After years of development, Universal’s first-ever Fast & Furious roller coaster is officially open in California.
Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift at Universal Studios Hollywood, with ride vehicles that look like the signature cars from the hit franchise, includes four launches, multiple inversions, and a top speed of 72 miles per hour. Each of the four cars per train can rotate, simulating “drifting” like the hard-driving heroes from Fast & Furious.
The ride looks great, and people I know who have ridden it give it rave reviews. But not everyone is happy about Universal’s high-tech addition. As soon as the park began testing the ride before its grand opening, it started to draw noise complaints from neighbors in nearby Toluca Lake, who claim that the screams of joy and terror were interrupting the peace and quiet in their sedate little village.
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With the ride officially open as of today, Deadline interviewed one notable Toluca Lake citizen about the noise issue: Roy P. Disney, none other than Walt Disney’s great-nephew. who said that no matter where he goes in his house, he is not safe from the screams.
Disney said his complaints have fallen on deaf ears, adding “I feel like the complaints go into what I call a round file, and I feel like they figure it’s part of the war they’re playing, and they’re not listening to us, they’re not honoring us, and so we have to do more.”
Deadline reports that Universal has agreed to meet with residents at the end of September to discuss the complaints. The community’s suggestions to mitigate the noise, per the article, include building “plastic hard tops” onto the convertible roller coaster cars, or erecting “fake facades” of buildings around the coaster track to “shield the sound from the neighborhood.”
Whatever the solution, I hope they can reach an amicable one, because I really want that roller coaster to still be in operation the next time I visit Los Angeles.
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