Some of the biggest crowds I’ve seen have been around Chez Alcatraz and the Bruce photo-op. That’s not even counting the Jaws merch I see people wearing around the parks. It seems like it flies off the shelves. In the legacy store, the jaws section was just as big as the Harry Potter section, which was very telling. There’s a modern audience for it all right!
And, I think, this is the critical thing. The nostalgia for Jaws, probably more than any other attraction, is such that any new attraction would be a major disappointment.
Both. Jaws is a better IP than most in the park and the Studios desperately needs more attractions like the original. Even if Creature is built in EU, it doesn’t totally fix Studios’ problem.
F&F ate two attractions. One of the biggest show buildings on property correct?
I think either Mack or Intamin just released a concept for this. I think that having the ride indoors with different scenes that only take inspiration from the OG would cut some of the harsher comparisons. Most guests didn’t ride the 1990 OG version with the shark bites boat effect, so this would be new for probably 99% of guests. Look at JP vs JW over in Hollywood. When JP was closed and JW was being built, everybody almost had JW sworn off that it could never be as good. Now that it’s open, many people like it more. This is because it changed enough not to be a simple ‘redo’ of the original, but almost a complete new ride that took the best parts of the original and added to them. Completely new things were also added to further the differentiation. If the ride is made different enough while keeping the spirit of the original, people may even prefer this version.
Right, I’m just saying Universal really does not have a problem with attractions taking up a large area. A one for one swap of Jaws for F&F is no net change in attractions anyways.
That might be because so much money was spent on overhauling the infrastructure and working on the show-building that they had to go cheap on the ride itself. If another attraction was placed here, the impressive show building still stands, and this time all money would be spent on the attraction itself that would go inside. The only issue I could think of would be water. This building was made for a dry attraction. How much would it cost to retrofit it so that it could hold water? As for the footprint, not much would need to be done. Just create a revised layout that can fit in the gutted show building. Reskin San Francisco to a revised version of Amity. You can keep the buildings facing the lagoon with some New England-inspired names replacing the California references. They’d only need to change the more city-esque facades, and even then that’s just simple facade-work. Swap one wall for another. To fit with the buildings being larger than the old ones in the OG Amity they could change to name from “Amity village” to “Amity Warf” or something like that
