Niles: Can Universal fix its Fast & Furious problem?

Universal Studios Hollywood is trying to fix one of its biggest recent mistakes. The park confirmed this month that it is building a “Fast & Furious”-themed roller coaster.

The new, as-yet-unnamed roller coaster is taking over the space formerly occupied by the Animal Actors and Special Effects Stage theaters. There’s no opening date yet, but plans filed with Los Angeles County suggest that this will be crowd-pleasing Intamin coaster with multiple launches and inversions, like Universal’s recent Jurassic World VelociCoaster in Orlando. Inside sources also have teased that the coaster trains will rotate for a “drifting” effect, like the Vekoma trains on Walt Disney World’s recent Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Rewind at EPCOT in Florida.

Say what you will about its outrageous stunts and plot points, but Fast & Furious is one of Universal’s most successful franchises, and Universal Studios Hollywood has offered Fast & Furious attractions for years. Most recently, Fast & Furious: Supercharged has anchored the park’s Studio Tour with a media-driven simulation of a high speed chase through downtown Los Angeles.

But that was Universal’s mistake. People come to theme parks to feel their favorite stories in ways that they cannot anywhere else. We don’t want to watch a simulation of a high-speed chase. We can do that at home. Let’s get on a ride, like a roller coaster, and experience one.

That’s why when Six Flags Magic Mountain opened its West Coast Racers coaster from Premier Rides in 2020, many fans said that was the ride that Universal should have opened under its Fast & Furious brand. Within the next couple of years, those fans should be getting their wish, and perhaps with a ride even more exciting than West Coast Racers.

Creative artists — and that includes theme park attraction designers — need to take risks from time to time. After all, playing it safe isn’t exactly being creative, is it? In the 2010s, Universal made a creative decision to emphasize screen-based attractions. I get the reasoning. Universal wanted to emphasize the stars of its media franchises in its new attractions, and filmed media offered a more realistic way to bring stars into the parks in high-action environments than trying to sculpt them into animatronics that often are limited in their range of motion.

I also liked that Universal used Fast & Furious on the Studio Tour to transition its story from showing fans the process of making movies to throwing them into the middle of their own movie adventure. But over time, Universal stripped much of that storyline from its tour. The final chase scene also never hit like it should, with its abundance of computer animation driving its filmed actors into the uncanny valley where they looked more artificial than real.

Great artists are not those who never make mistakes. Those are fictional. Great artists — and people — are ones who learn from their mistakes and use those mistakes to inspire them to do and create something better. Here’s hoping that Universal Studios’ new roller coaster finally provides the big adrenaline-rush that its Fast & Furious fans deserve.