While Hollywood presented its Kong encounter simply as an exercise in film production, Orlando's will seek to transport you to another place and time. Universal today revealed some of the details from that backstory:
The adventure begins as you set out to explore an island rife with prehistoric creatures of unknown origin – and the legend of a beast still undiscovered. You find yourself at a campsite of the 8th Wonder Expedition Company, the research team leading your adventure.
Once beyond camp, the menacing terrain shows signs of a native presence; beating drums draw you toward an ancient temple. Moving deeper into the ruins reveals a lost shrine – and proof you are not alone. You ignore warnings to turn back.
You board a specially designed expedition vehicle that will take you deeper into the island. Mysterious sounds pierce the air and you hear chanting. And then – you confront an enormous temple wall, complete with carvings and images that seem to pay homage to something you cannot quite comprehend. The temple’s massive wooden doors slowly open, revealing a labyrinth of caves.
Inside the caves, you meet your expedition leader – and suddenly find yourself in the midst of a raging struggle between creatures of incomprehensible size and ferocity. Then, as those creatures turn on you, there is an even more enormous, earth-pounding presence – bigger, closer and more overwhelming than you can possibly imagine. It is Kong. But is he friend or foe?
The backstory appears to describe an adventure that begins in the ride's queue — the campsite. The loading station will be in the shrine, and once aboard your vehicles, you will enter the ride's show building through the temple gate. Inside the building will be the Hollywood-style video tunnel, where the creatures will fight. After that battle, your ride vehicles will make a sweeping right-hand turn around the massive Kong animatronic, which serves as the ride's finale.
And here's a look into the making of the ride, hosted by Universal Creative's Mike West:
Universal is also promoting the new ride with a Web series called "Myth Explorer," starring SyFy host Erin Ryder, in which she travels to the Indian Ocean in search of the lost Skull Island. Here's the first episode:
Skull Island: Reign of Kong opens this summer at Universal's Islands of Adventure. A specific opening date has yet to be announced.
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If you're setting this up as a Pirates-style ride with multiple large-scale animatronic scenes in the ride portion of the attraction, well, that doesn't fit with the blueprints I've seen. Still, it's going to be a great ride. No dispute there.
Did I make up the stat of back in the day it had said 70% AA to 30% screens? Maybe it was just wishful thinking...or they changed the plans...or they pulled an Antarctica to get us pumped and then fall short come delivery
Sounds like Indiana Jones / Dinosaur. If so, I will be quite pleased!
And I don't want to kill the mood but I feel like the storyline of heroic, white explorers who are threatened by "hostile natives" is problematic to say the least.
Fast N Furious, and the Jimmy Fallon new attraction will also be screen based.
It's just too much. How about some actual physical experiences?
I Respond (in dramatic TH-like / I have to announce I am responding before I respond fashion) - Brilliant!!!
I remember about a year ago someone made a very similar claim (maybe it was you!) but there's a couple problems with that statement.
First off, "white" explorers? Why only white explorers? Clearly you've never been to Universal Orlando, because every time I go there I see pretty much every ethnicity you can think of, not just white people. And I'm 99.99% sure that not all of the tour guides are gonna be white.
And then there's the whole thing about "hostile natives." Well, why not make them hostile? Obviously, they've been a staple of the Kong franchise since the first movie came out, but aside from that, they're completely justified to attack us! We're an an entirely new race (or races) of people that they've never seen before, with weaponry and equipment far more advanced than their's, who just showed up to their home one day completely out of the blue and completely uninvited and just decided that we now own the place. Any rational human being would of course retaliate with violence. At the end of the day, I think the majority of people will not view the natives as brutal savages who are attacking because they're bloodthirsty heathens, but because they're trying to defend their homeland. And if the natives are attacking simply because they're just evil, I think people will still know that not all native peoples are evil.
I'm sorry, my friend, but PC has no place in theme park rides.
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