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For those of you have never been on Kongfrontation, lets fill you in. In many peoples opinion, it was the best ride at Universal Studios Florida, and was the only ride based on a classic movie (yes, E.T. probably is considered to be a classic to many, but I don't think it's old enough to be considered one yet). Kong was one of the original attractions that opened with Universal in 1990. At one time, this was THE attraction at the Universal, along with Back to the Future, but then the park worked out the bugs in Jaws, and opened Terminator and Men in Black, and they took over as the best attractions in the park (not to mention Islands of Adventure).
Here's the basic storyline of Kongfrontation for those of you have never been on it. You are in New York City, and get on a tram (like a cable car, ski lift, etc.) for Roosevelt Island. You know Kong is on the loose in the city from the news reports going on in the station, but he's far from the tram route. So, you board your tram and start out on your trip across the East River. As soon as you get out of the station, you see a disaster area. Police cars are crashed into buildings, a overhead train fell off of it's bridge, an ambulance is flipped over. Then, on the trams radio, you are contacted by the police telling all trams to stop, but probably due to poor maintience, the tram is stuck in automatic, and you are heading right towards Kong. You see his shadow in a helicopters spotlight, and then when you are right next to it, he grabs a power line, causing a transformer to explode. The explosion causes the crashed train to explode as well. You escape, and through the fog of a broken steam pipe, you see Kong in front of you, hanging off of the bridge next to you, while you are hundreds of feet up, over the East River. Since you can't stop, you keep on getting closer to Kong, and then the helicopter flying next to you decides to start shooting at Kong, with you just feet away from the gun fire. Kong gets angry, hits the tram, causing it to fall a bit, and then he hits the helicopter, causing it to crash on the bridge. Your tram operator regains control of the tram, and you are on your way. It looks like you made it. Roosevelt station is right around the corner...but then you hear the foot steps. You round a turn, and another helicopter is shining is spotlights right in your eyes. When the driver finally turns it out, Kong is right there, standing through the roof of a building. This time when you face the king, you are eye level to him, and extremely close. He picks you up, and throws you down to the ground, at the same time, the building explodes behind him. Luckily, the tram's cable doesn't break, so you once again make it, and then make a turn and find yourself at Roosevelt station. You made it! Kongfrontation had to be one of the best rides at Universal Florida. Why the closed it...I don't know real reason. Rumor had it that it was a very expensive ride to run. Besides that it had an live operator that rode along with you in every car, a lot of times you heard that the Kong robots were getting old and the cost of repairs on them wasn't worth it. Another rumor was that so few people rode it, with it's high capasity, that Universal figured that it wasn't worth running anymore. I can't see this being true, because during the peak seasons, Kong got hour waits. The only time I saw it very empty, was right before the park was set to close, just like all of the other rides. In past years, rumors have always come up about Kong closeing for a Halloween Horror Nights events, and not reopening, but this never happened. Kongs last day of operation, was on September 6th, 2002. They had a closing ceremony, and then gave selected guests (like annual pass holders) one last ride. Anyone that attended, also got a free gift. What's in store for Kongs future? We'll keep you updated on that. Universal has an idea, but it's not annouced to the public yet. The guy in charge of Universal Florida announced that Universal Studios would be getting 3 new attractions, and Islands of Adventure would be getting 1. He also said that one of these attractions would have a lot of the same technology as Spiderman, possibly even surpassing Spiderman. I doubt that this would be at Islands of Adventure, because they already have Spiderman, and that would be kind of repetitive (although I could see a jurassic park jeep with this technology). It's been annouced that two of the Studios new attractions will be a Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genuis simulator ride (Hanna Barbera is getting a new movie) and a 3D Shrek attraction will be replacing Alfred Hitchcock (this uses some of spidermans technology). The biggest rumor for the Kong building is a Mummy/Scorpion King coaster, bringing the first major coaster to Universal Studios. How they could fit that into a New York theme, I can't imagine. Any ideas? |
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Comments to Woofboy111@aol.com
Last Updated: 8-28-02 |