“It was so ahead of it’s time, technologically, that in a sense The Back to the Future Ride still exists.”
The Back to the Future Ride at Universal Studios Florida officially opened in May of 1991, and it was one of the first rides of it’s kind to use the massive IMAX Domes and cameras. Back to the Future star, Tom Wilson, who plays Biff in the Back to the Future Trilogy shared his thoughts and experiences on filming the ride at this year’s MegaCon in Orlando.
Watch: Tom Wilson remembers Back to the Future: The Ride
Wilson marvels at how far the technology has come since the ride first opened, and he’s so dead on, it’s not funny. On Saturday, the latest evolution of that type of technology will open, only this time at Walt Disney World. Avatar: Flight of Passage, uses huge screen technology to put you right into the film. The biggest difference is that engineers built Avatar using computers, when Back to the Future was created, they used models. Not only models, but they had to make the models curved so that when they were projected on the dome screen they would look normal.
The last Back to the Future attraction closed just last year at Universal Studios Japan to make way for Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. While the ride is a classic, technology has come a long way to make the impossible happen in a larger scale than ever before. While Harry Potter, Avatar and VR coasters seem to be the future, they owe it all to a punk who stole a time machine and made his way across Hill Valley, creating one of the most memorable attractions of all time.
We will be at MegaCon all weekend, so stay tuned for even more fun from this year’s event.
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