The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man

What it is

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man opened with the park in 1999 and invented a category. It puts a twelve-passenger vehicle on a track through a series of rooms, and in each room it hands you off between physical sets, projected 3D film and pure motion simulation without ever letting you work out which is which. Nothing before it had combined those three things at that level of precision, and a remarkable amount of what has been built at Universal since is a descendant of it.

The 2012 rebuild replaced the original film with high-definition 4K projection and re-rendered the animation while leaving the ride profile, the sets and the timing exactly alone. That was the right decision. The ride's core trick - a vehicle that moves in perfect sync with what is happening on the screen, so that a punch thrown in the film lands as a jolt in your seat - depends entirely on choreography that took years to tune.

The story is a straightforward comic plot: the Sinister Syndicate steals the Statue of Liberty, you are a reporter sent out in a news vehicle, and things escalate. What matters is not the plot but the density. There is more happening per second in this ride than in almost anything else in Orlando, and it repays a second and third ride in a way that screen-based attractions usually do not.

What riding it is actually like

The queue runs through the Daily Bugle newsroom, which is worth reading rather than walking - the desks are dressed properly and the details are funny. You collect 3D glasses at the load area and board a vehicle with three rows of four. There is no bad seat, but the middle row gets the best framing on the screens and the outside seats get the strongest sense of motion.

The ride opens gently and escalates. Doctor Octopus lifts you off the ground with an anti-gravity gun, Hydro-Man puts water in your face, Electro throws sparks, and the whole thing builds toward a sequence where the vehicle is apparently thrown off a rooftop and falls forty-odd stories to the street. That fall is entirely simulated - the vehicle drops a matter of inches - and it is one of the most convincing illusions in the industry. People flinch every time.

The fire effect is real. There is a moment where a genuine burst of flame goes off close enough that you feel the heat on your face, and it is the single most common reason a small child comes off this ride upset. It is over in about two seconds.

Is The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man scary?

The frights are cartoon-shaped but they are delivered at close range: fire effects with real radiant heat, water sprayed at your face, villains lunging out of the 3D plane, and a simulated 400-foot fall that reads convincingly. Children who handle Disney dark rides comfortably are usually fine, but the fire sequence and the drop catch out under-sevens. The vehicle never actually falls.

Scores are editorial, on a 1–5 scale, judged against what frightens a typical four- to seven-year-old rather than an adult.

Accessibility

Riders transfer from a wheelchair or ECV into the vehicle, which sits at bench height with a lap bar. The vehicle pitches, rolls and spins continuously, so this is not a good fit for anyone with neck or back instability. 3D glasses fit over prescription lenses.

Full Universal's Islands of Adventure accessibility guide →