Despicable Me will replace Jimmy Neutron at Universal Studios Florida

Cool. I like the Despicable Me characters.

eightdotthree said:
Cool. I like the Despicable Me characters.

I thought the little girls were the strongest characters. I hope they're featured in the attraction.

C'mon - where is the love for Jimmy, and more importantly for his sidekick Sheen?

Now if they could do something with Fievel...

I think that whole back area between E.T. and the former Hard Rock Cafe is ripe for replacement.

I am encouraged by the spiderman upgrade.

How many other attractions could use upgrading to new tech.

ET,T2,Hulk ,JPRA,Cat in the Hat,Shrek preshow,and Twister

I think the Spider-Man upgrade is something most people won't notice. Weren't they using 70mm film for that projection? If so, I doubt you'll see any difference unless they use a higher frame rate. The big win for them is that they don't need that super clean sealed projection system that they built for that ride, to keep the film prints from getting hosed from constant use.

Jeff is half right. They won't need the clean projection system, but the animation is being RE-DONE.

You will notice it. The resolution will be better, details that didn't exist before will be there.

It will be a big deal. GP might not notice/care, but fans of that ride will notice.

I tend to disagree. I've seen a lot of demos between standard HD and 4k projection, and when it gets that big, the differences aren't that intense. I could find out for sure, but if they're simply re-rendering at a higher resolution, it won't be that dramatic. The frame rate is where the win can come from.

Forbidden Journey is apparently 4k projection, but at 24 fps, I'm not sure there was a huge win for the higher resolution. The Simpsons ride is 60 fps, and I think that makes it really pop.

If the new tech makes it so they can keep the images in focus and the polarizers properly aligned, it will be a win over what they have in there now. On a not-too-distant visit to IOA (November 2009), Spiderman had consistently bad images in several scenes, where there were obvious double images due to misaligned polarizers and even just plain out of focus images.

High frame rate is great if you can afford to lose the brightness. Personally I can't understand why in this day and age anyone other than a film snob would run at 24 FPS when even 30 is noticeably better. The only reason movies run at 24 FPS is that it gives you a linear feed rate of 18 inches per second, which gives you a sufficient writing speed for a high quality audio track, otherwise those guys would still be running at 16 FPS. For digital projection, 29.97 or 30 FPS is fast enough to finally get rid of the flicker. Spiderman is a 3D presentation, so 60 FPS per eye would probably be the sort of ideal compromise.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I noticed the same thing, Dave, when I was there in February. I was able to ride several times, and the strange thing was some trips through were better than others and I'm not sure why that would be. (The technical aspect of it is beyond me, and that's fine...) DarKastle was an even worse offender, after a couple trips through I finally went and told a ride op that the movies were horribly out of synch, paticularly room two. He thanked me, but said it happens.

Interesting about this upgrade- the park is investing X amount of dollars for, as mentioned, something that may or may not be noticed. The thing I did notice after a few spins through the totally awesome and fabulous Harry Potter ride is that Spiderman's technology paled in comparison - dare I say seemed old fashioned? And this was the dark ride against which all others, (not too long ago, mind you), were measured. So, perhaps that's part of the reason. Universal has upstaged themselves with an even better attraction in the same park, and an upgrade seems necessary.

Technology has always moved a lot faster than I do.

Which begs the question: Do we know what ride system is going to be used for Transformers in Hollywood?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed the bad/blurry/misaligned video on Spiderman recently. I was beginning to wonder if there was something wrong with my eyes because I hadn't heard anyone else complaining about it.

Maybe you forgot to wear the glasses.

You mean those things weren't supposed to be worn around my waist?

This past October Spiderman man was the same for us too. We rode it several times and each time a different section was out of focus. I was really hyping the ride to my wife and it wasn't near as impressive as I remembered it. Also riding it after the Harry Potter ride made it even less impressive.

We also had a very bad first ride on DarKastle. It was so bad that the ride attendant at the exit let us go right back on for a reride. It was much better the second time.