Universal’s new Fast & Furious roller coaster might be … too fun?
Apparently, Universal Studios Hollywood’s latest attraction, Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, is so exciting that it’s drawing noise complaints from the theme park’s neighbors in the Los Angeles area.
A report on foxla.com quotes nearby residents describing the racket as this coaster, which is still in the testing phase and hasn’t officially opened to the public yet, makes as it drifts around its custom-built track:
I mean, when you’re sitting outside, you just hear the screaming all throughout the day and then even into the night, so it’s pretty non-stop. Yeah, loud scream, just voices, just like a little bit of obnoxious noise throughout the entire day,” one resident said of the daily impact.
Another neighbor quoted in the piece said the ride and its riders’ screams “not only echoes it blasts all over the golf course and into the neighborhood. So it’s extremely disruptive.”
Uh oh…
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Hollywood Drift features a unique coaster vehicle made to resemble drag racers from the famous movie franchise. Each car in the vehicle can rotate to simulate drifting as it zooms along through three inversions, at one point reaching a top speed of 72 miles per hour.
FOX LA claims Universal is now working on “a series of structural and mechanical adjustments” to mitigate the noise. Those adjustments reportedly include “constructing dedicated sound walls around the high-velocity segments of the outdoor track” and “programming the individual coaster vehicles to spin and face away from the Toluca Lake neighborhood during the loudest elements of the ride.”
We’ll see what if any impact all of this has on Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift’s opening date at Universal Studios Hollywood. The attraction was supposed to open there at some point during the summer.
