Rating:
* * * * *
Type: Slam-bang simulator thrill ride
Time: 4.5 minutes
Kelly says: The best theme park ride in Orlando
For many people, this
is the ride that made Universal Studios Florida famous. And with
good reason. Back To The Future . . . The Ride is a bone-jarring,
stomach-churning (the official disclaimer posted outside describes
it as “dynamically aggressive”) thrill-a-second rocket
ride through time and space. For once the warnings directed towards
expectant mothers and those with heart problems, bad backs, and
a tendency to motion sickness don’t seem like lawyers’
overkill. It’s easy to see how this ride could trigger a
premature birth or otherwise encourage what’s inside to come
outside in dramatic fashion.
Tip: Those in wheelchairs can still take this ride if they are able
to transfer themselves from their wheelchair to the ride vehicle.
Ask the attendant if you’re not sure.
That mammoth building
at the back of World Expo is the Institute of Future Technology
where that wild and wacky Doc Brown (played on video monitors
with gleeful aplomb by Christopher Lloyd) is conducting yet another
series of time travel experiments. Those of us who willingly get
on the invariably long lines to this attraction are “volunteers”
who have agreed to test out Doc’s new eight-seater convertible
DeLorean — all in the interests of science. Trouble is, that
not-too-bright but very resourceful Biff Tannen has stowed away
in 1955 and is loose on the premises — a key bit of intelligence
which we discover (via those video monitors) before Doc does.
Biff has tied up some attendants and stolen the keys to one of
the experimental DeLoreans. When he learns the truth, Doc goes,
well, ballistic. “This could end the universe as we know
it,” he screams with characteristic understatement.
Suddenly, our mission
has changed. Far from being mere passengers, we are now charged
with giving chase to the evil Biff and engineering a time/space
collision that will send Biff and his vehicle reeling back to
the present.
That’s the set-up.
What follows is harder to describe. Suffice it to say that you’re
off on a four and a half minute, high-speed odyssey that will
seem like eternity to some and all too brief to others. Along
the way, you will zoom through the streets of Hill Valley’s
future, into the ice caves of its distant past, and smack into
the slavering maw of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, always just a few tantalizing
feet behind the errant Biff.
This
ride raised the bar on thrill rides when it first opened. It has
yet to be matched. It is, quite simply, the best simulator-based
ride in Orlando, period.
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