Fast & Furious riders will have an amazing view of the coaster and the San Fernando Valley while waiting in the queue after the Universal Creative team that designed and built a ride on the side of a hill at Universal Studios Hollywood turned a challenge into an opportunity.
“The queue is in the middle of the ride and the middle of the action,” Universal Creative Vice President Jon Corfino said during a behind-the-scenes tour of the new ride. “You take the restrictions and you make a strength out of it. In terms of design, that was the goal.”
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The queue for Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will be an attraction in and of itself when the new roller coaster opens this summer at the Universal Studios Hollywood.
“The real superstar of this whole queue line is still going to be the ride,” Corfino said. “We designed this very purposely. Everywhere you go is a beauty shot.”
Nearly every inch of the coaster track is visible from the queue that winds underneath the steel support beams and along the edge of the hillside stretching between the Upper and Lower Lots.
The Fast & Furious queue offers commanding views of the StarWay loop, inverted stall and pretzel twist elements along the 4,100-foot-long track.
The queue borders both sides of the track as the coaster trains race through a tight slot at a top speed of 72 mph — the fastest coaster at any Universal theme park.
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Eight-foot-tall glass walls along the edge of the queue offer panoramic 180-degree views of Super Nintendo World and Jurassic World on the theme park’s Lower Lot, Universal’s studio backlot, the neighboring Warner Bros. Studios, the links at Lakeside Golf Club and the sprawling San Fernando Valley in the distance.
“You can see almost everything,” Corfino said. “You think you’re 700 feet up in the air.”
Corfino has been working on the Fast & Furious coaster for about a decade as the project progressed from blue sky to green light.
“It takes about three to four years to build something like this,” Corfino said. “Then you’ve got at least a year and a half worth of design.”
Universal Studios Hollywood has never had a high-speed outdoor roller coaster.
“It’s really going to take us to the next level,” Corfino said. “It’s something that the park has always needed.”
The new Fast & Furious coaster will feature 360-degree rotating coaster vehicles designed to look like drifting race cars from the street racing film franchise that has earned $7 billion at the worldwide box office.
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Corfino loves the revving engine and tire skid sounds riders hear on the one-of-a-kind coaster that he’s now ridden more than 20 times.
“I’m not aware of any cars that rotate, go upside down, go 72 miles an hour and look like this anywhere in the world,” Corfino said.
Riders get one final look at the coaster as they exit under the track bringing the trains back to the station. Look up and you’ll see the under-chassis of the trains and the turntable mechanism that controls the rotation of the cars.