Universal Creative

Universal Creative is the master planning, creative development, design, engineering, project management, and research and development division of Universal Parks & Resorts, a division of NBCUniversal, whose parent company is Comcast. Universal Creative is composed of artists, architects, engineers, designers, producers, builders, writers and more who conceive, design and build all of the attractions, rides, theme parks and resorts for Universal Parks & Resorts.

History
From 1968 until 1997, Universal Creative was known as MCA Planning and Development, working as part of Universal's recreation division. In 1997, when Universal parent MCA was sold to Seagram and dropped the MCA name, the company was renamed Universal Creative. Originally located in Universal City, California, the company moved to Universal Orlando in 2001. In 2011, Comcast purchased NBCUniversal, incorporating Universal Parks & Resorts and Universal Creative into its portfolio.

Projects
Universal Creative designed and created attractions such as The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man (1999), Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (2010), and Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts (2014), and has numerous patents on file for additional attractions and innovations. Thierry Coup, Universal Creative's Senior Vice President of the Creative Studio, describes the philosophy: "When people come to our park, a lot of them ask ‘How did they do that?’ It’s what we want to hear. But as they become savvier, we have to keep improving and staying on the cutting edge. We look at up-and-coming technology because developing an attraction at this level requires the use of tricks, techniques and technology that exists, and then we have to bring it to the next level. Often production systems we use for attractions are not available commercially yet. We work with technology partners to look at the future and see how we’re going to incorporate that into our attractions, to immerse our guests in a way that they’ve never dreamed about."

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man
Universal Creative's The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man is a dark ride using advanced audio, with the sound accurate to ⅕ of a video frame. “All of your visceral, aural and visual input has to be in perfect sync,” says Steve Blum, Senior Vice President of Ride Safety and Engineering. “Humans are very sensitive to anomalies in their environment: If you don’t give them the right input, they detect right away that it’s not real.” Universal Creative partnered with Oceaneering International to create a 12-passenger motion-based simulator pod capable of six degrees of freedom (heave, sway, surge, yaw, pitch, and roll) and 360-degree rotation (achieved with a ring and pinion gear system), all contained in an angled shell to direct riders' view. Universal Creative's Phil Hettema and William Mason received inventor credits on the ride system patent, known as the SCOOP.

Universal Creative employees Scott Trowbridge and Thierry Coup storyboarded a scene-by-scene breakdown of the ride that would be projected onto thirteen 30-foot tall projection screens integrated with physical sets. Because guests would be moving toward, away from, or past these 3D screens, animators had to consider the perspective shift that viewers would encounter if these. They developed a new process they called “squinching”, used to account for a viewer's moving sightline and distorting the animation to match.

Created for the Islands of Adventure theme park that opened on May 28, 1999, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man won Amusement Today's Golden Ticket Award for Best Dark Ride for twelve consecutive years from 1999 through to 2010. It has since placed second in that category, after fellow Islands of Adventure attraction, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, took the top spot in 2011. In 2000, the ride won a Thea Award from the Themed Entertainment Association for outstanding themed entertainment and experience design. It has also won numerous public-voted Theme Park Insider Awards and Screamscape Ultimate Awards. The ride has been duplicated at Universal Studios Japan, which opened in January 2004.

Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey
Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey opened in June 2010 as part of the Hogsmeade area at Islands of Adventure. It features robotic arms as a ride vehicle which is mounted on a track, to travel through the attraction while performing their movements in synchronization with the ride's show elements (animated props, projection surfaces, and so on). In Amusement Today 's annual Golden Ticket Awards, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey debuted as the best new ride of 2010. It won the Best Dark Ride category for five consecutive years from 2011 to 2015. Due to the massive popularity of the ride, it was duplicated at Universal Studios Japan (which opened on July 18, 2014) and Universal Studios Hollywood (which opened on April 7, 2016).

Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts
Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts is a steel roller coaster that opened on July 8, 2014, at Universal Studios Florida. It encompasses motion-based vehicles, detailed sets, physical effects, and 3D projection screens similar to those found on Transformers: The Ride 3D and The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. The ride takes guests through the vaults of Gringotts, where they meet several characters from the Harry Potter films and have a face-to-face encounter with Lord Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange In Amusement Today's annual Golden Ticket Awards, Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts has made it into the Top Five Dark Rides since it opened in 2014.