Super Nintendo World

About ten years ago, a partnership was struck between Universal Studios and Nintendo. Naturally, this was always meant to result in the building of additional attractions in the Universal Studios theme parks.  The Universal Studios Hollywood location opened on February 17, 2023. 

As I explained in my last post, Pedro’s son Andre has been dying to go there ever since he heard such a thing was going to happen. Prior to the trip, the normal teenage communication that often occurred between him and us consisted of grunts and a text message or photo once in a while, and an occasional non-stop stream of consciousness about a new obsession. (For example the time he found a carbonation machine for sale and asked, “Dad, what if we carbonated strange things? Like…milk? Or….ketchup?” This continued for a couple of weeks. Out of the blue, Andre would suddenly say out loud, “Oooh. What if we carbonated Jell-O?”) Beginning two weeks before our flight and continuing through the day we flew, Andre texted us multiple times a day, every day, asking what airline would we be flying, what time does the park open on Sunday, how far is the hotel from the park, how much time is he allowed to spend in Nintendo World vs. other parts of the park, and regaling us with every single detail about Nintendo World he had gleaned from the Internet discussion sites. We were quite entertained.

I am not much of a fan of Nintendo or Mario. To be clear, I enjoyed the video games just fine, back in the day. I played Mario Kart without any discernible skill, about two dozen times around 2013, and a couple more times since. I played the original Super Mario Brothers game about thirty times total in the 1990s. But I have been AROUND people who were huge fans. I have the little MIDI beep-boop video game tune stuck in my head (and you’re listening to it in your head right now, too, if you’ve played Mario in the past) as I write.

So what I’m trying to get at is that even as a non-fan, I was impressed by Super Nintendo World as an earnest and quality attempt to place a human inside the video game. It really works. In the short videos below, I try to show how it looks like the video game.

The night before, Andre had purchased wrist bands called Power-Up Bands, which a cynical person might call a clever way for Universal Studios to make more money. These bands only work inside Super Nintendo World, and are designed to work with many, many things such as games, actions, and a sort of scavenger hunt to increase your score. Since this attraction is like being inside a video game, then naturally to make it even more real, visitors can immerse themselves in more games and scoring. You don’t get anything for high scores other than the fun of watching your score go up, and comparing it to other people playing that day. An unsuspicious person might think of Power-Up bands as a clever way to make the attraction even more fun and to get a bunch of people excited to run around from place to place.

The Power-Up bands interact with many things inside the world, as you see in the photo above. If a person completes the activity correctly, then afterward that person can walk over to the grey disc in the wall and get the points for the activity. In this case, a little 8-bit Mario image lights up inside the wall, too.

Then there are the games or challenges, five in total, if I recall correctly. People wearing the bands can play the games and then get points when they complete the game. More points for doing a better job. I was able to join the alarm game even though I didn’t have a Power-Up band. There are about 12 alarm clocks going off and players have to run around hitting the “off” button, while an agitated carnivorous flower looks on. The more family members you have to help out, the better. In the following video, you can see the game being played on the very edge of the screen. You can see the park employee helping out the family playing, by hitting the top of an alarm clock every so often to turn it off and get another point. Also look in the background at all the movement on the walls, to simulate what the video game looks like.

If you successfully complete 3 of the first 4 challenges, you win the right (plus your whole family) to go play Bowser Jr. Shadow Showdown, which was pretty fun. Inside the game, your shadow is cast onto a wall and then images of things come at you, just like in a video game. You literally must duck beneath hazards, punch balloons out of the way, jump up in the air, and swing your arms to throw video fireballs and destroy the hazards.

The next thing I want to show is the fun characters. Just like in Disneyland, visitors can meet characters here.

The next thing we had to do, according to Andre’s research, was eat a meal at the Toadstool Cafe. It’s jam-packed and requires reservations, which only open up the morning of, and can only be reserved online by people who are on site. Yes! Lots of requirements (Disney restaurant reservations are tough like this too). Working together, Andre and I figured out the system and got ourselves a reservation. It was an ok experience.

While we ate, screens on all the surrounding walls were showing a story, and characters from one screen would move from screen to screen while chasing and being chased. That was mildly interesting and probably appealing to little kids.

The lines were as you would expect. Worse in this particular section, because this is a new attraction and there is still much enthusiasm. The lines were mostly bearable except for the Mario Kart ride. I’ll admit: the ride was very cool, and worth a wait, but not the ridiculous waits of two hours or more. I refused to wait in line that long, and didn’t go until it got down to about an hour. The second morning we got in early because Andre had purchased a special early morning pass for all of us. We ran directly to the ride and rode it four times in a row! In the end, the guys rode it six times total and I rode it five times. I had fun every time.

The line to get into the game is designed specifically to pacify people waiting for a very long time. It’s the most elaborate line I have ever seen, including everything at Disneyland. When we went through, there were short wait times, so we didn’t spend much time waiting, more like jogging through it. The boys had to keep waiting for me while I took photos. There are a million things to look at, all relevant to people familiar with the games and the characters and their rivalries. Bowser is always trying to best Mario and Luigi, kidnap Princess Peach and take over the kingdom. The following images are all taken from the wait line to the ride, even though it looks like many different rides, it’s all telling the story of the rivalry:

Finally, riders get to the end of the maze, and it’s time to put on the visor and fit it tightly to your head.

Inside the karts are goggles that you pick up and attach to your visor with magnets. The game then tracks where you look/ where your eyes go. You can look in a direction, press a button with your thumb, and it will shoot out shells (Turtle shells are your weapons in the game). You can look at a question mark cube as you approach it, and thus gain the Power-Up powers when you hit it virtually. As though you are in a game, there are good characters on your own team and bad characters on Bowser’s team, and you’re constantly in a battle while racing karts. One of the times I rode, my visor did not attach right and I had to hold it in place with my hands. I gave up and filmed what it looks like without the visor, which is that much less is going on:

In the video, you can see Andre engaging with the game. Everywhere he turns his head and looks, the visor is capturing his gaze and directing his game play.

In the photo above is an example of how worlds collide in some theme parks. In the center is a kid wearing a wizard robe from the Harry Potter section of the park, called the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. So this means someone who is so excited about wizards and magic that they bought a robe to play the part…then later decided to check out Nintendo World. Remember how I refused to go on a ride that had a wait time of longer than one hour? Well, Pedro, bless his soul, took pity on Andre and waited in line with him while I spent the entire hour and 45 minutes in a pretend village of Hogsmeade while the boys waited in line. That’ll be my next post.

{I know there are people who are NOT interested in theme parks. No worries, I got you! Coming up soon: garden and workshop updates!}