Back to the Future: The Ride

Back to the Future: The Ride
Back to the Future: The Ride was an operating motion simulator at Universal Studios Hollywood that closed on September 3, 2007. The ride is based on the famous Back to the Future blockbusters.



Ride sequence
When the doors of the time machine close, Doc uses his remote control to control the time machine, hovers it, and accelerates to 88 miles per hour (with electric sparks coming from the time machine and speeding through the open door and blasting through the wormhole) and the ride begins. First, Biff leads the riders to Hill Valley  in 2015 where they chase him through town. They smash into neon signs, flying over neighborhoods and the town square, the chase culminating at the iconic clock tower. He then departs for the ice age. The riders follow, and slowly lower into the icy caverns of the ice age. Biff honks his horn, causing an avalanche that damages the riders' vehicle. Flying out of the caverns, the car sees Biff shoot away into time, but their own engine has failed, and begins to plummet down a waterfall. Doc manages to restart the vehicle, accelerating backward and through time into the Cretaceous Period.

Upon arriving, the clock display on the DeLorean's dashboard blinks 12:00, as a reference to a videocassette recorder  that has lost power. The riders follow Biff's vehicle into a dormant volcano in which a  Tyrannosaurus  is discovered. Tannen goads it into attacking the riders, who barely escape. The dinosaur strikes Tannen's car, sending it flying out of control; the dinosaur then swallows the riders' car, but spits it out mere seconds later. The riders then drop down onto a lava river to see Biff's DeLorean, now damaged and unable to maneuver, moving down an active lava  flow toward the edge of a cliff, with Biff pleading help from Doc. As both vehicles plunge over the edge, the riders' car accelerates to time travel speed and bumps Tannen's, sending both of them back through the vortex to the original point of departure - the present, at the Institute of Future Technology, where Biff gets out, thanks the riders and Doc for saving his life, but is soon grabbed by security and taken away. Riders exit the vehicle, as Doc thanks them and reminds them that "the future is what you make it!". An animated logo of Institute of Future Technology flashes up on the screen with the words "Please lift lap bar and exit" and after a few seconds Doc warns "Hurry up! Get out! Before you meet yourself coming in!" As guests leave, the song " Back in Time " plays.

The Simpsons Ride
After the ride's closure in 2007, ground went breaking for a Simpsons motion simulator, planned to open in May 2008, featuring the famous Simpsons cast from TV. The ride opened on May 19, 2008, less than a year after Back to the Future's closure.