I have a confession to make: for years, I trash-talked Fast & Furious: Supercharged every chance I got.
And today, as it officially closes its doors forever at Universal Studios Florida, I have to sit with the uncomfortable truth that I’m actually going to miss it.
Let’s back up. If you’ve never ridden it (or if you rode it once and immediately understood the discourse), Fast & Furious: Supercharged opened back on April 23, 2018, replacing Disaster!: A Major Motion Picture Ride…Starring You and Beetlejuice’s Rock-and-Roll Graveyard Revue — RIP to both of those, but that’s a nostalgia spiral for another day. The ride puts you on a “party bus,” which is exactly as chaotic as it sounds, and sends you barreling through a high-speed chase scene set in San Francisco, played out almost entirely on massive projection screens. Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Luke Evans, and Tyrese Gibson all made appearances in the Hollywood version, while the Florida ride gave us Ludacris and Jordana Brewster in the pre-show. Big names! Big energy! Very small amount of actual physical movement, which, if we’re being honest, is exactly why fans have debated this ride since the day it opened.
And debate it, they did. Supercharged built a reputation over the years as one of Universal Orlando’s more polarizing attractions, praised for its queue (genuinely packed with cool screen-used vehicles and movie props, no notes there) but constantly picked apart for leaning so heavily on screens instead of delivering the kind of real, physical thrills the Fast & Furious franchise is supposedly built on. I was firmly in the “picked apart” camp for most of its run. I said the things. I rolled my eyes walking past the queue. I was, in hindsight, a little bit of a hater.
But here’s the thing about permanent closures: they have a funny way of softening you up right when it’s too late to do anything about it.
Universal first announced back in January that Supercharged would eventually close to make room for a new Fast & Furious coaster, and at the time, they said it wouldn’t happen until sometime in 2027 (which, fair, felt far enough away that nobody was rushing to say their goodbyes.) Then, without a ton of warning, Universal moved the date up. Way up. What was expected to be a 2027 closure quietly became an official closing date of August 17, 2026, which makes today, August 16th, the actual last day anyone will ever get to ride it. No dramatic farewell tour, no big send-off campaign — just a passholder notice and a countdown that snuck up faster than anyone expected.
So what’s replacing it? Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, a brand-new roller coaster being built on the former site of Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit (RIP to that one too — this park’s graveyard of former attractions is getting crowded). Hollywood Drift is promising vehicles that rotate a full 360 degrees to simulate an actual drifting sensation, plus a genuinely terrifying-sounding 170-foot vertical spike that launches riders nearly 17 stories into the air. Universal hasn’t confirmed an exact opening date yet beyond “2027,” and there’s still no word on what’s actually happening to the now-empty Supercharged show building once it goes dark.
Was Fast & Furious: Supercharged a masterpiece of theme park engineering? No. Did it deserve every ounce of side-eye I personally gave it over the years? Also, no, apparently, because here I am, getting weirdly sentimental about a screen-based dark ride I used to actively avoid.
Permanent closures do this to people. They did it to me. And now Supercharged joins the ever-growing list of Universal Studios Florida attractions that only became beloved once they were gone.
Did you ride Fast & Furious: Supercharged before it closed for good? Let me know your honest thoughts — hater or defender, I want to hear it!
Leave a Reply