I’ve always thought that the 2016 film
Captain America: Civil War should have been called
Captain America 3: Iron Man 4 – The Rise of Spider-Man. Seems to me
that there is no harm in giving something multiple numbering schemes when it
is more than one thing at a time. In keeping with that philosophy, I am
assigning the third part of my China-Japan trip report both the numbers three
and one. Now there will be no confusion whatsoever.
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October 19: Visit Universal Studios Beijing and Scares @ Universal
The jet lag was finally gone and I was able to sleep the whole night. Before
going into Universal Studios Beijing, my wife R wanted to try the breakfast
buffet in our hotel at Cafe Royal. They had lots of cute pastries with minions and stuff
like that. We were very happy with the meal, and I didn’t mind that we ended
up getting to the park after early entry ended.
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| The park entrance is under the Universal Grand Hotel. |
The park entrance area was nice, but I did notice that the archways had a metal cladding added on top of the stucco finish, presumably to hide the security cameras and other infrastructure like that. I wonder if the specifications for their security system were decided too late in the design of the hotel to integrate them into the building itself, or if something else happened. It’s not a huge deal, but it is strange.
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| The metal equipment enclosure is painted the same color as the exterior finishes of the hotel. It is noticeable while you are queuing right next to it. |
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| Once inside the park, a large plaza framed by fake palm trees leads to Hollywood Land. I took this photo from inside the Universal Grand Hotel in a hallway above the park's turnstiles before the park opened the previous day. |
R doesn’t ride anything with drops, but I wanted to be sure that I didn’t miss anything, so I booked us Express Passes in the Universal Beijing app. Since they don’t have Google in China, I had to install the app directly from the official Universal website onto my Android phone. I was originally concerned to install something outside of the Google Play store, but it all seemed to work okay.
Once inside the park, I went straight to Jurassic Flyers, the Mack Inverted
Power Coaster inside the Jurassic World Aviary. I was surprised to see that
the Aviary was a full Epcot-style pavilion including the Camp Jurassic
playground and a restaurant in addition to the ride.
Jurassic Flyers ★★½☆
[Enter Queue 10:53 | Standby Posted Wait 60 | Actual Wait 66]
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| Jurassic Flyers' queue is mostly located in a portion of the building with low ceilings at the edge of the aviary. |
The queue winds around scientific equipment and dinosaur displays. However,
the queue also went through a faux Jurassic World employee break room,
complete with a staff refrigerator with a note to only use it for human food.
The medical equipment makes sense if Jurassic World was a real theme park, but
why would guests go in the break room? Another point against the queue for
this ride is that there was no music in this area, just dinosaur sound
effects.
For some reason, this inverted coaster has a solid floor under nearly
the entire ride. It strikes me as being something that Universal wasn’t aware
they would need until the last minute. I have it on good authority that every
net and fence in use at both versions of Donkey Kong: Mine Cart Madness were
known years before the ride opened. So I would find it strange that they
wouldn’t have known about such a requirement many years in advance of this
ride’s opening as well.
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| The queue's detour through a Jurassic World staff break room took me out of the experience. Why would guests to this theme park wait for the ride back stage? |
The ride has an overhead track and four across seating, arranged so the
rider’s legs are dangling. I wonder if the ride would need all these platforms
if the ride vehicle had a floor? Anyway, it was a pretty fun ride with nice
swooping turns and a good view of the park’s central lagoon. It is a very
gentle ride, and if I were to compare it to the Jurassic Park-themed inverted
family coasters, I would say that it falls somewhere between the rather
lackluster
Pteranodon Flyers
at Islands of Adventure and the great
Canopy Flyer at Universal Studios Singapore.
The wait was posted at 60 minutes, and it wasn’t one of my Express Passes. I
timed the wait at 66 minutes. Overall, I like the idea of the ride, and the
layout was fun. But the platforms under the ride take a lot away from what it
could have been.
SING on Tour! ★½☆☆
[Enter Queue 12:11 | 12:15 Show]
After I got off Jurassic Flyers, I met back up with R in the delightful Minion Land section
of the park. I noticed that the Sing show was going to start in less than five
minutes, so we got in line and went straight to the preshow room.
I have never seen the film, so I got excited when the preshow had a pretty
strong resemblance to The Muppets, with an exasperated stage manager trying to
wrangle all the performers. Unfortunately, the show itself is basically just a
musical revue that almost completely forgot about the performer conflicts and
jokes as soon as the show started.
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| The theater has projection mapping and other built-in effects. |
Two of the characters were singing live, while the others had prerecorded
voices. The live voice performers were not very good. I am sure that it is
difficult to perform while wearing a 50-lb animal costume, but since a canned
voice is used for some of the show, why not go all in and have all the singing
prerecorded? I am not sure how the gorilla guy’s microphone was set up, but it
really sounded like he was singing into a face mask, which I guess he was.
The
theater had some excellent lighting effects, and it is possible that the show
could be pretty high energy with the right audience. But I definitely wasn’t
feeling it.
One other strange element about the show is that the
performer’s crowd work was in English. It is my understanding that this show
was created for Universal Studios Japan, where English-language crowd work
could definitely be effective. The audience I saw this show with was not
interested, however.
Lights Camera Action! ★☆☆☆
[Enter Queue 12:58 | Standby Posted Wait 5 | Actual Wait 6]
In Hollywood Land near the transition to Minion Land is another show that was
originally developed for a different Universal park. Lights Camera Action! is
a special effects show in the same mold as Twister…Ride It Out from Universal
Studios Florida (1998 – 2015) and Backdraft from
Universal Studios Hollywood (1992 – 2010) and Universal Studios Japan (2001 –
2020).
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| Lights Camera Action! is located near the park entrance in a replica of the Pantages Theatre. |
Guests watch a preshow film before moving to a tiered standing room only
viewing platform where a bunch of special effects happen in front of you for a
few minutes.
It was originally developed for
Universal Studios Singapore where it begins with a preshow starring Steven
Spielberg and a bunch of clips from Fast and Furious films. In this version of
the attraction, a new preshow film was produced with Steven Spielberg and
Zhang Yimou talking about the magic of special effects and filmmaking. This
preshow is much stronger than the Singapore version and makes a lot more sense
given the sound stage setting. (The Singapore version’s preshow is really
heavy on car chases which typically are not filmed on sound stages.)
Once
guests move to the main show room, they are looking at Shanghai through
the windows of a roofed boat dock. A series of special effects caused by a
typhoon happen in front of the audience. Many of the individual effects are
good, but they don’t particularly seem to build, and so it just sort of ends
after three minutes.
The other Universal special effects shows
suffered similar pacing issues, but this one seemed particularly
anticlimactic. I hate to be down on the attraction, but it really didn’t speak
to me. I think this form of show is extremely difficult to pull off, and I
think it speaks volumes that Universal’s new theme park built since Universal
Studios Beijing do not have a similar attraction. We waited six minutes for
this show and it is hard to imagine anyone being willing to wait longer.
After the show, I decided we should continue making our way through the list of attractions that Universal doesn’t have in Florida that R would be willing to do. So we made our way to the back of the park, where an enormous indoor Kung Fu Panda section is located. We entered via the Transformers Base portal and were blown away by the scale of this facility.
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| In person, the ceiling is much darker, although I do think that a faux night sky would have made a great indoor land even better. |
Carousel of Kung Fu Heroes ★★★½
[Enter Queue 1:35 | Standby Posted Wait 15 | Actual Wait 12]
The first thing we came across was the carousel, which features characters from the film with a beautiful carved wood look.
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| The character designs on the carousel were very cute. |
The queue winds through a wood shop with many in-progress character carvings. Once our 12-minute wait was up, we selected our favorite animal and were off!
This is an exceptionally charming carousel which adds a lot of great kinetic energy to this section of the park. If I had a criticism, it would be that there was no music in the queue, just the sounds of carving wood. Time always feels slower when waiting in line without music, and the Kung Fu Panda films have a nice orchestral score. Most of the queue is in a separate building where one cannot see the carousel, so music in the queue would not impact the ride at all.
Journey of the Dragon Warrior ★★★☆
[Enter Queue 1:56 | Standby Posted Wait 20 | Actual Wait 13]
After we got off the carousel, I was excited to see the headliner attraction in this area of the park. Right across the way from the carousel is the entrance to Journey of the Dragon Warrior, the park’s boat ride which I had not read anything about prior to the trip. After reading the warning sign, R decided to sit it out while I check to see what the ride was like, as the warning sign mentions that it has a drop.
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| The marquee for the ride needs to be impressive for rides that are completely hidden from guest view. |
The wait was posted at 20 minutes, but I only ended up waiting 13. For some reason, only the switchbacks in the first level of the queue were used. The queue continues upstairs to a gigantic room with elaborate props and more switchbacks, but at the top of the stairs, the line was directed straight to the other set of stairs into the station. I wonder if the upstairs queue is not typically used because the queue attendees do not want to have to actively manage a line upstairs when all of the other work locations are downstairs?
The station of the ride is truly grand, with two boats loading simultaneously on each side underneath full-size dragon boats hanging from the ceiling. This ride was built to eat people!
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| This ride has enormous capacity. |
The first few scenes are pretty good, with some nice animatronics of Po and the other good guys from the movies. The villains are introduced with a cool scene in which many of the characters become frozen. However, it quickly becomes clear that the villains will only appear as projections. After that, the boat goes up a lift hill, where the heroes fight the villains in a series of projection screens. This sequence doesn’t work very well, as there doesn’t feel like much of a reason as to why the scenes play out on multiple screens. There is no sense of montage like The Gran Fiesta Tour or that sequence in the middle of Living with the Land. Instead, it is more like the boat is floating through a bunch of flooded movie theaters.
The drop is nice and smooth, and the finale scenes are once again fairly well rendered with animatronics. But overall, I would say the ride is just good. Not great.
I could imagine the upstairs portion of the ride working better if somehow the fight sequence had better transitions making it more other worldly? As much as I love boat rides, the only thing that could have saved such a high usage rate of screens would be if the ride used a more active mode of conveyance. Something like the Spider-Man SCOOP vehicle would have been able to disorient and direct focus from screen to screen in a narrative driven way.
One other thing I noticed about the ride vehicle: the drive tires that control the track switches are extremely loud. I believe it is because the boats navigate a turn over wheels that do not face the direction of the turn. But it is an unusual condition for a boat ride to have.
As much as I found the ride to be interesting, I didn’t think it was good enough to justify making my wife ride something with a drop, even though she would have been okay on it.
Jurassic World Adventure ★★★★
[Express Pass | Standby Posted Wait ?]
The first time I saw the Jurassic Park movie and read the novel as a kid, the thing that stuck with me was the idea of a jeep tour of a dinosaur zoo. A few years later, Islands of Adventure opened with a whole land dedicated to Jurassic Park. So, I was sure that there would be a ride featuring a jeep-like tour of the dinosaurs. On my first visit to Islands of Adventure in ~2001, I enjoyed the visitor center, the Triceratops Encounter, and the River Adventure ride. But none of them was the jeep ride that the book and movie made look so appealing.
The Jurassic Park attractions in Hollywood and Japan follow a similar model (I guess technically Hollywood had the River Adventure first). But when Universal had the opportunity to retool the Jurassic Park offerings at their park in Singapore, they kept the headliner as a water-based experience.
So, when I first heard that the park in Beijing would have a dark ride that had the jeep tour for their main Jurassic Park experience, I was pretty excited. And when the ride opened, I violated my usual don’t watch the video of a ride you might see in person rule and watched a video of it. But the video I saw was dark and blurry and hard to tell what was real and what was screens.
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| Jurassic World Adventure is located inside the Visitor Center building. |
This ride uses the Spider-Man ride system to finally bring the Jurassic Park jeep tour experience to a real theme park. And it is every bit as good as people say. The screens are so high resolution that they look real (and they don’t require 3D glasses!), and they are built into extensive physical sets with life-size animatronics.
The chase sequence is one of the greatest moments on any dark ride anywhere. And the overall ride pacing is pretty phenomenal too. This ride is easily one of the best rides of its type in the world, and it is a must-see for anyone who likes dark rides or Jurassic Park.
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ★★★★
[Express Pass | Standby Posted Wait ?]
This version of Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey is nearly identical to the rides in Orlando, Japan, and Hollywood. If you are not familiar with this ride, you are missing out. Get to your nearest Universal park that has it (sorry, Singapore) and ride it. It’s amazing. They run people through the queue in a unique order in this version. It also has double sided lockers like VelociCoaster.
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| If Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey has any flaw, it is that the show building is plainly visible from the park. |
Super Swirly ★★☆☆
[Express Pass | Standby Posted Wait 25]
Super Swirly is located in the indoor portion of Minion Land. It is a Dumbo-style spinner themed to be an attraction in Super Silly Fun Land from the Despicable Me film. It is located inside the building, but with a waterfront view. And it looks really nice!
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| The ride vehicles are very cute. |
Riding this type of ride indoors is really fun, especially where you get close to the ceiling. Guests sit in two rows and those in the front row have a lever to control how high your vehicle gets off the ground.
Other Dumbo-style rides with two-row vehicles such as The Magic Carpets of Aladdin at Magic Kingdom let one row control the height and the other row control the pitch. However, this particular ride loses some major points by only having a controller in the front row.
Universal has a Super Silly Fun Land section in their Hollywood park as well. I’ve always thought it is a bit of a cop out to theme a section of a theme park to an amusement park. These attractions are recognizable from the film, but they lack any emotional connection to the film’s characters or settings. But, as flawed as the premise is, it still makes a handsome and dynamic anchor to this indoor portion of the park.
Universal Beijing Resort Parking Facilities ★½☆☆
Who else includes a review of the parking facilities with their theme park trip reports? Nobody. That’s who! A nobody!
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| The Universal Beijing Resort Parking Garage superficially looks pretty similar to the parking structures at Universal Orlando Resort's north campus. |
After we finished Super Swirly, R wanted to do some shopping in CityWalk and I took a break to check out the parking garage. Universal Beijing’s parking garage has many superficial similarities to the one in Orlando. But if you look closer, you will see some significant differences. Probably the biggest difference is the bomb shelter, which I believe is required for all large buildings in China.
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| The basement parking level doubles as a bomb shelter. |
One strange feature of the parking structure is that the escalators do not point in the direction of the resort entrance like they do in Orlando. Instead, they are stacked in such a way that you have to walk around in large circles to get to the bridge level. It is very strange that Universal opted to go with such an inefficient layout when they had such an excellent example of a great theme park parking garage in Orlando to use as a model.
The other interesting thing about the parking garage is that it has a corporate sponsor! The garage is covered throughout with the BMW logo. And near the bridge to the security area, there is a large Minion-themed BMW display.
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| The parking structure has a corporate sponsor. This BMW display is located just before the bridge to the security checkpoint to enter CityWalk. |
After that invigorating detour, I went back to the hotel to have dinner with R. My wife decided she was ready to call it a day. So this seems like a natural breaking point in my trip report. Next time, I will discuss how Universal’s Halloween event works in Beijing plus most of the other rides I missed in the first half of the day.
Series Directory
Part 1: Background, Trip Planning, and Flight to Beijing
Part 2: Forbidden City and Great Wall of China at Mutianyu
Part 3: Review of Universal Studios Beijing Part 1
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