The Universal Studios Jaws Ride Lives on at the Amity Boat Tours Site



Fans of Jaws and its subsequent franchise were crushed when the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida decided to close its Jaws ride back in January 2012. Yet while this piece of Jaws history is gone, it is far from forgotten. The folks behind the Amity Boat Tours Web site, a site that has been around for 13 years, are updating the site into the "Finale Edition" that will serve as an archive for all things concerning the Jaws ride.

According to the site, "(T)he Finale Edition of AmityBoatTours.com celebrates the life, and community of the JAWS World -- from the honorary JAWS Skippers to the Summer vacationers of Amity, this site was built and designed for you. We have received many questions and concerns that the site will close, and grow old, now that the attraction is gone. Quite the contrary has occurred. We have been working, since weeks before the announcement of its closure, to begin crafting a brand-new way to bring Amity Harbor to you and something that we can walk away from proud and dedicated to. The Finale Edition of the site is just that... we are extremely proud to bring this new experience to you, as well as 'bulk-up' the AmityBoatTours.com world."


A bird's-eye view of the Orlando Jaws ride. You can see the most of the places 
where the shark surfaces to terrorize theme park visitors.


I've been looking around the updated site and it appears to be on track (no pun intended) to becoming the definitive resource for anyone who is interested in the Jaws ride and its history. The Finale Edition site features a detailed history of the ride, plenty of trivia and photos, and video clips of the fictitious Amity TV station WJWS that would play on monitors in the ride pavilion to keep visitors entertained while they waited in line. The site also features photos of a similar Jaws ride that still operates in the Universal Studios theme park in Japan.

In honor of the revamped Amity Boat Tours site, I'm posting two Jaws ride video clips that I found on YouTube that are different from most others that are available on the Internet. The first is a video of the ride in anaglyph 3D (think of it as the other "Jaws 3D") and a video from 1990 that will give you an idea of how the ride functioned as it was originally designed Ride and Show Engineering, Inc. In this version, the shark would attack the tour boat and spin it to the side, shortly before the final confrontation between the shark and the boat's "Skipper". As you can see in the video, the shark that was supposed to attack the boat wasn't very convincing; however, the shark that surfaces in the boathouse (at about three minutes into the video) is very impressive with its thrashing head and snapping mouth. The ride was redesigned and re-launched in 1993 due to repeated technical problems, but it's a shame that Universal didn't keep the original boathouse shark.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Art of Tron: Uprising (Part 1 of 4): Characters

Image
This month marks the one year anniversary of the cancellation of Tron: Uprising , which aired on Disney XD for 19 episodes. Set between the events of Tron and Tron: Legacy , Uprising chronicled the events shortly after Clu’s rise to power within the stand-alone Grid created by Kevin Flynn. Personally, I think that Tron: Uprising got a raw deal from Disney. It’s a fantastic addition to the Tron saga that went on to win both Emmy and Annie Awards , yet Disney clearly had other priorities and was willing to toss Uprising aside without so much as an official cancellation notice. Even to this day, Uprising has yet to be released on DVD or Blu-ray and I’m wondering if it ever will. In honor of this amazing animated series that was cut down in its prime, I have decided to do something that Disney won’t. Since there will never be an official Tron: Uprising art book, I have searched across the Internet to find a selection of art from Uprising that I can share here on my blog with ...
Read more

FOUND: Mechanical Shark from Universal Jaws Theme Park Ride

Image
When the Universal Studios Theme Park in Florida shut down its Jaws ride back in January 2012, Jaws fans everywhere were devastated. Yet even though this part of the Jaws franchise is no longer operational, some of its sharks are swimming around out there … including places such as Frederick, Maryland. A few days ago, I was contacted by a fellow Jaws fan named John Ryan, asking me if I knew anything specific regarding the sharks from the Universal Jaws ride. He was asking because he thought he found one and is trying to verify its authenticity. We spoke on the phone and exchanged a few emails, and here’s what he told me about his find: “I've been collecting Jaws memorabilia for decades and when I found this incredibly rare gem sitting in a backyard in Frederick, Maryland, I wondered about its connection to the state. The current homeowners said the shark was already there when they purchased the property. They also told me it had been the subject of neighborhood rumor for y...
Read more

Machine Robo's Magnificent Robot Combiners

Image
I don't collect Transformers merchandise, but I see articles and advertisements about it when I browse through Japanese robot toy sites. From what I can gather, one of the latest product lines for Transformers is called "Combiner Wars" , a line that consists of five or six transforming robot toys that combine into one bigger robot. Combiner robot toys have been around for a long time, and Transformers had quite a few of them even back in the '80s. Yet of the many combiner robot toys I've seen over the years, the ones that have consistently impressed me were the ones released by Bandai under the Machine Robo line. Whereas other robot toy lines are stuck in the novelty of combining smaller toys into a bigger toy, Machine Robo has used the concept of combination to promote creative play. Read on for a review of how Machine Robo has built upon its combiner toys throughout the years.
Read more