed tram car isn’t good. The best ride of my trip my trip was Jurassic Park, just like it was over a decade ago. Because nothing made me “feel” more than when the music played and a big beautiful Brachiosaurus whose metal neck had too many bends in it ate some leaves above me, or when a stiff jerky velociraptor popped out of the wall and tried to get a bite of me, or when one Dilophosaurus spit venom (water) at me while a second one climbed in my boat and sucked me off. It was better because it was real.
*A couple of final notes:
The Spider-Man ride would have been the best one but he made fun of my glasses. I understand he’s known for the zingers, but it’s a lot less fun when it’s aimed at you. We were in a lot of danger with the sinister six, and I really wish he would focus a little more and not goof around in a situation like that.
The Hogwarts ride would have been my favorite if my dad didn’t throw up. More on that tomorrow.