It has been a long time since I have taken a vacation. Sure, I go with my family to the beach
every one to two years, and I take a day off here and there for a three-day mountain getaway or bachelor trip with my friends, but besides that, I am a working man. So much so that I had
accumulated 104 vacation hours at work. My assistant manager suggested I take a couple of weeks off: one for getting stuff done and one for fun.
I took him up on that and it was one of the best decisions that I have made recently. I got a ton of stuff done during the first week of vacation. And that made the second week all the more enjoyable.
A good friend of mine, Toby Armellino, lives in Mt. Dora, Florida, a suburb of Orlando and
home to the Mt. Dora Children’s Home (our readers in the Churches of Christ will know what I am talking about. The Mt. Dora Children’s Home does a lot of good work). Toby has an annual pass to Universal Studios (which includes parking) and an apartment with a spare room, so all I had to do was drive down there and buy my tickets.
We had a wonderful time. I haven’t been to Universal Studios since I was a kid. Some things have changed. The Jaws ride is no longer there, and the Back to the Future ride is now a Simpsons ride. However, my favorite ride from when I was a kid was still there: The Mummy, based on the hit blockbuster starring Brenden Fraser.
Toby said that this and E.T. were his two favorite rides and he rode both of them every single
time he visited Universal. The Mummy was just as fun as I remember it being. I love the movie and the theming was spot on (the ride takes place during the production of one of the movies, with Brenden playing himself).
I remember riding the E.T. ride as a kid, but I only rode it once and did not remember much about it (I think I only rode it the first time I went and it was closed for maintenance on my second visit). But Toby said that it was one of his favorites and it was the second ride we rode after The Mummy. We stood in line for the pre-show and the story captivated me immediately.
Stephen Spielberg himself said that we were to go with E.T. to help save his home world, the Green Planet (it is 70% land and 30% water), and save it. E.T. would guide us there on flying bikes. This makes sense because, at the beginning of the movie, E.T. is on Earth collecting planets, not abducting people, a unique alien visitation for a movie.
After the pre-show movie, we gave the ride attendants our names for our “passports”. I thought that this must be a gimmick for the kids or something, but to my surprise, they actually do serve a purpose later on. The queue itself was super neat. It looked and smelled like we were in a California forest.
A few props from the movie were there, including the “home phone” device
that E.T. invented to contact his friends to come back to Earth to rescue him. A new character and the leader of the Green Planet, Botanicus, was there to guide us to our bikes.
If the line is interesting and isn’t too long, I really don’t mind waiting in lines. We got to ride in the front row and to my delight, E.T. was in the basket in the front. He would pop his head out throughout the ride, which added to the fun.
As the ride begins, the bikes go up in the air above the forest and start to fly in a very convincing effect! I felt like I was flying just above the ground. Cop cars and government vans were coming after us just like in the movie, but we managed to get away. And then, in a most spectacular moment in the ride, we flew high above the city, with the lights twinkling below.
With the John Williams music swelling, the lighting effects, E.T. sticking his head out of the basket, I felt just like a kid again (Toby said I looked like a kid again too, taking in the brilliant effects in awe).
But it doesn’t stop there. E.T. must’ve picked up a new technology or something since the movie because we then all of a sudden were transported at light speed to the Green Planet. E.T., now in the ride itself and no longer in the basket, uses his healing touch from the film to rejuvenate the Green Planet. Light rushes in and all of the plants come back to life. Several of E.T.’s friends come to celebrate the restoration of their home world.
I may get some hate for this, but I think that the baby E.T.s on the ride are cuter than Baby Yoda. The baby E.T.s splash around in a pond, swing on vines, and one even plays the drums! It was cuteness overload and did a good job at rewarding the riders, especially the younger riders, for making it through the “scary” parts of the ride.
You actually feel like you just went on an adventure and saved the day, like the heroes in movies. And that’s what a good dark ride should do: make you part of the adventure.
Remember those passports I mentioned earlier and said that they would actually come in hand later? Well, at the end of the ride, E.T. tells you goodbye by name. That’s right. By name! Talk about a cool way to make you feel like part of the ride.
As the ride came to an end, I remembered why I have always loved dark rides so much. Not that the screen-based rides are necessarily bad, but there is nothing like seeing everything in front of you. That is also why I love the Mummy ride. There are actual mummies that pop out, fire that shoots out at you, and it is on a moving track, not just jerking you around in front of a 3-D screen the entire time.
I hope that theme parks will go back to making dark rides the norm, and 3-D rides the novelty, instead of the other way around.
While it is sad that E.T. is the last opening-day attraction that is still in operation at Universal Orlando, it is easy to see why it has remained all these years. It is what all theme park rides should aspire to: to put the rider in the universe of their favorite movies and take them on an adventure.
Anyone who knows me knows I love to collect stuffed animals, so of course I had to get an E.T. plush. Well, actually I got two: one of him in the robe from the movie, and a small keychain one of him wearing Elliot’s red hoodie.
I then went and bought the Blu-Ray on Amazon (I bought it because it was $4 to rent or $6 to own and it came with a digital copy). I hadn’t seen the movie since the VHS days and it was even better than I remember it being. But that’ll have to wait for another review.
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