Jaws (ride)

Jaws is an amusement ride attraction based on the Jaws film series and is located at Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Japan. It originally opened at Universal Studios Hollywood as part of the Studio Tour on April 10, 1976. A standalone ride at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando opened on June 7, 1990, and another installation later opened at Universal Studios Japan on March 31, 2001. The Hollywood iteration has the tram through a harbor of the fictional Amity Island, only to be interrupted by an attack of the famous great white shark. The Florida and Japan iterations ride uses tour boats. On January 2, 2012, the attraction was removed from the Florida theme park to make room for the second phase of expansion for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The original Jaws attraction on the Studio Tour originally opened a year after the release of Steven Spielberg's 1975 film at Universal Studios Hollywood and is still in operation. It is an attraction that features the moving shark animatronic from the film and other sets. The actual hero prop boat Orca was placed in the lagoon as a center piece, but was removed between 1991 and 1992 and chopped up for timber (Jaws director Steven Spielberg learned of the fate of the Orca, much to his anger, after noticing it gone while he was on the ride[7]). The shark as seen in the attraction has had cameos in multiple television shows and films including The Nude Bomb in 1980, the made-for-TV film The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island in 1981, the episode "Hooray for Hollywood" from Diff'rent Strokes in 1984, and the episode "Fright Knight" from Knight Rider in 1986.