The highly awaited Skull Island : Reign of Kong is now in soft-opening at Universal Orlando Islands of Adventure, and thanks to Attractions Magazine and Inside the Magic we have excellent videos of the queue decor and the ride itself. The ride looks great and include real sets, Audio-Animatronics creatures, the 3D sequence similar to the one in KONG 360 at USH but with new additional 3D sequences and the expected BIG surprise at the end!
But what you must not miss is to watch first the video showing the queue decor as USO did one of the best queue theming i've seen since a while, which includes scary sets, projection effects, Audio-Animatronics, fire effects and the biggest quantity of skulls you've ever seen in a ride queue decor! The queue is an attraction in itself, just like the one of Indiana Jones Adventure is at DL or TDS. Note that the video filmed by attractions Magazine is a low light video, meaning that the lighting is most probably more dim in the queue than what you can see on the video.
About the attraction length itself, we have a 6.30 min ride plus the time spent in the queue decor which last 6.40 min long in the video but of course it has been edited, so let's count 10 minutes even if people will of course spend more time than this in the queue decor. That makes more than 16 min for the full experience and i don't think we can consider this short. I, personally, gives a "E-Ticket" to this new Universal attraction and i think they did a fantastic job. Some may complain about the use again of projections in the ride, but there was no other way to create these scenes, you simply can't do it without projections. Personally it don't bother me because of the mix of real sets, AAs, and more, not to mention others effects that we can't see or feel on the videos like the trackless vehicle probably shaking or water effects that seems to happen during one of the projection sequences.
Anyway, i let you discover the whole thing and let's start with the queue decor video filmed by Attractions Magazine - don't miss it if you want to live the Skull Island : Reign of Kong full experience!
And now, if you've watched first the video above of the queue decor, here is the full ride filmed by inside the Magic.
And for those of you who have the nostalghia of the now extinct King Kong attraction at Universal Studios - or simply want to compare the two rides - here is the video of the full KongFrontation ride uploaded by Themepark Thrills!
5 comments:
This is very impressive, they could use those animatronic bats in the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. It's kind of weird though how the girl gets taken away and we just hear her voice at the end to know that she's ok?
The Kong animatronic also could have been something better, I know the facial expressions and head movements are advanced, but the old ride had full body Kongs, it seems like the head was just stuck in there. I know it's a peaceful moment when Kong is just kind of 'cooing' but somehow it could have been a better, more dynamic 'wow' moment, it was too different from the wild action of the film segment.
Also, the modern Kong is too much like a gorilla, it was much more of a unique character in the old original movie of the 1930s.
That looks absolutely awesome!
Lame...not really different from California version- a movie, really?
At the end of the film, Kong beats his chest and then climbs up onto some rocks, then the tram drives into a cave, where the giant Kong head is waiting for you. It's weird because in the film he makes his exit, and he looks back like he's saying goodbye, then all of a sudden, his head is in the cave. It would have been better if the animatronic Kong was still 'outside', with sky projected onto a screen behind him. In the film he's already next to the tram, why would he climb up this rock to peek his head into a cave to get close to us?
It is basically the Hollywood tram ride with an two added scenes in the beginning and a Kong animatronic in the end that didn't do anything. Since Shanghai Disneyland opened with a completely new Pirates rides that used projection without 3D and still looks great, the Kong ride looks dated. The Kong ride somehow eliminated the personalized driver aspect that they publicized a few months ago. I hope they won't do the same thing with Fast and Furious ride opening in a few years. The problem with the Tram ride is the passenger has to turn their head several times to see the action. You don't get a good field of view.
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