KEVIN Salutations. My name is Kevin Perjurer, and welcome to another addition in Defunctland. For background/context on this series, please visit theperj.com with the link below.
Today we will be attempting to resurrect our first non-Disney attraction, Jaws: The Ride, that operated in Universal Studios Florida from 1990 to 2012. This is also our first viewer-suggested addition 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, stay with me, because there will be plenty of Disney history weaved throughout this story. (‘Obligatory Michael Eisner reference.’) So let’s get into it.
In the mid-1960s, 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 park Disneyland. As Universal Studios Hollywood continued 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 (‘Refreshingly not Michael Eisner’), 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 dive fully into the feud, as I would be touching on the history of future Defunctland attractions, but just to give you an idea… (Side-by-side comparison of the nearly identical entry gates to Disney-MGM Studios and Universal Studios Hollywood) 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 their plan and already existing park. However, luckily for Universal and MCA, they had recently found a developer for their Orlando park. They had also found a creative partner: Steven Spielberg. That’s right. If you’ve watched the first episode of Defunctland(‘Shameless Plug’), you will 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 (‘Spielberg with the George Lucas that everyone loves.’), who found themselves in competition with one another in the late 1980s due to this feud.
Universal decided not to make their Orlando park the same as their Hollywood tram tour out of fear of being accused of copying Disney. They decided to instead focus more on film-based attractions such as Kongfrontation and Jaws: The Ride. The creative head of Universal Studios Florida was former Disney Imagineer - and Steven Spielberg’s former college roommate - Peter Alexander. (‘And former Scientologist. No, I am not making this up.’) 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 & Show Engineering agreed to produce it. The first version of the ride cost $30 million to make in the late 1980s (‘Result of an unsuccessful Google image search of 30 million dollars.’), which, factoring in inflation… (just about $59 million, 96% cumulative inflation rate) Yeah. It was expensive, and the results were…interesting (‘Interesting is a relative term, in this case meaning unsuccessful’).
The original Jaws ride took guests on a pontoon boat captained by an…employee (‘Purposely refraining from using the term “cast member”’) who would guide the boat on a tour of Amity, the town in Jaws. Then, shockingly, the guests spot a…
(Clip of a taping of the ride from themeparkviewer.com.)
KEVIN The shark would then stalk you for the rest of the ride, even appearing in the boat halfway house 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 it. This would have been amazing, except for it almost never worked 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’s shark teeth would sometimes damage the boat because 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 would be filtered back in and recirculated. The sharks were guided by computers and could swim at twenty feet per second. It was an impressive ride, but did it work as they had planned? No. The answer is no. --- (Clip from special Universal Studios Florida: The Magic of Movies.)
NARRATOR As we stroll through the streets of Amity, this little New England village seems like any seaside resort in summer: young men thronging around the shooting gallery, people basking in the sun, crowds taking photographs with a great white shark… A 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. It’s a good day for a boat ride.
(The shark approaches a boat full of riders.)
FEMALE SKIPPER There he is!
(The skipper shoots the shark. It initially seems to be a hit and the riders cheer, but then the shark pops up right in front of the boat and bites a chunk out of the side before retreating.) --- KEVIN Disney-MGM Studios opened on May 1st, 1989, and a year later Universal Studios Florida opened on June 7th, 1990. Opening day was a star-studded event: celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Steven Spielberg, and Bill Cosby (‘*Insert obvious joke here*’) were in attendance. The opening was a huge success for people that liked to watch everything go wrong.
(Clip of the opening ceremony. Spielberg holds a large pair of scissors, preparing to cut the ceremonial banner.)
SPIELBERG (chuckles) I hope this cuts. This is a lot thicker than what we rehearsed with.
KEVIN (‘This is Earthquake operating correctly, and it’s already a disaster.’) The power went out just hours before the opening, many of the attractions’ automation systems weren’t operating, and Jaws had to shut down due to a thunderstorm after a few hours of operation. Steven Spielberg was rumored to be stuck on the ride during this 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 it 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, who were obviously mortified that their father would be eaten. Worse, he fell in one of the ten 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 clapped, thinking it was all just part of the show. He sued Universal for $1 million. 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. (‘Or that they may have jumped the shark…’)
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 Ride & Show Engineering for not designing the ride properly. Ride & Show claimed that their handiwork was not at fault, and that Universal did not give them enough time. Ride & 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 (‘Settling out of court is boring and anticlimactic’), with Ride & 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 2. In the new ride, the…
KEVIN …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 it bit a high-voltage wire, such as in the end of Jaws 2. This was Peter Alexander’s final suggestion before he left the project to go to the other end of the park and produce 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 that the water made it difficult for the robot sharks to go from a complete standstill to lunging out of the water. Universal decided to hire Oceaneering International, a company specializing in products that assist in deep sea exploration, to build the sharks. They were able to accomplish this, although the detail on 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? (‘Sorry, I sounded like Michael Eisner there for a second.’)
An interesting aspect of the remodeling was the testing phase, because in order to view changes made to the attractions, technicians would have to take a round trip on the boat as they could not go in reverse. This means that they were taking trip after trip after trip through the ride to witness minor changes.
With all of these contractors on board and $40 million 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. --- (Clip from a promotional special. Rapid cut between the shark in the hideout house and the gas explosion.)
HOST We’re definitely in hot water now!
(The shark is electrocuted. More fire.)
HOST No survivors. (nervous chuckle) And you thought this only happened in the movies!
OLD MAN That’s what I thought!
(Riders cheer.)
HOST So catch Jaws at Universal Studios! One ride and you’re hooked! --- KEVIN So the final version of the attraction went like this: as you waited in line, you were taken through the boathouses of Amity, including TV screens playing WJWS-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 boarded one of Captain Jake’s boats with a skipper to tour the island of Amity. 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 Jaws movies until suddenly, they get a call of distress from Amity 3. The skipper tries to see what is going on and finds Amity 3 sinking. Then the guests see a…
KEVIN The skipper pulls out the grenade launcher, not realizing that it is actually loaded at first, and fires at the monster, 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, “We’ll 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 a nearby gas dock. The skipper then explains that they are going to unload 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 as they are returned safely to Amity. All in all, the shark appears five times on the starboard side and only twice on the port side, so you were luckier to be placed on the starboard side.
So that was Jaws: The Ride. But hold on, because its 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 that 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. (‘Changed to this [shark oil extract], I assume.’)
In 2004, hurricanes caused gas prices to increase in Florida to the point that it was too expensive to operate the Jaws ride, thus causing it to only be open 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 Defunctland entries, this one is pretty simple: Harry Potter. The franchise was going to - and did - save Universal’s attendance numbers, and Jaws was replaced with the Diagon Alley attraction “Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts.” 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 to 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. One is to Theme Park Tourist.com, which is where I got the majority of my research for ExtraTERRORestrial and Jaws, and the other is to a Reddit AMA 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 in Defunctland, please visit theperj.com with the link below. Otherwise, thank you for watching and don’t forget to comment, share, and subscribe.