Thrill Park

By Richard Corliss, Orlando

In the pre-show line for the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, visitors to Universal's Islands of Adventure learn that the Sinister Syndicate has hijacked the Statue of Liberty. Who can save her, and give the customers a six-minute jolt that will be worth every bit of the $42 they've paid for a day at Orlando's newest theme park? Only Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man.

On this stunning, pummeling ride, visitors are strapped into a "scoop" (cab) that twists and lurches in the dark while 3-D images of destruction explode from 25 large movie screens to the accompaniment of cunning fire and water effects. Spider-Man jumps onto the hood of the scoop, Doctor Octopus shakes it like a gorilla with a new toy, Hobgoblin tosses flaming pumpkins, Electro makes malefic use of a giant socket plug, Hydro Man spritzes everyone, and the scoop plummets what feels like hundreds of feet from the sky into concrete canyons that suddenly seem grand--Grand Guignol, that is. By the happy-ending salvation in a giant spiderweb, this out-of-body, out-of-mind experience reduces cynical theme parkers to burbling kids. "Gee," they say as they stagger out, "that was the best ride--ever!" And the Universal bosses raise their fists in an unspoken "Gotcha, Disney!"

Ask children at a northern airport where they're heading, and they don't say Orlando; they say, with an almost desperate glow, "Disney." Walt and his successors turned Central Florida swampland into the country's top resort destination and, for decades, have virtually monopolized it. Now Edgar Bronfman's besieged company has spent five years and $2.5 billion (on top of a previous billion or so for its Universal Studios Florida, or U.S.F., park, which opened in 1990) to get Orlando-bound kids to think "Universal." Though visitors have been filtering in since March, this week marks the official opening of Islands of Adventure, or I.O.A., and an adjacent area, City Walk, with shops, restaurants and lots of singalong. The expanded park area, called Universal Studios Escape, has enlisted Steven Spielberg as a creative consultant.

Even these days, $2.5 billion is a lot of dough to invest in rides and restaurants. For that money, you could finance 12 whole Titanics or 14 Waterworlds. What it gets Universal, in addition to I.O.A. and City Walk, is three lavish hotels, the first of which, Portofino Bay, opens in September. The plan is to challenge Walt Disney World as a full-service resort--a place where people can spend all their time and money.

Disney wants to hook the whole family with its homey, homogenized grandeur; U.S.F. and I.O.A. are aimed at the 9- to 15-year-olds, too hip for the Magic Kingdom but still young enough to tolerate a week's vacation with their parents. As consumers, these kids are warier. So the coasters are scarier, the flume rides hairier. Even I.O.A.'s Cat in the Hat ride, tailored for kids, may upset some young stomachs with its gyrations. Disney soothes, like a kindly grandma taking the toddlers for an afternoon stroll. Universal rattles and rocks; it is Bart Simpson baby-sitting Maggie.

At Disney they say, "The park is the ride"; it's a gestalt experience, artfully designed. At Universal they say, "It's the rides, stupid," and U.S.F. has some attractions, like the spectacular Terminator 2 3-D show, that almost make visitors forget the drabness of the decor--the rows of gray, blocky buildings, meant to evoke movie soundstages, which have given the place the look of a Stalinist workers' paradise.

I.O.A. blends the best of both strategies. In design it virtually out-Disneys Disney, and, on the 360[degree] thrill rides, certainly outdizzies it. I.O.A. is stocked with familiar characters from Zeus to Seuss; with its imaginative attention to detail, the park is jazzy fun just to walk through. Toddlers could spend the day in Seuss Landing, a genial riot of DayGlo colors, where you can drink Moose Juice (turbo tangerine) or Goose Juice (sour green apple). In the Lost Continent area, you pass Magic Rock, which squirts water and speaks, with the droll sarcasm of a bachelor uncle roped into caring for some itchy 10-year-olds. "You have kids crawling all over you 24-7," it exasperates, "and see how chipper you are."

Each of the five "islands" has its own design appeal. The Lost Continent decor is instant antique: imposing Athenian edifices that seem about to crumble before your eyes. Spider-Man and his Marvel superhero pals inhabit a comic-book-bright boulevard. Toon Lagoon is haunted by old favorites from the rotogravure, like Beetle Bailey and Dagwood. Jurassic Park's primeval foliage conceals a labyrinthine playground, a Discovery Center where you can see a raptor egg hatch, a Pteranodon Flyers ride that lets you soar above the park and a mechanical triceratops that pees and farts on cue. The beast, nicknamed Cera, allows a child to pet her--"unless the kid is wearing a Disney T shirt," jokes Mark Woodbury, who oversees the park's design. "Then she rips it to shreds."

You hear that kind of bantering trash talk from the Universal and Disney camps. A Walt Disney World executive, alluding to the high-speed roller coasters at the center of I.O.A.'s promotion, calls them "theme rides without the theme." True enough for some rides. The Incredible Hulk Coaster is similar to slinky steel screamers in nearby Busch Gardens, though it has some jet-propulsive refinements. Another thrill ride, Dr. Doom's Fear Fall, is supposed to extract "raw human fear" from the brains of its strapped-in victims, but it's just a fresh version of the Big Shot, a four-G slingshot perched 1,000 ft. above Las Vegas, atop the Stratosphere Hotel. Woodbury has already fine-tuned this 40-sec. bungee blast. As he says, in flawless techno-speak, "We've upgraded the pulldown."

To compete with local water parks like Wet 'n Wild and Disney's Typhoon Lagoon, the Universal designers built a virtual water park into I.O.A.; half the rides take you to the edge of wetness and over. The Jurassic Park River Adventure plummets your boat past a snarly T rex and down a steep sluice to land with a cascading plop 80 ft. below. Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges take visitors on a whirling whitewater ride where you will get soaked. (The ride guides will tell you it's practically illegal to remove your footwear. Do it anyway and save yourself a day's walk in soggy sneakers.) You also get sprayed in the elaborate Sinbad stunt show, in the swirling vortex that leads you to the battle of the gods in Poseidon's Fury, and on the One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish kiddie ride. Some days, of course, it'll just rain.

You can dry off and go nuts on the Dueling Dragons--two inverted, high-speed coasters that run in synch and, twice during the two-minute loop-the-loop, come within 2 ft. of crashing into each other. The Ice ride nearly skirts an adjoining castle. The Fire ride is even cooler; it has a camelback dip and lots more delirious twists. As a survivor giddily noted, "it catches you right in the back of the tonsils." And stand in the separate, front-row line to get the ride's full, giddy force; if you're going to fly, you may as well go first class.

Theme parks are an eternal work in progress. On a few basic ride genres (the coaster, the stunt show, the 3-D effects extravaganza, the bumpy-ride-plus-film that began with George Lucas' Star Tours), grownup kids are always looking for inventive story lines to harness to new techniques. As Woodbury says, I.O.A. is "a lot of evolution and a lot of revolution." Disney, with the Tower of Terror ride and its own 3-D smash It's Tough to Be a Bug, will surely be part of that revolution. But for now, I.O.A. is the glorious trendsetter in the huge theme resort that is Florida. The state of the park has reached state of the art.