JAWS - THE RIDE THAT GOT AWAY!

Today - June 20th 2024 - is the 49th anniversary since the release of the first ever summer blockbuster movie, JAWS!  As the countdown for the big 50th anniversary next year begins, let's look back at the greatly missed JAWS THE RIDE!

Jaws The Ride opened at Universal Studios Florida in 1990. Its troubled early days/years are well documented online and in print and a revised version of the ride finally opened in 1993.

I first experienced the Jaws ride in June 1994 when I was 13 years old and it terrified me! It all felt so real, with the build up to the encounter starting long before you boarded your tour boat:

• learning about the actual Chief Brody that the movie was based on as you waited in line watching the comedic ‘Hey There Amity’ show on raised monitors;

• setting off for an Amity Boat Tour but don’t worry “no sharks have been spotted for years”;

• turning the corner to see the sinking Amity 3 tour boat by the lighthouse, then a shark fin breaking the surface;

• hiding out in the stinky, dark boat house but the shark still finds you;

• being attacked on the port side just before a giant explosion at the Amity Gas Co. singes your eyebrows;

• and then a final shark attack amid a shower of sparks as it chomps down on the power cables just like the climax of JAWS 2!

Brilliant! They don’t make theme park rides like that anymore!

Back then, there were no digital cameras and the cameras we did have used actual film which needed developing later at a cost - whether your shots were any good or not. You took a chance having your camera out as you were at risk dropping it overboard or getting it wet during the shark attacks. The boat skippers also warned you that there was to be no flash photography. I was lucky enough to take several photographs of the Jaws ride in 1996 and 1998 which I now cherish for the memories.

Visitors were also lucky to see props from the last Jaws movie, 1987's awful 'Jaws The Revenge', including a shark which was left on display in the 'Bone Yard' (now the Plaza Stage area near the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit) to bake in the sun and have its teeth stolen.  Immediately outside the ride, in the town of Amity, you could get up close to a chomped Amity Police boat and the Neptune's Folly boat which killed the shark during the finale of that much derided movie. 

Theme park goers bid ‘farewell and adieu’ to the Jaws ride at Universal Studios Florida in early 2012 and it was subsequently replaced with the immersive Diagon Alley from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. 

The hanging captured shark (known as Bruce after the prop shark from the original movie which itself was named after Spielberg’s lawyer) was installed in 1990 outside Jaws The Ride but was thankfully relocated from Amity to Fisherman’s Wharf when that part of Universal Studios was redeveloped. 

Bruce is still popular to this day. The nearby Chez Alcatraz bar cleverly capitalizes on the visiting Jaws fans by tempting them with the dramatic Ocean Attack cocktail!

But be warned: don’t do a Chief Brody and attempt a ‘half-ass autopsy’ on the bad fish after a few drinks: selfie-seekers won’t appreciate seeing that little Kintner boy spilling out all over the dock!

LOOK BACK: VOODOO DOUGHNUT (UNIVERSAL ORLANDO)

 

“Good things come in pink boxes” and that’s definitely true at VOODOO DOUGHNUT at Universal Orlando’s City Walk. 

The doughnut eatery was founded in 2003 in Portland, Oregon, and while it has outlets in at least 9 U.S. states, the only one in Florida is at Universal Orlando’s City Walk, which became the company’s seventh store in 2018. We had walked by it dozens of times over the last few years, on our way to and from Universal Studios, but had never ventured inside. 

Voodoo often gets very busy and the line can extend outside. They have a couple of clever systems to help:

• Mobile Pickup. Simply scan the QR, download the app and pick your collection time. When we tested it, the doughnuts could have been ready for collection as quickly as in 15 minutes. Not bad, when the line was extending out the store!

• Inside the store, staff members walk the spiral line, taking your order as you pore over the menus and salivate at the revolving samples of the types of doughnuts on offer.

We lined up on a visit during a quiet period - 12:50pm on New Year’s Day 2024 - and received our doughnuts within 6 mins. 

That wasn’t the only impressive thing. The total cost of our order was less than $10! We heard another customer also commenting on how reasonable the prices were (they might have been even cheaper if you ordered multiples).

We ordered:

🕺 Memphis Mafia - a large fritter with banana chunks and cinnamon, covered in glaze, chocolate and peanut butter, peanuts and chocolate chips. The biggest and priciest offering. $5.95

🍩 Dirt - a ring doughnut with vanilla frosting and Oreo cookies. $3.20

😢 Tax = $0.60

💰 Total = $9.75

On our previous visit to Voodoo, in summer 2023 at Universal Hollywood, we sensibly shared a Memphis Mafia fritter for breakfast. This time we chose one each but still ended up sharing the Elvis themed one, as it was so big!

We sat in the sunshine on City Walk, tucking in to our doughnuts, watching the store get busier and busier as people ventured inside to try the magical flavors on offer. We are bound to return some day, and will be brave and try something different (the Voodoo Doll doughnut looks great!).

LOOK BACK: VOODOO DOUGHNUT (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD)

VOODOO DOUGHNUT - it's now or never at Universal Studios Hollywood!

We’ve always been curious about Voodoo Doughnut when visiting City Walk at Universal Orlando, but the line to get in has always been long or we’ve been full of theme park food and not hungry. Since then, "Voo were always on our mind". So when we arrived at City Walk Hollywood very early on August 1st 2023 for our VIP Studio Tour and saw that Voodoo had just opened for the day, we knew it was now or never!

As we greedily skipped up to the counter we gave no thought to the fact that we would shortly be lavished with an eat all you want breakfast and later a gourmet lunch. Fortunately we only ordered one donut, to share (never been known), as when it arrived it was HUGE! 

Not bad for $6.50. 

As big fans of Elvis Presley and the City of Memphis, as soon as we saw a doughnut called “MEMPHIS MAFIA” we knew we had to choose that one. Wise men say only fools rush in, but we didn’t even look at the rest of the menu as this one was at the top!

The Memphis Mafia was fried dough (like a fritter) with banana chunks and cinnamon, topped with glaze, chocolate chips, peanuts, and chocolate and peanut butter drizzle, synonymous with a snack Elvis liked when he had the munchies on those late Graceland nights. 

We sat outside Voodoo in the early morning sunshine all shook up at the size of the doughnut. It was a monster! And like monsters, we demolished it - with some effort, as the forks kept bending!

Delicious! Banana-ery! Chocolately. Peanut buttery. It was like a hunk of burning love! It was like the sweet song of a choir! It was like the Lord had given us a mountain to climb. 

Then it was gone! We didn’t leave a crumb. 

The doughnut had left the building!

30 YEARS OF AMERICAN ADVENTURES

Today marks the 30th anniversary of my first ever visit to the USA. I fell in love with America on that trip and it’s no wonder as it was to the theme park capital of the world, ORLANDO in the sunshine state of Florida. 

In the early 1990s, when I was 12 years old, and was told I would be going on vacation to Florida with my 60 year old grandfather, sister and cousin, I ran down the street singing: “I’m coming to America” over and over! If I’d realised then it would be a sluggish year or two later I don’t know if I’d have been quite as ecstatic! 

This was to be “the trip of a lifetime” for us and we needed enough time to save up. My mother and four lovely grandparents chipped in every week with our pocket monies and I’ll always be forever grateful for what they did to get us to Florida. 

The Orlando Holiday Boom of the 1990s was in full swing and free promotional VHS cassettes featuring exciting montages of the Orlando thrills fuelled our excitement as we literally counted down the hundreds of days. 

It felt like departure day would never arrive. But it did  - Saturday June 4th 1994 - and we were soon jetting off from the northeast of England to the northeast of America: our flight to Florida was not direct!

We had to land and refuel. 

So my first ever taste of America was Bangor International Airport in Maine. 

While I was bemused that you could buy a newspaper from a vending machine just like in the movies, that boring layover was a very underwhelming welcome to the USA. 

The Orlando theme parks were of course the opposite: they literally blew our minds! One day we were being attacked by our favorite movie monsters - Jaws, Kong, Jurassic Park, Ghostbusters - and the next we were seeing real-life monsters: awesome killer whales and fearsome alligators. 

We spent an exhausting 2 weeks at Walt Disney World (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT and Disney MGM Studios), Universal Studios Florida, Sea World Orlando, Busch Gardens Tampa, Gatorland Florida, a night time visit downtown to Rosie O’Grady’s and Church Street Station, a day at Kennedy Space Center, plus the many delights of International Drive: tourist stores galore (Bargain World and Disney collectibles) and the famous eat all you want restaurants. 

We ate loads. 

We walked miles. 

We laughed of heads off. 

And we all got sunburnt, despite our mothers having dozily packed jumpers and pants for us. It was frequently 100° and lethal in sun as my poor ginger cousin discovered. But who covers up in sunny Florida? 

All good things must come to an end and we said a sad farewell to our hotel, the Quality Inn Plaza on International Dr., when we travelled west to Clearwater Beach for a final week of sun, sea, sand, stingrays and some kind of spiky seed pods that stuck in my poor sister’s butt (what a way to celebrate your 7th birthday!).

Clearwater was sedentary compared to Orlando and the fishy smell of the pelicans is the memorable highlight. There was a little excitement when we watched live breaking news on the TV in our hotel room - actor OJ Simpson was being chased down the freeways of LA wanted for murder! We watched while tucking into our dinner: a giant bag of salted Lays and a bottle of Snapple, for that’s what you’re often fed when you holiday with your eccentric grandfather! 

But our mothers mustn’t have been bothered by the American junk food diet he gave us: they allowed us to go back to Florida again and again with him. 

We were very lucky indeed. 

30 years later I’m still visiting America and still having my mind blown by the adventures I have there. Here’s to the next 30 years!