Universal Orlando this morning announced the official opening date for its newest attraction - Illumination's Villain-Con Minion Blast.
The new interactive ride will open officially on August 11, anchoring Universal Studios Florida's newly designated Minion Land. Set at the Villain-Con event from the "Minions" movies, Minion Blast challenges guests to see if they have the skills to become the newest member of the Vicious 6 - the gang of supervillains from this Illumination Entertainment franchise.
I am planning to be in Orlando for a media day for Minion Blast the day before its official opening, so stay tuned to Theme Park Insider and its channels for my review of the attraction and surrounding land, which includes the new Minion Cafe restaurant.
Universal Orlando today also added Villain-Con Minion Blast to its official app, so you can check the current wait time for the moving walkway ride during its technical rehearsal soft opening period. Villain-Con Minion Blast also uses the Universal Orlando app to customize and track performance on the interactive experience, so I am told that new options for that are available now, as well.
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The bigger joke is the fact I've been on the ride twice, and twice it's been a walk on.
I have never seen the wait time more than 30mins, and that was one Saturday afternoon.
Makes you wonder if it's going to gain the popularity other shooter rides have?
Let's face it, a "passholder preview" is NOT for the benefit of the passholders, it's for the benefit of the park. The park uses the passholders like guinea pigs to load test the attraction, ride ops, and other systems, so they're going to manage every variable as strictly as they can. It's especially true on a tech-heavy attraction like this, which could explain the very limited number of passholders they want to arrive to experience the attraction during the preview period.
Russell - agreed that passholders are guinea pigs. But the ride has been open to the general public for a while now. Capping attendance with some ultra-low number doesn't make sense, but I'm sure they have their reasons.
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A real joke the way that they offered the passholder preview. 4 days of preview that were booked up within about an hour? Impossible, as that ride is a people eater. No way they reached 4-days capacity. Even worse, you had to show up at an assigned time. Ever try to take I-4 East on a Saturday? Good luck being anywhere even close to a set time. Why not just open the preview up during a set amount of hours and just allow passholders to show up? Like passholder night, another passholder perk that most won't get to experience. Are there more passholders that signed up in less than one hour than can fit in Islands of Adventure? Doesn't pass the sanity check, Universal. Work a job and can't insta-click the email the second it is sent out? Sorry, you lose. I'd rather they offered no passholder preview, honestly, if it is going to be so difficult to attend.