King Kong 360 3D The World's Largest, Most Intense 3-D Experience You Will Ever Survive... Maybe!

Have you felt the shaking? The thunderous shaking? An earthquake, perhaps? No, it’s NOT an earthquake. DEFINITELY NOT.

King Kong has made his colossal return to Universal Studios HollywoodSM, re-emerging in a ground-breaking attraction, “King Kong 360 3-D.” This next generation theme park experience, created for the world-famous, behind-the-scenes Studio Tour, is characterized as the largest, most intense 3-D experience on the planet. The revolutionary special effects ride is a collaboration between Universal Studios Hollywood and triple Academy Award®--winning director, Peter Jackson, based on Universal Pictures’ 2005 Academy Award-winning blockbuster.

A monumental tour de force, “King Kong 360 3-D” features new, never-before-seen imagery re-imagined from the film and presented in groundbreaking 3-D technology. In creating this ambitious, interactive theme park ride, Jackson infused progressive film technology and dynamic storytelling with an adrenalized motion-based environment and visceral special effects. Guests are propelled into the heart of the action as it comes to life in a 360-degree environment. An Immersive Experience

For the first time ever, guests on the Studio Tour will don special 3-D glasses to experience “King Kong 360 3-D.”  Trams will enter a darkened soundstage, the size of a football field, where guests will be launched—via the magic of Surround Digital 3-D projection—deep into the tangled jungle location of Skull Island. They’ll survive a close encounter with a swarm of hungry raptors, only to be confronted by the terrifying presence of 35' tall dinosaur behemoths, intent on attacking the tram and Studio Tour guests.

When a gigantic 30' tall, 6,000 pound silverback gorilla thunders onto the screen, the tram will jolt and shudder as guests physically find themselves trapped in the middle of a massive struggle between two colossal foes, the great ape and a carnivorous reptile. The realism of the immersive 3-D action will give each guest a ringside seat to the best prize fight on earth as King Kong and the colossal T-Rex battle to the very end while the tram cars slide ever closer to the edge of a bottomless chasm.

3-D Film Projection & Surround Sound Create a Multi-Sensory Experience

Revolutionary technology combines with landmark special effects to give guests a multi-sensory, never to be forgotten experience. Curious how it all works? We think some of the behind-the-scenes technical details that follow will fascinate you, as they did us.

“King Kong 360 3-D” features the world’s largest 3-D projection installation ever produced. Two seamless curved screens, each measuring a massive 187’ wide by 40’ high -- the equivalent of 16 movie theatre screens -- surround the Studio Tour tram to cocoon guests within the Skull Island environment and fully immerse them in a riveting experience. Summarizing, Peter Jackson said, “16 different projectors are simultaneously linked together with the image seamlessly connected. The screen is so large that one single piece of film and one projector couldn’t fill the area, so it takes 16 projectors, each projecting a huge cinema-size image. It is fully absorbing and puts you inside the movie.”

Groundbreaking, original 3-D media created for the attraction projects at the highest resolution possible, running at a significantly higher frame rate than traditional 3-D films. Guests see and experience nearly three minutes of uncompressed media, the equivalent usually rendered for one hour of a feature film. The average film typically projects at 24 frames per second. “King Kong 360 3-D” projects at 60 frames per second, providing an incredibly fluid sense of reality.

The Tram Mover System, developed specifically for “King Kong 360 3-D,” is the first of its kind ever created for a theme park ride. It consists of four very large movable platens (flat metal plates) situated beneath each tram car, maneuvered by compressed-air power. The weight of each individual tram car is perfectly calibrated to enhance the synchronization of its movement to the media.

By manipulating the four detached platens, the tram cars have the ability to move independent of one another and in unison with action sequences on the screen. The tram can roll, pitch, undulate and vibrate along with smaller textural

motions or larger more aggressive movements to simulate severe tram impacts, such as when King Kong hurtles himself atop the tram. This, in combination with the multi-sensory effects of olfactory, water and wind, further contributes to the attraction’s immersive sensation.

“As the tails of the dinosaurs or Kong’s hands sweep past the tram, passengers will feel air blow across their faces. When the dinosaurs bang or try and push the tram, passengers will feel the tram being moved around physically,” Peter Jackson said.

The powerful sound system is equivalent to that of a movie-going experience, but because it is orchestrated in tandem with the multi-sensory effects, is significantly more impactful. The fully immersive, realistic jungle sounds broadcast from 16 acoustic clusters, each equipped with 16 audio channels. The effect will resonate at 108 decibels from 68 speakers, which is considerably more intense than a movie-going experience.

“King Kong 360 3-D,” set to be the most exhilarating feature of the Studio Tour, raises the bar to a new high for immersive theme park experiences. The goal was to create an enormously spectacular and intense 3-D experience. Check it out. We think you’ll agree that they reached their goal.

The Studio Tour Evolves to “Mobile Movie Theatres”

Universal Studios Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes Studio Tour was recently converted into “mobile movie theatres” and outfitted with HD flat screen monitors and digital playback systems. The program enables the tour guides to showcase a vast selection of movie and television clips corresponding to sites along the Tour route and show how they were transformed for productions. Video commentary from filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Stephen Sommers and Peter Jackson will join actors and personalities, such as Al Roker, Billy Bush and Whoopi Goldberg, in offering insightful perspectives on film and television production.

The arrival of “King Kong 360 3-D” and the enhanced Studio Tour coincide with the most extensive backlot reconstruction project ever in the history of Universal Studios. On June 1, 2008, an accidental fire burned Universal’s New York Street, a Hollywood fixture for decades. New York Street (which consists of 13 city blocks of buildings) has been the shooting location of countless commercials, television shows, and feature films, such as The Sting, Blues Brothers, To Kill a Mockingbord, Back to the Future, Frost/Nixon, and Bruce Almighty, to name a few.

Today, when guests venture aboard the behind-the-scenes Studio Tour, they will be greeted by a new experience showcasing four acres of innovative contemporary movie sets and striking facades on the backlot. The new locations include a gas station, a firehouse, and most notably, a modern urban cityscape, with glass and steel façade structures that will provide film and TV crews with the opportunity to replicate a modern city street scene in a controlled studio environment. The contemporary cityscape will be the largest modern urban backlot shooting location in Los Angeles.