TubaGeek
God bless the "Ignore" button.
I fail to see how "...haven't been balanced properly. They really should be by now" is "making excuses". Seriously, I honestly believe YOU may be unbalanced.
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Universal maintenance issues
- Thread starter kap91
- Start date
Bairstow
Well-Known Member
You seem to know a lot about what he would or would not say.
JediMasterMatt
Well-Known Member
a dozen OLED screens with perfect blacks replacing the day-glo painted scrims would be a good start.
You know, assuming Universal would rather sell their firstborn children than install more animatronics.
OLED on a large scale is a pipe dream. Yields on panels aren't high enough for even flat panel television sizes. Projectors are the only viable option for anything of size unless you want to get into using LED diodes for extreme sizes (like Jerry Jones's scoreboard) and image quality isn't very good.
Re: projector adjustment - Ironically, the way to adjust "brightness" is not to use the Brightness control. Brightness usually adjusts black level, not peak light output - which is adjusted by Contrast. In the case of the Mummy, the issue is not that the black point is set improperly, it's that the projector can't output high enough contrast ratio to have true black and bright highlights concurrently. Even with the panels set to "off" too much light is passing through. The only way to fix that is to use a neutral density filter to knock down the total light output, which would dim everything.
Bairstow
Well-Known Member
Perhaps I'm misjudging their size because of the darkness/speed, but the "apparitions" you see in the spaghetti bowl portion of the ride never seemed much larger than commercial television screens.
Either way, projection or LED screens would be a huge upgrade from the painted plywood/scrims they have now. Maybe it's supposed to look like a cheesy, laff-in-the-dark throwback effect but it lets down what is otherwise a leading-edge ride.
Skip
Well-Known Member
Revenge of the Mummy has been one hell of a mess for quite some time - everything from the animatronics (boy, Imhotep I hasn't been anything but cringe-worthy in nearly a decade), the lighting (turntable scene has been astonishingly illuminated for so long), to the projections (Scarab scene is WAY too bright, I can never make out what I'm supposed to be seeing in the turntable, etc.).
It's a mess of a ride. It was built on the cheap in an era where the parks were desperate for a quick fix that included a coaster track to advertise. I'm honestly not sure why everyone loves it so much... typically theme park fans usually have higher standards.
To be clear - HUGE fan of Universal, including The Mummy property. But I don't make excuses for them, and while this ride is "fun," it is not by any means "good" as a themed experience, even when running at 100%. It needs a huge overhaul and reimagining to be brought up to the standards with the rest of the park (as did Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, another ride built on the cheap. Shrek would ideally also be up for some help.)
As for your Transformers problems... sounds isolated to the vehicle. The effects that usually go out are the smoke screen and the heat, which I understand have had some issues recently.
Forbidden Journey is miles ahead of Revenge of the Mummy but it's still overall a mess of a ride in terms of narrative & show elements... the new profile has really messed with the ability to see backstage elements creeping into your line of sight. I know it's impossible to do anything about it, but ideally they'd go back and give this a thorough reimagining, too, now that they have the money to spend.
It's a mess of a ride. It was built on the cheap in an era where the parks were desperate for a quick fix that included a coaster track to advertise. I'm honestly not sure why everyone loves it so much... typically theme park fans usually have higher standards.
To be clear - HUGE fan of Universal, including The Mummy property. But I don't make excuses for them, and while this ride is "fun," it is not by any means "good" as a themed experience, even when running at 100%. It needs a huge overhaul and reimagining to be brought up to the standards with the rest of the park (as did Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast, another ride built on the cheap. Shrek would ideally also be up for some help.)
As for your Transformers problems... sounds isolated to the vehicle. The effects that usually go out are the smoke screen and the heat, which I understand have had some issues recently.
Forbidden Journey is miles ahead of Revenge of the Mummy but it's still overall a mess of a ride in terms of narrative & show elements... the new profile has really messed with the ability to see backstage elements creeping into your line of sight. I know it's impossible to do anything about it, but ideally they'd go back and give this a thorough reimagining, too, now that they have the money to spend.
Bairstow
Well-Known Member
Was Mummy cheap? I've always heard that of the three versions of Mummy that were built, Florida got the "good" one.
Also, I don't recall the ride ever being advertised as a coaster. When I rode and found that it was a true coaster/dark ride hybrid I was pleasantly surprised.
Skip
Well-Known Member
Oh yeah, super cheap. $45 million - tiny for an "E-Ticket" style attraction (remember, this was the Studios headliner back then!) The Hollywood version cost something like $40 million. Florida got the "good one" in the sense that it had a longer dark ride portion (though honestly I prefer Hollywood's) and had more space to work with the KONG structure (vs. Hollywood's ET structure).
Park maps and hype videos all advertised space age robotics (??), forward and backwards motion, and COASTER COASTER COASTER. It was the park's Test Track - an overhyped mess that functioned as a sorely needed thrill ride. I can find one of my old park maps and take a picture - lots of imagery of coaster tracks around the warrior mummies and/or one of the poster images from the original film.
BTW - Singapore's ride was built much later as part of their Egypt land. It abandoned the convoluted "cursed set" schtick and just set the whole thing in an ancient temple like Hollywood's - it completely changed up the opening scene and the ending, to great effect. (No fake unload, either.) It's by far and away considered the "best" of the three.
Funny, the only thing I always thought was great about the mummy was the fake unload and fire on the ceiling.
So how in any way be Universal be said to be having superb maintenance with all this going on? Seems "fair" to me, maybe better than their immediately preceding period, but certainly not putting Disney to shame (not that it's making Disney look good either)
Bairstow
Well-Known Member
Was anyone saying that Universal has superb maintenance?
Skip
Well-Known Member
I think overall it does put Disney to shame - Universal has and usually keeps to its 10 point system (each effect is assigned a point value, if the number reaches 10, the ride goes down until it can get below 10). However, you can't really "fix" a ride that is fundamentally flawed (i.e. Mummy or Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls). Disney has a nasty habit of not only not fixing effects in a timely manner, but often shutting them down or forgetting about them entirely (cc: Dinosaur, Ellen). Universal has had occasions of effects being abandoned, though they're almost always out of unfeasibility (i.e. the "swinging doors" right before the final drop on Dudley) rather than laziness or a reduced budget.
Neither resort is perfect at maintenance at the moment, but Uni has a far better overall philosophy and generally keeps at it. Disney lets the Yeti rot and Dinosaur operate with a third of its effects.
I've said its gotten a hell of a lot better over the last five years with new procedures and systems in place to try to get as much fixed and maintained as much as physically possible.
Nowhere near perfect but far better than it used to be.
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You're heading towards personal.
A little hint. Back off. Or you may find yourself not here anymore.
Well I don't think a ride being fundamentally flawed excuses not keeping up the effects it does have. If that were the case then the yeti should be excused as well. And weren't most if the turned off dinosaur effects also canned because of feasibility/practicality (compies, teradactyl,)
Ellen always makes my heart hurt in ins post curtain status. Though it seems to me it's state can be blamed largely on multiple anticipated refurbs that never happened. But it seems the exception rather than the rule.
I'm not trying to say that Disney's maintenance is perfect - it just doesn't seem like Universal's is any better. Having a better philosophy doesn't count for much if it's not stuck to.
TubaGeek
God bless the "Ignore" button.
Any other examples? I find this kind of stuff oddly fascinating.
Admittedly, it's been a while since I've rode it, but MIB always used to be notorious for stuff not working. Half the animatronics would be still, the ambushes wouldn't happen, the queue elevator would be still with both doors open, the scan of the opposite car wouldn't happen, and there would never, ever be fog in the final big bug scene - ruining the illusion when it was over as you'd still see the city scene behind you.
As far as I know some of those effects are now back on, but I think the end fog still doesn't work.
The mummy in the mummy only works about half the times I've ridden it.
I've seen disaster/earthquake run often without the collapsing street and tanker as well.
Over at Ioa poseidon's water tunnel was turned off for years, though I think I heard it might be finally running again.
The fountain outside of sinbad hasn't had its proper squeaky voice in years.
Sorry for the typos. Courtesy of my phone.
TubaGeek
God bless the "Ignore" button.
See, I've been going only or the past couple years, but almost all of those things work consistantly now. I've seen Mummy without the mummy ONCE, a couple of regularly broken effects on MIB, and I didn't even KNOW the fountain was ever supposed to have a squeaky voice! I'm guessing they just abandoned that one.
Yup. That was a pure Blackstone budget call.
Because he always comes down on Disney for everything that is wrong and he always makes excuses for Universal. Yes they do fix the problems but so does Disney.
You've been here for two months.
Once you've been around a hell of a lot longer you can talk about what I "always" do or don't do.