E.T. SAID MY NAME
— Brad (@midnightsky82) December 17, 2014Listening to other followers on Twitter, the reaction to this news seems to be split between "Wait a minute, E.T. can say people's names?" and "Wait a minute, there's still an E.T. ride at Universal Studios Florida?" E.T. is the last remaining unchanged original attraction from the 1990 opening of the park, save for the coming and going of the namechecking, of course.
The use in the attraction of "passport" cards to E.T.'s home world, which then allowed E.T. to say each visitor's name at the end of the ride, represented one of the first widespread uses of interactivity in a major theme park attraction. Director Steven Spielberg recorded the preshow for the attraction, which makes a point of emphasizing the passports that visitors would collect as they told a ride attendant their name upon entering the inside queue. Ride attendants at the load area would collect the passport cards, which would be associated with each rider's name and would provide the input that would prompt E.T.'s farewell at the conclusion of the trip.
Of course, much fun was to be had in trying to come up with the most outlandish (and borderline inappropriate) names that you could get the USF team members to input. Over the years, though, the namecheck interaction on the ride became more and more inconsistent, adding to a general feeling among many fans that E.T.'s days in the park might be numbered. Universal Studios Hollywood closed its E.T. ride in 2003 and its show building is now used for that park's version of Revenge of the Mummy. Japan's version closed in 2009 to make way for Space Fantasy: The Ride.
Here's an on-ride video of E.T. Adventure that I recorded in Orlando last month. E.T. did not say my name, or anyone else's.
Have you ridden the E.T. Adventure? Did E.T. say your name?
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Operator: "What's your name?"
Me: "Ian"
Operator types the letter E. Long pause. "er, how do you spell that?"
My family and I visited the Orlando park in June of 2012, however, and had a completely different experience. Here's an excerpt from my trip log regarding that particular ET ride:
<<...don’t know what was wrong, but I had the team all pumped to listen for a surprise at the end…and you couldn’t understand a single thing E.T. was saying. Deb and Katie had no idea that he had just called us by our names. Partly because he wasn’t loud enough, partly because it was timed wrong, and partly because I don’t think they had coded our cards correctly. I sort of heard “Katie” – only because I knew what to listen for – but the other two names could have been spoken in E.T.’s own language for all I know. They really oughta get that fixed.>>
So glad to hear that they did!
We were just there a couple of weeks ago. We were told that we had been per-approved for galactic travel due to the seriousness of the situation and that no passports were necessary. After 20 years, ET finally announced that I was his friend.
When I was there in 10/2013 E.T. did say my name. I loved riding it again after so many years!
I think I had heard so much about it, I expected to hear just my name, not ET real off all the names on that vehicle at once.
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