***SPOILERS***
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Oh, it's bad. I legitimately cannot think of any ride lazier than this. Kong received lukewarm reception but shows ambition and effort. Antarctica at SeaWorld is terrible but it was a pretty ambitious ride system for a park that previously did not have a dark ride.
This? ANOTHER simulator. Another screen. More 3D glasses. More simulated falling and getting splashed with water droplets. And this time in ride vehicle and theater that are 100% unthemed (at least that will make installing a new video easier). Of course, we all knew that that's what this would be, so I hoped they had found some way to make the concept work enough for the ride hold it's own. Nope.
First and foremost, it's cringingly unfunny. I don't think Jimmy himself is that funny but that isn't the problem here. What could have possibly made this work is if it was done in a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware style, akin to how The Simpsons Ride makes fun of it's own use of ride tropes. Instead it's played entirely straight, despite being literally cartoonish. The entire time Jimmy makes extremely hokey comments like "oh being in first place sure feels great!" rather than anything even remotely funny.
Second, this was a missed opportunity to make a "real world" simulator (like Soarin'), as in something that could at least semi-plausibly happen. This would make it stand out from Universal's other simulator rides. Instead it's the same out of control unrestrained chaos, and, to reiterate, awkwardly cartoony. The cartoonish direction is weird and awkward because he's a real person with a real world talk show and is playing himself. So why are we in a Mario Kart-esque version of New York? If there is one positive I can say about the ride experience, it's that they at least refrained from using the"something goes wrong" cliche'.
I will say that the queue and new system are done well and do a great job of making it seem like you're actually there to be in the audience of The Tonight Show. But then this pretense doesn't seem to carry over to the actual ride. I may have missed some lines of dialogue, but it doesn't seem like Jimmy introduces the experience as it should be explained: you're there for the filming of an episode and the idea for tonight's skit is for Jimmy to race the audience around New York. Instead he more or less says "Hi I'm Jimmy Fallon and this is a ride about racing me around New York because reasons."
I predict that from following the mediocre Kong with this, and following this with a ride that is probably just like Kong, Universal will receive backlash.
