Purduevian
Well-Known Member
I wasn't looking at thrill data, just Universal Orlando's website.
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Universal Epic Universe (South Expansion Complex) - Now Open!
- Thread starter Bob Harlem
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BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Out of curiosity, what is wrong with Terra? I booked Stella apparently, had to look it up, I don’t think that decision had much thought behind it.
Purduevian
Well-Known Member
I think Stella is a much closer walk to EPIC. Not sure if there is anything else
Disneyhead'71
Well-Known Member
Nope, that's it. Almost identical. But Stella is a 10 min walk, Terra does not have a walkable path to Epic. It is a 3 min. bus ride.
Baloo124
Premium Member
Question for those of you who have visited both EU and Uni Beijing.
Many are saying Monsters at EU ranks as the best dark ride Uni has given us (or any park chain, some are claiming).
Yet since 2021 when Uni Beijing opened, many online are giving the Jurassic World dark ride the exact same praise.
If any of you have ridden both, how to they face-off against one another? Is there a top contender between the two, or are they too different to compare?
Many are saying Monsters at EU ranks as the best dark ride Uni has given us (or any park chain, some are claiming).
Yet since 2021 when Uni Beijing opened, many online are giving the Jurassic World dark ride the exact same praise.
If any of you have ridden both, how to they face-off against one another? Is there a top contender between the two, or are they too different to compare?
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DarkMetroid567
Well-Known Member
I’m very harsh on Jurassic World Adventure so it’s no contest Monsters for me. The animatronics on JWA are very wonderful but the pacing and structure of the ride are aimless, and the latter half of the ride is way too screen reliant.
But I’d still call Spidey my #1 Universal dark ride.
Baloo124
Premium Member
It definitely set the bar up high and still holds strong all these years later. My one and only complaint is it excluding Venom in favor of Scream.
Venom belongs in the lineup of top Spidey villains with Doc Ock, Goblin, etc. That always seemed off leaving poor Eddie Brock out of that great attraction. Imo
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
I haven't done either (so this comment reads practically useless!); but I'm pretty taken aback by the reaction to USB's Jurassic ride. It seems exclusively based on the one major practical scene (which does look great) rather than the whole.
I also feel like the broader Disney and Universal community have fallen out of touch with dark rides in China. There's been quite a lot of output from the Fantawild brand I'm hoping to try out and report back on. To the point where literally no one seems to have awareness of this brand constantly pumping out large scale dark rides.
Granted it's lower fidelity, but this is also outdoors and not from the two brands of focus.
Hey, they built the Bantha ride!!!
The chase scene is obviously the highlight of the ride, but there's more to it than that. It gets a bit screen-heavy for my liking towards the middle, but it has a decent amount of practical overall, probably more than Spider-Man. This is just my impression from watching videos. The real question for me is how convincing the integration is in-person.
Baloo124
Premium Member
That was what got me wondering which tops the other from those who experienced both.
-High online praise for each
-Both use AA's and screens throughout
I've seen videos but they don't paint the whole picture.
BrianLo
Well-Known Member
My complaint is also one of ride story pacing. A perennial Universal weakness. Which is probably a bit more personal, but I can already tell that it struggles in this regard.
I already know for me personally it can’t overtake Pan or indirectly Flight of passage. And just to not play favourites, I really dislike Dinosaur.
Let me soak up the majesty of Dino’s for more than 10 seconds.
The ride's conclusion strikes me as oddly abrupt, but I don't think I can get a proper feel for the rest of the story unless it's translated into English. The language barrier creates too much of a disconnect. It's definitely chaotic, but it should be given the source material.
I think the chase scene and a few other things would be cool to see in-person, but I already wouldn't trade Monsters for JW. Most of it is too similar to various things we've already seen here in Orlando, even if there are incremental improvements in how they're presented, whereas Monsters (which I've been on) feels more like a proper evolutionary step forward with what Universal is capable of in terms of show, even if it has a few nagging imperfections of its own (reliability being chief among them.)
I get the impression that the best thing one could say about JW is "Spider-Man but better," assuming one actually feels that way. Which would be high praise, especially as I was certain until recently that Spider-Man was still my favorite attraction, but Monsters feels unlike anything else I've ridden as an overall experience. I suppose you could theoretically melt it down to, "Forbidden Journey but so much better it's not even funny," but I feel like that would be underselling it.
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BrianLo
Well-Known Member
Just to clarify it’s not the chaos. It’s the inability to soak in the majesty of Jurassic Park/World for more than 5 seconds (about the time of the reveal coming out of the hallway to the lightening strike).
Jurassic Park is a near perfect movie and they seem to have continually struggled at understanding why. Apart from the derivatively structured Jurassic World.
Jurassic Park: The Ride does it all so much better.
Take MMRR, a ride meant to be zany and chaotic. It still takes a beat before devolving, has a really nice serene outro and even takes a hilarious and needed reprieve mid ride. Perfect ride structuring.
To be fair, it is a Jurassic World ride, so the pacing is in-character, if not optimal. I think the actual Jurassic Park rides are appropriately slow burns, even if I'd prefer to see some more visual points of interests squeezed in along the way if they ever give River Adventure an overhaul.
I'll always prefer Spider-Man over Transformers, and the pacing is one of the big reasons why, but you can't deny how uncompromisingly faithful the latter is to the source material.
lazyboy97o
Well-Known Member
Covered amphitheaters are a thing.