| I think it's a combination of wear and tear on the rides, and trying to keep the park as up to date as possible. I started in '90, before the park opened, and besides training on the rides, we were constantly running them for the engineers so they could fine tune, repair, and maintain the rides.
Most of the originals were state-of-the-art rides that had never been done before, and Universal really wanted them to be something to blow visitor's socks off. I started on Jaws, and we were working on that ride through park opening and for months and months after. We had times where it worked great, but then it just had so many recurring problems they had to shut it down.
After Jaws closed for remodeling, I moved to Kong, and while that ride ran much better, it also had it's share of breakdowns. Lots of hydraulic leaks, and just stress on the parts, especially the two Kong structures. Nothing like the ride stopping cold when you're driving the tram 35 feet in the air.
When the park opened, these were the originals:
Rides:
Kong (opened a cpl months after park opening)
Jaws
Hanna Barbera
Earthquake
Back to the Future (opened a few months after the official park opening)
E.T.
Shows:
Hitchcock
Murder, She Wrote (this was similar to the sound effect show at MGM)
Horror Make Up
Animal Actors
Stunt Boat show in the lagoon
Ghostbusters (I think this opened just a bit later than the official opening, but can't remember - hey, it was almost 20 yrs ago!!)
Wild West Stunt Show (same for this one)
Nikelodeon Tour
Backstage Studio Tour
During the first few months, Jaws and Kong had major issues and were open sporadically. Jaws finally got going and then Kong opened a cpl months later. BttF took a little longer, but ran the best. Universal gave out free park tickets to everyone during those first few months to make up for it. |