Last year, I reviewed the "Amazing Adventures Of Spider-Man Ride" which was awesome! This year I reviewed the first season of the Animated series as a follow up to my review on the ride and for the new Spider-Man movie that was coming out. Well this is the week when the latest Spider-Man movie has hit the theaters and in honor of it's release I'm going to review the updated Spider-Man ride.
Believe it or not, the Universal Studio theme park decided to update this classic ride and give it better graphics. When I first heard that they were updating this classic I was thinking to myself "Don't fix something that isn't broken! Leave it the way it is!". Well, when the ride was finally released, I took a look to see the many changes they put into it. Are they good changes or bad changes? ON WITH THE REVIEW!
Before I begin, let me just tell you I'm just reviewing the main attraction instead of reviewing the Queue Videos as well. Why, because they're the same! The creators decided to update the ride with better graphics, but couldn't they update the Queue Videos as well? When we're watching the Queue videos on line, we expect the ride to look the same as the videos we're looking at. Thankfully, I'm glad they didn't change the rides story because it's really a great story and literally makes you feel like you're in the middle of the action. The only huge change once again is the graphics. So what do I think, well to be honest, they're actually better than the original graphics. The faces look more realistic; every detail of the scenery really sticks out; and on top of it really makes you feel like you're in real danger in this comic book world.
I think the best upgrade to the graphics are we can see the climatic fight between Spider-Man and the villains more clearly now when in the original you can barely see what’s going on as you're being lifted. Another great upgrade is the design for Scream! Yeah, she still feels like a thrown in character, but she's a lot scarier looking than she was in the original ride. When I first saw her jump out at me, I almost jumped out of my seat. Another scene when I nearly jumped is when the Hobgoblin throws a pumpkin bomb heading towards you because the bomb looks more realistic than the bomb in the original ride and with the upgraded graphics I felt like it was really heading towards me.
The only thing I didn't like about the new improved graphics is the design for Doc Ock. The ride is based on the animated series and instead of making Doc Ock look like as he did in the cartoon, he looks more like Alfred Molina from Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2". Now to be fair, most of the other villains look a little different too, but at least they resemble the villains from where the ride is based on. Throwing in a look like to the live action film seems a bit out of place and it doesn't really blend into its comic book universe. Another thing I didn't like was the music. In the original ride it had a hard rock tune to make you feel like you were in serious danger. Here, we get a tech tune which kind of sucks out the feel of the danger.
Before I sum up my final conclusion, let me just tell you one more thing for you comic book fans! In the original ride I told you to look for an Iron Man billboard. If you expect to look for it on this updated ride, well, I'm afraid your chances of finding it is very unlikely. However, they were still nice enough to put a new hidden Easter egg on this ride. The person I want you to keep an eye out for is Spider-Man's creator Stan Lee.
Aside from these small criticisms, it's not a bad upgrade to this fantastic ride. The 3-D is once again amazing; the graphics are better than the original graphics; and the story is the same classic story as it was before. If they just make Doc Ock look like a comic book character instead of the live action film version and bring back the original rockin score, then the ride would be complete, but still those are just minor problems I have with the ride. If you love the original ride, chances are you're going to love it even more!
RATING 5/5
For those of you who are interested in seeing the difference between the rides. Here's a side by side video of both rides.
http://youtu.be/kq7cH-h_Dao
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