Gotta Get Back In Time! Back To The Future: The Ride

Back To The Future: The Ride opened at Universal Studios Florida in 1991. The ride was a motion simulator, with a 70-foot IMAX screen in front of the guests. The ride had two theaters, each consisting of 12 cars. Sometime after Back To The Future part 3, Doc opened a new scientific lab based off of future technology. Guests entered Doc Brown’s Institute Of Future Technology as volunteers to test out his new 8 passenger DeLorean time machine. Guests entered the first room of the attraction, and Doc Brown tells them that they’re going to go one day into the future, but they need to be cautious because Biff Tannen is running loose in the space-time continuum. Without Doc knowing, Biff has snuck into Doc’s institute. Biff finds Doc and locks him in a storage closet! Biff then proceeds to steal one of the time machines. Doc needs the guests help, he needs them to get into the 8 passenger time machine, chase Biff, then bump him back to the future at 88 MPH!

Guests board the eight passenger car, and Doc appears on a screen on the dashboard and tells the guests he will be using his remote control to control the car. The ride starts, and the guests are sent into 2015! They see Biff, and they chase him through time. The guests encounter dinosaurs, and the ice age. Eventually they catch up behind Biff and accelerate to 88 miles per hour, and they successfully bump him straight back to the Institute!

Interview

I got the chance to interview Stephanie, who worked at Back To The Future: The Ride! Here’s what she had to say:

“At Future, I did pretty much everything from loading, ran the tower to crowd control.

A typical day- came in did platform checks, socialized with co workers, begged to get out of working the baby swap area on level 1 ( level 2 n 3 were my favorites), the park would open and off we went, at the end of the day we would usually head over to Ale House.

I have too many special stories, but here are 2 of my best memories working there -
Meeting George Lucas (huge Star Wars geek). Another time I was working crowd control during July and there was a family from Canada in the queue line, well you know what happened in July at the parks, all these pretty little flags followed by the group of Brazilians, Venezuelans or whatever you want to call them ( I will be nice on what we called them). Anyway, as most know these “groups” are not the most well behaved and decided that all 200 of them were going to attempt to cut through the line ( I say attempt due to the fact that at the time Universal had zero tolerance for that and they were kindly escorted out of the park). Ok, got off track, so this poor family was in the middle of this mess, I pulled them out of line and brought them to the ” back door” of the ride. They rode and when done I walked them over to Jaws and Earthquake ( at the time we were allowed to do that). I said my goodbyes and thought nothing more of it. The next day they came back, tracked me down and had a few things for me, a letter to my supervisor, one of those small shell jewelry boxes that all tourists must buy and a few pictures the kids drew for me. To this day, many many years later I still have all those things tucked away in a box.”

Back To The Future: The Ride later closed in 2007, and was replaced by the Simpsons Ride. As Doc Brown said, “Remember! The Future Is What You Make It!”.