Kongfrontation: Universal's Most Impressive Defunct Ride

Comments · 362

• ST

  @stellaVista · 3 months ago (edited)

  Also: Kongfrontation is most likely the best name for a ride ever!

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• ST

  @steveericson6209 · 3 months ago (edited)

  As a theme park attraction designer who was visiting Sequoia Creative, I was privileged to climb INSIDE the head of one of the Kong animatronics as it was being finished prior to its move to Universal Orlando.  And then while between theme park projects, I was invited to be an extra for several Universal Orlando projects; and so for many years, I was seen in the guest map brochures and on highway billboards, and even in this YouTube video, riding Kongfrontation!

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• TH

  @ThePrettyLilyPondue · 3 months ago

  This one was so scary for me as a kid. My parents tried to explain that the drop was only "one dad tall", but that didn't help one bit 😅

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• PA

  @pault5557 · 3 months ago

  FUN FACT: a friend of mine who worked on Kongfrontation said that they eventually had to turn off the banana breath because the chemical used was melting Kong’s vinyl skin!

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• FL

  @FlameWorksStudio · 3 months ago (edited)

  I'm honestly kinda disappointed i never got to ride this one. while the modern kong ride is cool, a giant animatronic just can't be beat.

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• JD

  @JDPlaysMoth · 3 months ago

  It deeply saddens me that Universal abandoned so many important movies over the years. Twister, Back To The Future, Jaws, Ghostbusters, frankly it&apos;s a miracle The Mummy has survived for so long as a ride. I&apos;d love to see Universal maybe do revamps of their older rides and shows since those have all aged far better than most of the properties that replaced them. <br><br>Also, while I&apos;m sad that I never had a chance to ride Kongfrontation, I&apos;m glad that Skull Island has a similar massive King Kong animatronic. My dream theme park ride would probably be a Godzilla dark ride similar to Kongfrontation

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• MM

  @MMd525 · 3 months ago (edited)

  I was born in Orlando and went to the parks very often. I was so young at the time, my memories of Kongfrontation and Michael Jackson in Disney&apos;s Captain EO combined themselves into one memory of Michael Jackson singing in front of the shops as Kong destroys the city.

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• ED

  @EdwardandJessicaMiller · 3 months ago

  Kongfrontation crawled so Expedition Everest could disco.

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• CU

  @cup_and_cone · 3 months ago

  I rode Kongfrontation many times in 90&apos;s...then ironically worked at Mummy in the 00&apos;s. &nbsp;There are a couple other Kong tributes and hidden oddities not mentioned here. &nbsp;<br><br>Both attractions hold a special place in my heart. &nbsp;Ultimately, what made Kongfrontation so amazing was the scale of it. &nbsp;The soundstage is massive. &nbsp;Being elevated in the gondola and looking down onto NYC streets was a perspective other theme park rides never matched.

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• RO

  @Robbygolds · 3 months ago

  I remember my mom picking me up from school and telling me that King Kong burnt down. I was devastated. Even tho I was so young, I always had great memories experiencing it on the tram tour :/

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• MR

  @MrBigPipesYT · 3 months ago

  Best ride I&apos;ve ever been on. The level of detail in the queue was insane. The smells, cold air, news stories. Graffiti. Being a kid and seeing it was just indescribable. You felt like you were up so high and just so much detail and scale.

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• AV

  @AverytheCubanAmerican · 2 months ago

  love the fact that the ride uses the Roosevelt Island Tramway as the ride vehicle. The Roosevelt Island Tramway is one of my favorite things in NYC as someone who lives in the NYC metro area. <br> <br>The Roosevelt Island Tramway has an interesting history: Roosevelt Island was once an isolated, institutional enclave known as &quot;Welfare Island&quot;. For over a century, it served as a quarantine zone for New York City&apos;s &quot;undesirables,&quot; housing prisons, asylums, and hospitals. Before the aerial tramway, there used to be a trolley/streetcar line that ran on the Queensboro Bridge, and it stopped in the middle of the bridge at an elevator that took passengers down to the island. The last streetcar retired in 1957 shortly after the Roosevelt Island Bridge was completed in 1955, connecting the island to Queens. After the NY state government leased the island from the city in 1969, the island&apos;s unique circumstance gave them a blank slate to build a (mostly, they allowed cars later on because the hospitals needed vehicular access) car-free community, a master-planned transit-oriented community with a subway station as the centerpiece. However, the Roosevelt Island station that was proposed was delayed. So the temporary solution to connect would-be RI residents to Manhattan was to build an aerial tramway which opened in 1976! &nbsp; <br> <br>When the subway station finally opened in 1989, residents didn&apos;t want the tramway to close because it provided a wheelchair-accessible connection to more bus routes in Manhattan than the subway did, and the RIOC (the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation is a New York State public-benefit corporation; they operate the aerial tramway and the island&apos;s Red Bus system, and they&apos;re responsible for developing the island) wanted to attract tourists as well, thus it stayed open and became a popular attraction! The fare on the aerial tramway is the same as the NYC Subway, and a transfer to the subway or bus is free (or vice versa, the transfer to the tramway is free)! The aerial tramway was actually the last in NYC to stop using tokens, as they still accepted them until March 2004, and during the NYC transit strike in 2005, it transported three times its passenger count! The island&apos;s free Red Bus does continuous loops around the island, as well as a Shopper&apos;s Bus for seniors and those with disabilities to Costco in Astoria. The MTA Q102 bus serves the island as well, connecting the island with Long Island City. Subway trains serving Roosevelt Island use the 63rd Street Tunnel, which was futureproofed to carry LIRR trains to Grand Central, with the lower level of the tunnel for the LIRR opening in 2023 when East Side Access was finally completed. <br><br>Besides the TOD proposal, the American Institute of Architects&apos; NY chapter proposed that the island instead become a park (eventually the southernmost point became a state park in 2012, the Four Freedoms Park, with a memorial made of North Carolina granite and views of the United Nations), while another plan called for the island to become housing for United Nations staff. The TOD plan called for two neighborhoods named Northtown and Southtown, separated by a common area. With services such as parks and schools (it was planned with up to 16 schools serving grades K-12 with each accommodating 180 to 300 students; it had five by the 1980s and they were combined into PS/IS 217 in 1992) near every residence, and a pneumatic trash collection system which was the second AVAC system in the US after Magic Kingdom&apos;s Utilidors. Their AVAC system is one of the largest in the world, and trash is collected from each tower to the Central Collections and Compaction Plant at up to 60 miles per hour. Until 1989, Main Street was the island&apos;s only road! Main Street, along with the island&apos;s parks, was intended to be a communal area for the island&apos;s various ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes. The Octagon designed by Alexander Jackson Davis (who worked on the former 1833 North Carolina State Capitol, Litchfield Villa in Brooklyn&apos;s Prospect Park, and the Lyndhurst mansion in Tarrytown), a remnant of a hospital made famous by Nellie Bly, has since been incorporated as part of a large apartment complex! Not to mention, there&apos;s the Cornell Tech graduate campus on the island now as well.

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