Coming out in April 2018, the Fast & Furious - Supercharged ride is one of the latest addition to the Universal Studios Orlando theme park. Taking over the once Disaster!: A Major Motion Picture Ride...Starring You! and Beetlejuice's Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue. The story behind the ride is guests being invited to celebrate a victory race with Dom when they are suddenly ambushed by the villain of the series, Owen Shaw.
Upon entering, guests are sent through a long queue that is filled with various cars and automobile parts. The indoor area resembles a mechanic shop and is filled with up beat party music.
While the music can be a bit overwhelming, the queue is filled with many things to gander and has projections of epic car scenes from the F&F films. After winding through the queue, guests enter a room filled with images of characters from F&F and meet Pat, a mechanic who receives phone calls from Tej and Mia. While Tej (AKA Ludacris) is able to casually interact, Mia is an incredibly stiff and almost creepy character whom I highly disliked.
From there, guests are sent to the “War Room” where they meet Jaimie, a live actor who is in charge of - who knows? Both Jaimie and Pat seem unnecessary (and acknowledge their lack of necessity multiple times), as the phone calls between the F&F characters seem to explain everything the guests need to know. Through the phone calls from Tej, Hobbs, and Dom, you find out that Shaw is after an important witness hidden within the crowd as Dom reassures the guests safety.
After exiting the “War Room”, guests are led to another queue that once again bring you back to the dark and gritty mechanic shop again where a lone screen shows the leader board of F&F trivia, accessible through the official Universal Orlando Studios app. After a few more twists and turns, guests are then loaded onto the party bus.
From there, guests sit back and watch as multiple screens take you on an action pack ride on the freeway while watching madness ensue: Letty uses a crane to smash someone into a wall, Hobbs is doing something on the left screen, and Dom is kicking rockets into places. Lots of action. Lots of noises. However, not a lot of thrills?
The format of the ride makes it hard to see the screens with so many people in the way. If you get lucky enough to be seated on one side of the row, you’ll have the best view of that side and be virtually oblivious to the things happening on the other.
The queue was cool and a nice break from being in the blazing sun. Lots of interesting things to look at for car lovers or not and the trivia game is a nice way to pass the time. While I find the live actors unnecessary, they did bring life to the conversation where Mia’s creepy, slow cadence did not.
Overall the ride missed many marks. There was a strong lack of excitement and was too similar to the neighboring park’s Skull Island, yet somehow worse? The lack of enthusiasm from the live actors reduced the whole experience and gave off the vibe that they too felt unneeded. The only true scream that I gave came from the sudden fear of the loud steam machines. The crowding of screen truly makes a girl long for the traditional special effects shown off from previous rides like Disaster!: A Major Motion Picture Ride...Starring You! or even Earthquake: The Big One.
Sadly, the action-packed, thrill ride we were expecting was not delivered.
