How Spider-Man ride spun into Islands of Adventure
The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man ride took its first spin at Universal’s Islands of Adventure more than two decades ago. Some of its creators shared origin stories of the attraction at the recent IAAPA Expo.
The Spider-Man panel included Thierry Coup, senior vice president and chief creative officer of Universal Creative. He was joined by Scott Trowbridge, a former vice president of Universal Creative and now portfolio creative executive with Walt Disney Imagineering, and Philip Hettema, president and creative director of The Hettema Group and a former senior vice president of Universal Creative.
“All three have worked for Disney. All three have worked for Universal, kind of like Spider-Man,” moderator Bob Rogers said during their introductions.
Their freewheeling discussion emphasized teamwork, determination, storytelling and focus on solutions, qualities that turned their project into a $100 million attraction in 1999.
“Many attractions claim to be a game-changer. This one really was. After 22 years, the world is still trying, unsuccessfully, to imitate it,” Rogers said.
“But it began with colossal failure.”
Reworking with webs
Universal had been planning its second Orlando theme park for three years when a working agreement with Warner Bros. fell apart, taking DC Comics and Loony Tunes with it.
“The theme of the park was going to be cartoon world,” Hettema said.
“I still say some of those concepts, which are sitting in a drawer somewhere at Universal, are some of the best work I’ve ever seen.”
As part of its Plan B, “Jurassic Park” was moved from the Universal Studios drawing board to the park that would become IOA, and it reached out to Marvel in lieu of DC. Planners liked the attitude of the Spider-Man character, but it wasn’t a hot property at that point. Marvel had filed for bankruptcy in 1996.
“This was not the world of Universal Creative you know today. This was like a dirty little skunk factory that was trying to figure out how to build a theme park,” Hettema said. “We were all young and naive, and very enthusiastic.”
‘Impossible’ dreams
Experts said the ambitious Spider-Man ride couldn’t be done, Trowbridge and Coup recalled.
“We were told that doing 3D projection, rear-screen projection or 3D projection in the dome — not possible,” Trowbridge said. The attraction features vehicles moving amid giant projections and physical set pieces, choreographed to fastpaced music, dialogue and disorienting special effects (fire, fog, faux free-fall).
“When experts told us that it really wasn’t possible to rear-screen a project, I remember we went out and we just bought all kinds of crazy materials to see,” Trowbridge said.
“It’s about how can you pass a light through something and have it retain its polarized state?” he said. “We looked at different kinds of glass. I remember going and buying shower curtains from Bed Bath & Beyond, projecting on those.”
Eventually, they found a way through “a certain kind of material,” he said.
“I think as a team, everyone here working with us always saw a solution and that’s what made this thing, this attraction, designed to be so strong. We just believed in solutions,” Coup said.
Their hands-on mentality included a vehicle mock-up in a warehouse, where they hired grips to push along a car as if it were a ride system. Coup and Trowbridge supplied special effects.
“It was me hitting the vehicle with a 2x4 and Thierry spraying a CO2 fire extinguisher at the people in the car,” Trowbridge said.
Scoop on Scoops
The ride vehicles — dubbed Scoops — originally were designed for eight passengers. But that wasn’t going to meet the goals for hourly capacity. They were upped to 12 riders, which required significant redesigns to the Scoops and the
ride overall.
“It allowed us to design a better vehicle. I think the proportions are better. It looked like a dumpster before,” Coup said.
“It’s a great lesson, you know. Don’t get attached to anything because out of that challenge came a way better solution than we had hoped or designed for,” he said.
But there were losses then too.
“Three of our favorite scenes, we have to take out of the ride to reshift things, given the size of the vehicle and the budgetary restrictions as well,” Coup said.
What the tech
Remember, the SpiderMan ride was conceived in a different technological era, a time before people edited movies on phones.
“We knew we wanted to use CG to develop the media and to create the 3D, be dynamic and create this incredible window into a world that we could only
dream of,” Coup said. “But we just set to do this with really rudimentary software.”
Rendering the video frames was extremely time-consuming.
Now in the current ever-changing world of technology, storytelling remains important, Hettema said.
“Technology has to be invisible. If you can smell the technology, you’re going to be obsolete in two years these days,” he said. “But the story, the experience is unforgettable.”
Islands fever
Debuting a complicated ride is risky, especially after the bumpy opening of Universal Studios, IOA’s sister park, nine years before Spider-Ride arrived on the scene. Many of Universal Studios’ rides had operational issues at first, famously so with the Jaws ride.
“It took probably a year for the park to recover and
get really operational,” Hettema said at IAAPA.
He gave credit to Jay Stein, chairman and CEO of MCA, a predecessor of NBCUniversal.
“Long before that year was up, Jay was already saying we’re going to do a second park. And he was ready to get started on it,” Hettema said.
Stein “was fearless in trying to do things. He failed as often as he succeeded,” Hettema said. “But talk about audacious. He promised anything; he wouldn’t always be able to deliver it. But Universal was always willing to take a chance for a big idea, and I think they still are today.”