After serving ‘Back to the Future’ fans at the Orlando theme park for nearly 16 years, Universal Studios has closed the amazing ride. Back to the Future is my favorite movie of all time, so naturally, the ride based on the movie was my favorite attraction at the theme park. I liked the ride so much growing up, that even when my family vacationed at DisneyWorld, we always took a day to head over to Universal Studios to get on this ride.
The closing is sad for me, and what’s worse, there are rumors now that the Hollywood Studios ride will also close this summer. This means that my son will never enjoy the ride as I did. It means that Universal Studios is no longer a fixed destination for me when I get to Orlando. What could they possibly replace Back to the Future with? What in the glorious, over-sequeled new library of Universal movies will they draw from. I wonder if a Fast & Furious, The Mummy or Meet The Parents ride will last 16 years. I can see it now: You’re Jinxie the cat, chasing Greg Focker through the house. Big Jack Burns jumps out and you get flushed into the toilet. Wheeeeee.
According to Wikipedia, the ride closed abruptly and without much fanfare: “The Orlando ride closed at 8pm on March 30, 2007, to make room for a new attraction opening in Summer 2008. At closing, the wait time sign displayed a 75 minute line. Guests waiting in line heard a crew member on a microphone proclaim at 8:02 pm, “The Institute of Future Technology is now closed.” After the final guests said goodnight to the attraction, employees gathered on the second level for reflection, photographs and two final rides. Within minutes after guests left the area, work crews arrived to erect fences and began barricading the area. The original sign for the ride remains and the gift shop is still open, but will be replaced by a gift shop for the replacement ride.”
If you got to ride the attraction, consider yourself lucky. For those of you who didn’t, who knows, maybe the ride will return. The future hasn’t been written yet.
What a huge disapointment! The first time I went on this ride was during my honeymoon and didn’t really care much for it, not because I don’t like the BTF trilogy. I felt dizzy. I really loved the concept of the ride. My husband who is a #1 fan of the trilogy is very disapointed as well. They said that it was one of the most popular rides, so why shut it down. Doesn’t make much sense to me…..
This is one of those things about corporations I simply don’t understand: Why in the world can’t these people simply stay put and leave a good thing alone? Why do they constantly have to change everything? I recently went to a corporate owned store and they changed the entire store. Nothing was left in place and now it simply looks horrible. Before the change the store made sense: All you had to do when you went in is take one look and you knew where to go. Now I’m walking up and down the aisles, all of which have been changed to different places, trying to figure out what goes where.
It’s amazing but these corporate folks have nothing to do but to change things for the freaking sake of it. I suppose it makes them feel important and in control. They know better, don’t they?
Universal is doing a great job in making their signature park obsolete. I’m sure it has something to do with failing business. Since Island of Adventure opened the older park has lost business. Disney continues to dominate their market. Maybe it has something to do with their nostalgia. I hated that they changed Pirates but at least they didn’t chuck it to the wind. Seriously, BTTF the ride is the only reason I went to universal. Jaws and King Kong were an after thought. Now Jaws is the only one left. Who knows how long that will last. If Universal thinks adding a ride based on a dead horse cartoon will help their business, then their doing Disney’s dirty work for them. This was one of Universal’s signatures… tears of sorrow…
I actually went on this ride on the last day. I didn’t even know it was it’s last day until a couple people in front of me said so. You would have thought they might have let people know so they could go on it one last time. The only place I found them announce it was on their website and you had to really dig to find it. The ride was showing it’s age though and truthfully I don’t think most of today’s younger kids really like back to the future. The ride while one of their signature rides was a ride that pretty much would bore any kid at that park to death. There were quite a few more exciting rides to go on and while in 1991 a motion simulator was cutting edge and exciting, in 2007 being blasted up a hill at 90mph is a hell of a lot more fun.
This is to me a fucking lie,excuse my language.How can they shut down a legendary ride,a legendary movie.Like this.
Don’t tell me that BS the ride was old,it needed to be fixed etc.
Its all BS. Its odd that Orlando closes their BTTF ride and couple months later Hollywood as well??? whats their excuse.And everyone who ever went to Orlando or Hollywood,they will tell you their favorite attraction was back to the future.And NOTHING can nor ever will replace that ride.
Its Shame,and big shame on Spielberg who has alot of ownership in both parks and the rides,especially bttf.He could have done something if he cared one bit!!!
Very very dissopointing!!!!
another stupid decision… well, it’s all Islands of Adventure from now on.
Good thing people took videos on BTTF so the grief-stricken fans can go back to Back to the Future, at least in our minds. You can almost feel the car shaking and hitting your knee on the seat in front of you, but you didn’t care ’cause the pain was outta sight, and so was the ride.
Thanks to everyone out there who took videos!!!! You guys rule!
BRING BACK BTTF AT UNIVERSAL!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m going to Universal next week with an open mind on the simpsons ride, part of me is sad as nostalgic as I am, but looking forward to something new. I think I’m almost more sad to see ET go, but watching ET now is painfully boring and without the excitement of being new, so is the ride. I’m thinking The Simpsons would be great and I know this would be something to kill budget, but T:2 3D probably could go bye bye as Terminator 4 is getting ready to come out. That is something that can go as Terminator, I may be wrong, but isn’t that at a completely different studio now with the third and forth release?
i want it back. i rode it in 2006, a year before it closed. I got to ride it once. It was my first trip to Florida ever and it was the first thing i rode. i ADORE BTTF films. i actually watched them last night, i’m listening to the soundtrack atm and waiting for my 2015 Marty McFly cap and DeLorian merchandice to arrive that’s how much i’m obsessed with the film. I was born 10 years after the 1st film (i’m 14) and it’s my favourite film. I preffer it to films i watch that are being released nowadays. Fair enough when i rode it, i felt a bit sick afterwards and i imagine the Simpsons Ride will too when i ride it in 2 months. But i’d much rather throw up after riding a ride based on the most amazing films in history.
Splash Mountain in Disney is much older than BTTF and kids nowadays haven’t ever seen Song Of The South or know who the characters on the ride are. But they don’t close that down. And i don’t immagine they ever will. And if they do they won’t anytime soon. BTTF being much more succesful than Song of The South they close because less people know about it. It’s not right.