An opening of a new land at Hollywood Studios is a pretty rare thing, and Universal is really betting big on this one. With the release and amazing performance of the new The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the new land opening up has caused quite a stir, and the showpiece of the Land is the Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge, a 4-d Augmented Reality racing ride and game, featuring cutting edge tech, intricate theming and all the fun of Mario Kart in real life, there is a lot to be excited about. Can the ride live up to the hype and expectation?
- Location – Super Nintendo World – Lower Lot, Universal Studios Hollywood
- Type – AR Dark Ride with Game Elements
What is Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge?
If you don’t know what Mario Kart is then we are not sure where you have been, to date the series has sold over 178 million copies and is the highest-selling racing game franchise of all time, so it’s pretty popular. We spent far too many hours in the distant past racing friends and family around the zany courses, but this is not a game solely from yester-year, the latest incarnation, Mario Kart 8, has shifted more than 64 million copies and is the 5th highest selling Video game of all time, exposing even tik-tokers to the franchise, and of course, a 9th edition is firmly in the works.
So to say Mario Kart is popular is a huge understatement, so a real-life ride version is something well worth getting excited about. The Ride features some really intricate sets, cutting edge Ride Tech with a gaming element. It’s billed as you controlling the ride vehicle as you do battle with either Team Bowser or Team Mario depending upon which team you are placed on.
The Ride cars are 4-seater Mario Karts, with the riders wearing Augmented Reality headsets that project additional images over the amazing sets that have been created for the ride.
Ride Experience
It is at this point we need to switch the tone of the review, as we have been all hype up until now, as this is exactly how we experienced it, very hyped up. Huge expectations, even larger queues, amazing Themeing, exciting Pre-Shows, and then utter and abject disappointment!
We don’t know how to say it any better…this ride is garbage. Our whole group was so pumped, talking about nothing else all day, and then just…was that it! It fell so flat it really is hard to come to terms with…so what’s gone wrong, and can it be fixed, let’s get into it.
Queue
Express Pass
There is no Express Pass Queue for the Ride, and the only options to skip the Queue are the VIP Tour and the Single Rider Line. We are not sure how the Single Rider line will work but as the ride is very performance-based it a really fun to ride with actual friends and family rather than on your own. But with 4 riders per Kart, there is likely to be good single-rider throughput at least.
Let’s start with the good, the Queue Line is exceptional. And that’s good as you are likely to spend a LONG time in it. On a fairly innocuous and soggy Monday morning that we visited the queue topped out at 175 mins, yep you read that right, just shy of 3 hours and stayed above 2 hours all day. At weekends and Holidays, we dread to think!
So while the queue line is amazing, it needs to be if you are going to spend 3 hours in it. The overflow area is nothing special, but soon enough you are actually walking through the halls of Bowsers Castle! Starting at Yoshi’s Island, you explore the various rooms of the Castle, from the open-air ramparts to Bowser’s throne room, lab, and Boiler rooms. The castle is filled with cool Bowser art and an impressive Bowser Statue, along with lots of neat little displays and things to look at. It’s one of the best queue lines we have seen and getting to explore the castle is seriously cool.
Once through the Castle you ht a series of Pre-Shows. These explain the game, in detail. Explaining how the AR headsets work and how to control the Ride vehicles and fire your Koopa Shels and score points along with being assigned to Team Mario or Team Bowser.
We were super lucky to be o VIP tours so got an express walk-through rather than the 3 hours of in-depth look at the Caste…However it’s important to note, the entire process for us still took nearly an hour from the entrance to the exit.
The Ride is still very new and the queue lines may start to come down once the novelty wears off and maybe once people realize how poor the ride really is…
Ride Tech
The Ride has two main components the Basic Ride and the Augmented Reality. The basic ride is pretty simple. It’s a 4 person train, themed to look like a Mario Kart, and this runs on a racked circuit through a heavily themed Dark Ride experience. It’s a slow ride, with no thrill elements and the only excitement comes from the trains spinning to mimic the Spinng Karts that occur when hit by a Koopa Shell.
The Additional Augmented Reality is where the game elements of the Ride are borne out. Here additional characters appear that you need to fire your Shells at. These appear on the headset screens and are overlayed onto the real world, which during the ride is the whacky world of Mario Kart. Some parts of this world are old-school Dark-Ride theming, others are in the form of video screens.
The AR/VR Headset mechanism is the best implementation we have seen of this type of headset. Usually, the addition of VR Headsets has added a layer of complexity that has been impossible to manage, leading to huge wait times and a poor experience. The issue is people do not want to share headsets, especially in these post covid days, without a good wipe-down and clean. This leads to cars sitting in the station while the huge ride team cleans down the headsets. It’s unworkable and usually results in the VR element of the ride being removed in short order.
The Way it’s done here is excellent, essentially splitting the headset into two parts. The Complicated expensive part of the headset is attached to the car and never actually touches the rider’s face, this is separate from the “dumb” part of the headset which is removed from the ride and can be cleaned separately. You pick up the “Dumb” part of the headset, which is hilariously themed as Mario’s hat, and were this like a sun visor as you finish off the last section of the Queue. Then once in the car, you pick up the “Smart” section of the headset and clip it into the “Dumb” piece that is already fitted on your head.
After the ride the Smart section clicks off, and you leave it on the ride car for the next person along, and then deposit your “dumb” headset piece into the bins to be cleaned and returned to the front of the ride. It is really clever and helps keep the boarding process smooth and swift.
The Problem with the AR/VR element is it is rubbish…
Ride
The Vehicle has a large steering wheel at the front of each seat and here you can dab your power-up band to keep track of your progress.
Ride Elements
The Basic ride is pretty decent on its own. The theming is great, and any Mario fans are going to love it. There are a plethora of Pipes, characters, and elements from the game and Mario World Universe. On top of the hard theming elements, there are a series of screens that attempt to add a little zip to proceedings but largely fail.
The opening race sequence works quite well but on the whole, it’s a slow trot through a well-themed representation of The Mario Kart World. This culminates on the Rainbow Road which acts as the climax to the Ride. Here you find out if your team won and what score you got.
Overall it isn’t terrible, but very underwhelming for a Showpiece attraction, if this was in addition to another ride, then ok, it is really well-themed and fun, but it’s just not the kind of level you would expect from a Headline Attraction.
Game Elements.
The Game elements are terrible. The concept seems fine, the AR/VR headset projects various game characters into the real world. There are some Good-Guys(Team Bowser) and some bad guys (Team Mario) and you need to aim by turning your head and then firing your Koopa Shells at the enemy, earning coins for an Enemy Team Hit and losing coins for a Friendly hit. This all sounds fun enough, but the mechanics are very 8-bit.
The field of view is tiny and you need to be looking straight at the characters to even see them. They didn’t appear to be in any way related to the real world and this game just played out in front of your eyes, assuming you looked in the right direction.
There is also the Driving element. This was such a mess and was in no way related to anything happening in the real world. You just turned the wheel when a huge arrow told you to. Nothing happened if you didn’t, you just got coins if you did.
Combined
Augmented Reality is supposed to combine a real world with a digital one, the Digital World projected onto the canvas of reality. done right a Digital character will appear right before you in the actual world. It can be really stunning, We have seen examples of Dinosaurs marching through a park, Pokemin dancing in the street, and Labels appearing on landmarks across city skylines.
We had the impression this would be the case with Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge, where these race characters would appear on the circuit laid out in front of you, creating an exciting and immersive experience. We found nothing of the sort.
The game element played out in front of your eyes in the mid-distance and the Dark Ride elements happened behind. This is the worst of both worlds as you either focus on the game elements, which are not worth a 3-hour queue, and miss all the fantastic theming, or you focus on the real world and ignore the game. There is nothing seamless about it and there is little to no integration of the characters and the Real World.
Basically, it is like trying to play a shonky 8-bit game while riding a theme park ride, not a good combination.
Overall
It really was hard to come to terms with how hard the ride has failed. We are naturally very positive people and were pretty excited to Visit the world and try out the Mario Kart Ride. While initial Ride Videos looked less than amazing, we have often found an overall experience is much better than watching something on YouTube.
However this was not the case here, the ride was seriously lacking. Honestly, it would be better without the AR headsets and meaningless game, It”s not like we didn’t win, I got the high score in my Kart, we both got over 100 coins, and overall the team won, so we were doing it right, it’s just not that great.
We remember the disappointment at the Spiderman Webslingers Ride at Disneyland and this is orders of magnitude worse. It’s probably not the WORST ride we have been on, but for a Headline ride at a New Land in a Major Themepark, this is a STINKER!
Have Your Say
We know how passionate Nintendo and Mario Fans can be so we put out this review with a little trepidation, but come on, even the most Die Hard Nintendo fan must realize this is very wide of the mark!
But as always we invite you to have your say! Have we “missed” the point of this ride? Is this your new favorite attraction at Universal? Are we Neanderthals who just don’t get it? or are we right and this is a real missed opportunity by Universal and Nintendo? Let us know in the comments, we would love to hear your thoughts.
