Thank you so much for listening. We have a really interesting episode filled with backstabbing, continuous rivals, and Steven Spielberg being stuck on his ride for hours. Today we are going to talk about one of most innovative and expensive opening day attractions ever to grace a theme park map, Universal Orlando’s Jaws, and how it was the result of the one of theme park history’s darkest and yet most inspiring period – the “arms race for Orlando” between The Walt Disney Company and Universal Studios Hollywood in the 1970’s. • Teaser: So, without further ado, let’s take a deep dive into the origins of the Jaws attraction and, to an extent, Universal Studios Orlando as a whole, to find out why – after over a decade of subsisting in Hollywood on just a studio tour- Universal’s newest theme park decided to spend 30 Million dollars to build their first attraction. Part #1: Jaws Intro The former Jaws ride at Universal Studios Florida holds a special place in the hearts of many theme park fans – especially those that grew up in Florida like me. I remember being terrified, scared, and thrilled as a great white shark chased own our Jungle Curies-like boat. The ride operated for almost two decades, subjecting millions of guests to the terror a giant great white shark - just like the characters in Steven Spielberg’s classic movie. Unfortunately, Jaws closed in 2012 to make room for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley. Such was its enduring popularity that furious Twitter users bombarded Universal with abuse, with one proclaiming “You’ve ruined Orlando!” However, it has left an enduring legacy of a novel concept – putting theme park guests inside the movies. Ironically, Disney was to blame for pushing Universal into this dangerously competitive direction and for the crafting what is regarded as one of the best theme park attractions of all time. Teaser: How is that possible? Well we’re going to need a bigger boat. Part #2: The Arms Race for Orlando Before we even get to big white sharks, we’re going deeper – to how Universal – a tiny ‘theme park’ outpost on a working studio lot in Hollywood – ended up with in Orlando. It all starts in 1971. As many of you are aware, Disney expanded its theme park empire beyond California with the opening of the sprawling Walt Disney World Resort just outside of Orlando, Florida. There were questions and many naysayers. The main concern was whether East Coast audiences would take to Disney’s specific brand of entertainment, that was centered in characters and a successful (much smaller) theme park in Orange County, California. However, they were wrong. The resort – notable in that it featured on-site hotels and a focus on multi-day vacations - quickly became a huge success. Meanwhile, Universal and their owner the Music Corporation of America, looked on quite enviously. After MCA took over ownership of Universal Pictures in 1962, having just revamped Universal Studios Hollywood and the studio tour, formerly called Glamor Trams, seven years prior. MCA had spent $4 million on a fleet of trams, dining locations, parking lots and other facilities. The tour was boosted with set-pieces such as a flash flood section and a “torpedo attack” sequence. By the 1970s, Universal was spending millions on updates to the tour, including a spectacular rockslide display and the Jaws Experience, which saw guests being attacked by the 25-foot-long shark seen in the smash-hit movie. This was the obvious pre-cursor for the eventual Universal Orlando attraction, however it was incredibly simple and did not involve any ride-show engineering – which Universal had not yet dabbled in, being simply a mixture of the tram tour and shows like Animal Actors (which premiered in the 1970’s as well). In the early 1980s, with early designs reportedly dating back to 1982, Universal devised a plan for the Florida studios and began looking for investment partners to share the risk. The Florida tour was to be similar to the Hollywood version, and would be built around a brand-new, working production facility. The plans called for a “front lot” walking tour, as well as a tram tour through the studio’s backlot. One set-piece, the “Hollywood Canyon”, would see a tram rolling onto a bridge in view of the Hollywood Hills. A massive earthquake would then strike, causing a dam to crack and a wall of water to pour down towards the tram, which would escape into an oil field in time for riders to witness a semi-trailer truck explode after crashing into an oil tank. Recognizing the risk and the large cost of development, MCA & Universal wanted a partner to assist with the Florida project. Among others, Jay Stein approached Paramount Studios, which was headed by none other than Michael Eisner. However, many of these investors expressed concern that a walking tour/tram tour experience, such as that in place at the time at Universal Hollywood, would not be able to compete head to head against Disney on Disney’s home turf. Ever the optimist, in 1981, MCA went ahead and purchased 423 acres of land in Orlando on which to build its Florida tour. To the company’s frustration, though, none of the prospective partners came on board. So the project was halted for the time being and the company turned to further improvements for their Hollywood park. In 1986, Steven Spielberg’s former college roommate, Peter Alexander (a former Disney Imagineer), was working on the King Kong figure that was to be added to the Studio tram tour at Universal Studios Hollywood. Spielberg was impressed by the lifelike Kong and asked Alexander to work on design ideas for Back to the Future. It just so happened that Spielberg’s good friend George Lucas was working with Disney on Star Tours, and had “supposedly” chided Spielberg that Universal could never produce such a ride. The great success Universal Hollywood experienced in the first year following Kong’s addition to the Studio Tour in 1987 convinced management to bring the Florida idea back to life. However, they were a bit too late. Remember that CEO of Paramount they had originally pitched the idea to? In 1984, Michael Eisner left Paramount and ascended to CEO of the Walt Disney Company. He was joined by Frank Wells, President, another potential investor the MCA team originally pitched their Florida vision to over at Warner Brothers. They were by all accounts, a force to be reckoned with. Brought in at a crucial time for the Walt Disney Company when it looked as if the company may be split up and sold, they were hostile to “truff intruders” in a way that was a complete departure to how Disney Parks had behaved up until this point. Listen to my Knott’s Berry Farm Episode to learn more about the quarter sharing and other practices Disneyland – their California theme park - practiced early on. Since the opening of EPCOT in October of 1982, Disney’s Imagineers had been hard at work designing additional pavilions. Around 1984, they had put together a plan for an entertainment-themed pavilion (dubbed can you believe it! the Great Movie Ride Pavilion) for EPCOT Center’s Future World area. Up until this point, it not been pursued. However, Eisner was intrigued. He saw an opportunity to stop Universal’s plans by opening an entire full-sized Disney theme park themed as a studio- just as Disney had themed EPCOT to great success just a couple years prior. In February 1985, at his very first shareholders meeting, Eisner announced plans for Disney-MGM Studios. Disney’s plans shared at this shareholders meeting had a striking resemblance to those for Universal’s theme park – pitched 3-4 years earlier. The main attraction would be a tram tour past four working soundstages, an animation building, backlot sets and post-production facilities. One of the set pieces to be included in the tour would be “Catastrophe Canyon”, during which an earthquake would shake the tram, cause fires to ignite, lead to an oil tank explosion and trigger a flash flood. The similarities to Universal’s proposed Hollywood Canyon, that we mentioned earlier, were undeniable. Teaser: Not to be deterred, MCA’s CEO Sidney Sheinberg was more determined than ever to get the project off the ground, especially with the success of their recent King Kong studio tour inclusion. In December of 1986, MCA announced Cineplex Odeon Corp., a Toronto-based entertainment company 50 percent owned by MCA, would be an equal partner in what would now be known as Universal Studios Florida. Part 3: The Arms Race for Orlando The so-called ‘Hollywood Arms War’ between Disney and Universal escalated throughout 1986 and 1987. Disney broke ground on Disney-MGM Studios on a 100-acre site southwest of EPCOT Center. By this stage, Disney had increased the budget for the project substantially, from $300 million to $550 million. However, to everyone’s surprise, Steven Spielberg had signed on to the Universal park as a “creative consultant.” At this point, he was already known for creating Jaws & E.T., and this was a huge boon for the fledgling park. It also put him in direct completion with longtime collaborator George Lucas – who was currently working on rides for Disney (including Indiana Jones at Disneyland) at the same time. However, I think they kind of liked it… haha. However, even with a competitive Spielberg and a lot of land, Universal was at a cross-roads. With a tram tour being the headline attraction of neighboring Disney’s park and thanks to the existence of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which allowed Disney to bypass the normal permitting processes, Disney-Hollywood Studios was a full year ahead of Universal Studios Florida. Simply cloning the Universal Studios Hollywood experience in Florida would leave MCA open to accusations that it had copied Disney, and not vice-versa. They had to do something else? But what? At this point, Universal and MCA had never attempted to create an actual themed “ride”. They didn’t even know where to start! With particularly hard-headed CEOs, MCA decided to redesign the park from top to bottom, throwing out many of its original ideas and the tram tour entirely. Through marketing and press releases, MCA attempted to differentiate its park from Disney’s, stressing that Universal Studios Florida would be a very different proposition. They wouldn’t show people how movies were made, they would put guests inside the movies. And that meant building some massive attractions. Part 4: Winning With Better Weapons When Universal & MCA decided which films would form the basis of their Orlando park, they didn’t have to look far- choosing instead to use the main set-pieces from the Hollywood tour, such as the encounters with Jaws and King Kong. Strangely enough - Universal undertook these projects having never built large scale attractions previously – up until this point their Hollywood park had only short effects & stunt shows. Nevertheless, Peter Alexander, the only show designer hired for the Florida project by MCA and Speilbergs former college roommate, was determined to, quote, “out Disney Disney.” According to Peter, when he told Sid Sheinberg at MCA that the rides would probably cost $25-30 million each (about four times what they had spent on the L.A. version of King Kong), he looked ashen. However, the fearless executives at MCA green-lighted them anyway even through the so-called ‘design’ was only represented by Alexander telling the story-line (live) and a bunch of story boards. Peter went on to say, quote, “We were in an ‘arms race’ with Disney, and he knew that only way to win was with bigger and better ‘weapons’.”” Peter’s original idea was to make Jaws one section of a larger water ride, but Jay Stein, figured the movie was worth a whole ride. However, it’s interesting to note that castle-designer Bill Martin, had made the original plans for Peter’s water ride. In the most basic terms, the new Florida Jaws attraction was to be a significantly expanded version of the segment in the original studio tour. In Hollywood, Jaws’ great white shark lunges out of a lagoon at the Studio Tour’s trams. The Florida version of the experience would instead have riders would now board flimsy-looking boats, placing them in much greater jeopardy. In one section, the plans called for the shark to actually grab the boats with his sharp teeth. However, when they went to source ride production companies to partner with MCA to actually build the water-based animatronic-heavy ride – it soon became clear that this would be a hugely complicated and costly undertaking (not unlike the actual movie Jaws). Legendary former Disney Imagineer Bob Gurr, then with Sequoia Creative, recalls in his book that, quote,: “I had no reluctance to decline to bid on giant jobs if I thought the idea was too risky. Once, as a VP in a themed entertainment company, I no-bid on a monstrous job in Florida that had sharks in it.” Gurr’s decision was to prove to be a wise one. With Sequoia Creative declining to bid, Ride & Show Engineering, Inc. (also based in California) won the bid to produce the Jaws ride’s ride show control system and animatronic sharks. Spielberg himself acted as a creative consultant – although most of the creative work fell on his old buddy Peter Alexander. All of the team would come to regret the choice to sign on in later years. Teaser: In total, MCA spent more than $30 million to produce the Jaws ride, making it Universal Studios Florida’s most expensive attraction. However, persuading its mechanical predators to perform for guests on a day-by-day basis was to prove to be an even bigger challenge than the ride’s initial construction. And we’ll be discussing those troubles and what happened to the original Jaws ride, and yes, the lawsuits that followed, next week in part two! Part 6: That Costs How Much? That Costs How Much is a new segment on the show where I look at current limited-edition merchandise and past theme park memorabilia that is going for a lot of money on eBay and auction sites. This week we’re looking at JAWS merchandise that was sold in the park and is now being sold for exorbitant amounts on eBay. On Ebay, there is a Jaws Shark Tooth Prop – the sharks in the attraction did have real shark teeth glued to their mouths originally. However, this one is made of hard rubber and likely comes from the second iteration of the ride, which we will talk about next week. It is going for a pretty reasonable, in my mind at least, $99.99. There is also a “skipper” training manual out there on the interwebs for $50.00. My favorite thing that I found is a 1988 Universal Studios Florida coffee mug. At just $25, this mug is so amazing! It features Jaws, King Kong, Ghostbusters, the Bates Motel, and is super colorful. I won’t link to it… because I kind of want it for myself. The most expensive item I could find was a JAWS Window cling – a 10 inch plastic shark split in half that goes on your window. It is apparently marked Universal Studios 1989 & JAWS 1975 and was purchased at the Universal Studio during the opening of the JAWS ride. It is currently selling for $212 and 12 cents. • Where they can find the Shownotes Closing • The ‘Thanks for listening’ close. I hope you enjoyed our new segement and the origin story behind what is one of Disney’s best ever bars. • Email me at fastpasstothepast@gmail.com if you have show ideas, or message on Facebook • The ‘Please leave an iTunes review’ if you enjoyed the podcast and want to learn more • Tune in Next Week to Learn more about the fun disaster that was the opening of Jaws and Universal Orlando.