How far has our expectations of Universal planning at USF fallen. The big argument here is *It's better to have something substandard than to have nothing in that space. Bottom line, it's sad. Optimism, where art thou?
Maybe Woodbury and company need to get on with their life's work, as Chuck Noll would have said. The decisions from the top haven't been all that great lately.
As I said just before your post-
The ride system isn’t necessarily the problem. Look at Kong. It’s a great attraction in IOA.
Why is Kong successful with the same ride system?
1) Storyline - coherent and simple
2) Graphics - Doesn’t look corny and fake
3) Scale - from the queue to the facade - the ride is grand feeling even though it’s just a screen tunnel. Everything around the screen tunnel just works.
4) The outdoor section - gives us a longer ride and allows us to make the scale and façade of the ride part of the ride itself. The ride is noticeably less enjoyable when it skips the outdoor section.
5) The animatronic - impressive as hell. But it’s arguably way less important than the other 4 points. There could be no animatronic and the ride would still work. It’s just a great punctuation at the end of a relatively complete ride.
But the most important part in my opinion?
6) It’s a ride perfectly placed in a park that desperately needs a ride with its qualities. Specifically- being indoor in a park full of outdoor rides. And in a park with only 2 screen based rides in it. Thereby adding to the
diversity of the park’s attractions instead of
contributing to it’s overabundance.
—-
So knowing the ride system itself isn’t the problem; how can Twisters correct what F&F got wrong and Kong got right?
For starters- numbers 1 and 2 can easily be done. But numbers 3, 4 and 5; you can’t, with the way the current show building is. So they are going to need to massively overcompensate with some fans and blowers to truly make the tunnel experience itself stand apart. As much physical effects as they can add, they need to.
Twisters is really the only IP I can think of where they can add more physical elements to the attraction (like wind) to elevate the ride from what it was previously. BTTF, for example, wouldn’t have any opportunity to add more needed physical elements.
Although even doing that, it still won’t be able to make up for the 3/4/5 that Kong offers.
Still- if they can do that, it can be an OK attraction that still compliments and adds to the park. But only if the correct number 6. Which is, by far, the bigger problem.