IAAPA Legends Panel reveals startling secrets behind the groundbreaking attraction
“Just over 20 years ago, “The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man” ride opened at Universal’s Islands of Adventure and changed our world, inspiring both visitors and would-be imitations. Meet four amazing super-star legends of our industry as they explain how they convinced others to let them build it.” This was the introduction to Bob Roger’s 22nd annual legends panel at the IAAPA trade show in Orlando.
The panel included giants of the parks and attractions industry: Thierry Coup, Senior Vice President, and Chief Creative Officer of Universal Creative. Phil Hettema, President and Creative Director of The Hettema Group (THG), Scott Trowbridge, Portfolio Creative Executive and Studio Leader with Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI), and Moderator, Bob Rogers, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of BRC Imagination Arts.
15 surprising takeaways from the Legends Panel
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Takeaway #1: Spiderman was a game-changer.
Bob Rogers began by explaining the importance of the attraction. “The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man took the parks and attractions industry to a new level. It took $170 million (valued today) to develop, and for 12 straight years, it won Amusement Today’s Golden Ticket award for the world’s best dark ride. Many attractions claimed to be a game-changer. After 22 years, the world is still trying to imitate it.”
Takeaway #2: It began with colossal failure.
During the planning for Islands of Adventure, Universal Creative spent years developing attraction concepts for DC comics books characters (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, e.g.), but then the deal fell apart. A feud developed at the last minute between Warner Brothers and Universal Studios and they parted company. And because Universal Studios lost the licensing deal for the IP (intellectual property) for DC Comics, they had to start over. At the time Marvel was far less popular and far less successful. In 1998 Marvel was in bankruptcy. No feature films existed featuring its characters. Could a failing IP with no feature films support a $100 million attraction?
Scott Trowbridge explained: “There’s something different about Spiderman: He’s a kid. He’s not born on Krypton. He’s just a kid who got lucky (or unlucky). He’s just like us. So he was a relatable character. With Spiderman, he is someone we can be friends with. That made him relatable!”
Universal Creative felt they had a winner with Spiderman and Marvel comics. And so they went with Spiderman.
Takeaway #3: The original theme for Islands of Adventure was going to be Cartoon World.
Former Universal Creative V.P. Phil Hettema explained, “We had a working agreement with Warner Brothers for not only DC Comics characters, but also Looney Tunes, and Dr. Seuss. The theme of the park was going to be cartoons. But when we lost our IP deal with DC comics, we really scrambled for a new theme for our park.”
Hettema added, “Fortunately we had a good relationship with Steven Spielberg. The Jurassic park property was available. We moved Jurassic Park from Universal Studios Florida to Islands of Adventure and really started picking up the pieces.”
With the change came modifications and it became Islands of Adventure. The results were impressive. Last year, for example, Islands of Adventure was ranked #14 in worldwide theme park attendance with 9.8 million visitors. It was a boon for Universal Studios to get visitors to stay longer than a single day.
Takeaway #4: Going head-to-head with Disney.
Universal Studios Florida (USF) was aimed squarely at a teen demographic. But Islands of Adventure was to compete with Disney. “We expanded it from teen and young adults to a broader demographic,” Hettema explained.
Takeaway #5: Learning from failure.
Universal Creative also planned Islands of Adventure (IOA) to be more of a ride park than Universal Studios Florida (USF). This is because when Universal Studios Florida opened, only a single ride worked properly on opening day. It was a painful lesson for Universal Studios management.
Hettema explained, “This was because all the rides at Universal Studios Florida were prototypical ride systems. Each was completely custom and this created problems when the park opened.”
With Islands of Adventure, Universal Creative adapted. Thus, every ride at Islands of Adventure had a fairly well-understood ride system, except that each ride was enhanced to give a more exciting guest experience.
©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved.
Hettema explained, “For the Incredible Hulk, we added the catapult launch. For One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish we added an interactive water feature. With Popeye’s Bilge Rat Barges we added a waterfall.
Universal Creative would only go for a completely new and untested ride system on one attraction: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. And no one knew if it could be done.
Takeaway #7: Unique story development that touches the guest.
©2021 Universal Orlando. All Rights Reserved.
Bob Rogers explained the unique way Spiderman breaks the “Fourth Wall”. He explained, “Unlike Pirates of the Caribbean, the characters know that you’re there and are trying to kill you!”
This is what set the Spiderman attraction apart from many attractions. At Islands of Adventure, it is a park where things happen to you. Spiderman jumps on your vehicle and rides with you!
Takeaway #8: The pitch was sold to management on an airplane.
Scott Trowbridge was tasked with pitching the Spiderman ride concept to Universal Studios executives. But he had to make his pitch on a corporate jet at 36,000 feet!
He said, “You have 20 minutes on a corporate jet from Los Angeles to New York. You bring your storyboards with you, and when you land you’re getting back on the plane and flying back to LA. I was hunched over with some boards trying to stand, doing the dog-and-pony show for 20 minutes of a flight from Los Angeles. I had no luggage,” said Trowbridge.
“When I got there, I had to immediately get back on a commercial flight and fly back!”
When asked their reaction to the pitch they said, “Sounds good. What’s next?” Thus, management approved the Spider-Man attraction concept.
Takeaway #9: The Spider-Man ride was entirely produced with beta software.
A popular computer animation program is called Maya. But it didn’t exist when Universal Creative started working on the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. Universal Creative knew they wanted CGI, but when they were shown Maya, it was only in beta testing. They decided to switch software and create the entire ride using a beta version of Maya despite the risk. Thus, Universal Creative became the primary beta tester for Maya.
Render times were extremely slow. It took six hours to render a single frame of the show!
Takeaway #10: Universal Creative had a backup plan.
There was a second concept for the ride waiting in the wings if Spider-Man didn’t work. (Hint: They never told us what it was!) But we now know that a backup plan existed.
Takeaway #11: Sometimes with unique rides come unique problems.
Detective story: As development progressed and opening day loomed closer, the audio kept cutting out at the same place in the ride for no reason at all. It became a technical who-done-it.
The ride system had a six-degree of motion base plus a yaw slew ring. They built a brand new, first-of-its-kind digital audio system. And the audio always cut out in the same spot in the ride.
Trowbridge explained that they tried a different audio track and the audio still cut out in the same place.
“Eventually we turned off everything in the building and ran the ride by itself, gradually turning things on. There was some kind of interference,” said Trowbridge.
It turns out that in a different scene there was a place where riders would get blasted by a levitation ray. We added an effect to it with a metal cone.
Trowbridge explained, “The liquid nitrogen was so cold it was stripping ions off the metal cone, and it was projecting an ion beam at the computer in a different scene causing the audio to cut out. There is no way would we have figured that out!”
“Let’s make sure we don’t unintentionally build an ion cannon,” he quipped. “That was one of the unknowns we discovered!”
Takeaway #12: Limitations lead to opportunities.
Universal Creative was very demoralized by the first cost estimates to build the show sets: The sets and scenery came in over budget by a margin of two. So instead of building all the sets dimensionally, Universal Creative came up with a creative solution.
Coup explained, “We came up with a solution by printing on canvas billboards. We asked [our billboard vendor] if they could print the canvas to make it look like the windows were glowing with dimension in a U/V ink.”
When the solution was worked out, it allowed them to afford the sets.
“Whatever we used in the virtual world, we used the same texture on the physical sets. All we needed to do is render them to match on the canvas. There was an almost seamless integration between the real world and the virtual world,” said Coup.
But to do this, they needed to invent a way for an inkjet printer to use U/V inks.
“Because U/V inks have a larger particulate size. We partnered with our vendors to invent and redevelop the printing nozzles so we could print the larger U/V particulate, so we could do this cheaper thing.”
The results were outstanding and it allowed Universal Creative to stay within budget.
Takeaway #13: A good show requires exact timing!
They explained that at a certain point, they realized that with a ride vehicle holding only 8 passengers, they didn’t allow enough time per scene to reach the planned 2,000 riders per hour (THRC) ride capacity.
Coup said, “We realized that an 8 person vehicle didn’t give us enough time to deliver a really good story. We were deep into it. We needed to redesign the entire ride for a 12 person vehicle. The envelope was larger and we had to take out a third of the ride, three of our favorite scenes were cut to make it work. It was a good lesson in not getting too attached to anything.”
Out of that challenge came a much better solution with a better vehicle with better proportions. It allowed them to gain the 18 seconds per scene they needed to tell a better story. From the very beginning, it was about pacing, and that’s what made it so successful. The pacing was perfect.
Thierry Coup said, “We’ve paced it like a symphony. Pacing as a philosophy to deliver emotions and story and capture the emotions of your audience. It gives you just enough time to rest to prepare for the next moment. From the very first scene when Spiderman jumps on your vehicle, it just breaks the fourth wall. You don’t expect it. There is no formula for perfect pacing. There is trial and error. It’s something you have to feel. It’s instinctive. We’re looking at the timing and thinking about every second.”
Takeaway #14: Great attractions require precise planning.
Coup explained that three years before the ride opened, they had to put a dot exactly where the vehicle was going to be and commit to it.
Said Coup, “You think about the action of the moment, the music at that moment. When you control that, you really start thinking about the rhythm of the attraction. Nowadays we have so many modern tools and we really don’t think things very thoroughly. But we all put all our brains on it. Every second in this fight was thought out and we were lucky to get it so perfect.”
Takeaway #15: A great story will tolerate some value engineering.
During the planning of the attraction, budget cuts forced Universal Creative to cut three whole scenes from the ride. One was a scene involving the Green Goblin flying. Coup, Hettema, and Trowbridge did not disclose what the other two scenes were about. But they did have to change the story to adapt to the shorter attraction. The ride turned out to be a classic, which proves the point that a great story can tolerate some budget cuts (value engineering) and still be great.
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