Jaws

A photo of Bruce (the name of the shark from Jaws)

**Jaws** is a former ride attraction at Universal Studios Florida that opened on June 7, 1990 in the San Francisco section of the theme park, based on the 1975 film of the same name. The attraction uses tour boats to take guests through a harbor of the fictional Amity Island, which begins as a leisurely tour that is abruptly interrupted by an attack of the famous great white shark. The concept is an expanded version of the *Jaws* miniature attraction featured in the Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood in California.

The attraction and the rest of it's land of Amity Island permanently closed on January 2, 2012 and was demolished and got replaced by Diagon Alley for *The Wizarding World of Harry Potter* which included, *Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts*.

## Plot

After the shark nicknamed as, "*Jaws*" was eventually destroyed by Chief Brody, Matt Hooper and Quint in 1974, Brody became a legend in Amity Harbor, and the "Jaws" incident inspired Steven Spielberg's big Hollywood movie.
 However, the tourism on Amity Island strongly decreased following the
incident due to a fear of sharks. However, resident seaman Jake Grundy
decided to open a new boat tour
 on the island which would take guests out to the historic areas where
the shark attacks actually occurred, which ultimately brought back
tourism to the island.

### Queue

As guests enter *Captain Jake's Amity Boat Tours*,
 they walk through a series of boathouses located near Amity Harbor,
which hold various fishing supplies, nautical artifacts and feature
numerous overhead television monitors that are tuned to Amity's local TV
 station, WJWS13: The Station That BITES (which also has the tagline
"The station that plays the hits"). The station features a low-budget
local talk show entitled "Hey There, Amity!", children's and news
programming, ads for local businesses, and promos for classic movies and
 television shows, many of them from the Universal library. Upon
reaching the end of the queue, guests are loaded onto one of Captain
Jake's tour boats.

### Ride

After
boarding the tour boat, guests learn that they are taking a guided
scenic cruise to visit the actual locations of the shark attacks that
occurred during that fateful summer of 1974, which were made famous in a
 popular Hollywood movie
 that was made not long afterward. The tour boat is piloted by one of
Captain Jake's skippers, and is protected by an army surplus 40mm grenade launcher.
 However, guests are reassured by their skipper that they won't need to
use it because no one has seen a shark in the area since 1974.

The tour begins in Amity Harbor as the tour boat passes the homes
 of Chief Brody, Mayor Larry Vaughn, and various harbor side businesses.
 As the tour boat approaches a lighthouse situated on top of a rocky
jetty, the tour is suddenly interrupted by a radio distress call from a
fellow tour boat skipper named Gordon. His call for help turns into
screams of horror, followed by mysterious silence. As the skipper
contacts the home base in an attempt to find out what is going on with
Gordon's boat, the tour boat crosses the jetty to reveal the remains of
Gordon's tour boat, *Amity 3*, sinking under the water.

Suddenly, a dorsal fin appears out of the water, the fin of what appears to be a great white shark.
 The fin submerges and swims under the tour boat, rocking it back and
forth. Worried, the skipper pulls out the grenade launcher as the dorsal
 fin rises out of the water on the starboard. Not realizing that it is
actually loaded, the skipper fires at the shark, but misses. They try
firing the second shot but miss again as the fin sinks back beneath the
surface of the water.

The skipper then comes up with the idea to try to hide the tour
boat in a nearby boathouse and wait for Chief Brody's arrival. As the
skipper brings the tour boat to a stop inside the boathouse and looks
for somewhere to tie it up, a sound is heard somewhere near the back of
the boathouse. As the nervous skipper tries to figure out what it was, a
 loud crashing noise breaks the silence as the walls of the boathouse
begin to shake. The skipper realizes that the shark is barging itself
against the outside of the boathouse trying to break in. The skipper
starts to drive off but is unable to get the tour boat to drop into
gear. After several tense seconds of fighting with the tour boat's
throttle, the skipper finally gets it to drop into gear just as the
shark finally breaks a hole through the wall and surfaces inside of the
boathouse, grazing the side of the tour boat.

As the tour boat leaves the boathouse, the skipper is informed by
 Chief Brody over the radio that he'll be there in ten minutes. The
skipper replies with "we'll be shark bait in ten minutes" and picks up
the grenade launcher again, just as the shark attacks the tour boat near
 Bridewell's Gas Dock. Unfortunately, the next grenade that the skipper
fires strikes the nearby gas dock, which erupts into flames, threatening
 to engulf the tour boat and its passengers. However, the skipper
manages to pilot an escape before the flames reach the tour boat.

As a last resort, the skipper decides to unload everyone at an
old fishing pier that happens to be located near a high voltage barge.
But just as they reach the pier, the shark's fin reappears heading
straight for the tour boat. Suddenly, the shark emerges right next to
the tour boat but accidentally bites down onto a submerged power cable
from the barge and electrocutes itself. The smell of roasted shark fills
 the air as the shark disappears into a cloud of steam that engulfs the
tour boat. As the steam cloud clears, the burnt corpse of the shark
resurfaces and makes one final lunge at the tour boat. But the skipper
immediately takes one last shot at it with the grenade launcher and
finally hits it, decimating the shark. The guests cheer on the skipper
for saving Amity Island and killing the shark.

## Tributes

* **57 Fare**: This New York area has Amity show up on a subway map.
* **Halloween Horror Nights**: Boris Shuster supposedly has a summer home in Amity, and former *Legendary Truth: The Collective* leader Dr. Richard W. Steerington died on a fishing-trip on the island.
	+ **Dead Man's Pier: Winter's Wake**: This 2022 Haunted House had multiple indirect allusions to Jaws including a docked boat called the ORCA, and a bulletin board with an advertisement for Captain Jake's Boat Tours as well as Quint's Marine Salvage.
* **Hollywood**: A window features a can of, "Skipper Retro-Ride".
* **Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon**: A shark attacks Jimmy Fallon in *Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon*, referencing the Jaws ride.
* **San Francisco**: Some Amity signage still remains.
* **Shrek 4-D**: A poster at Shrek 4-D had a parody poster of Jaws featuring Dragon called, "Claws".
* **Studio Tour**: While passing a depiction of Amity inspired by the defunct ride, the boat is attacked by the shark.
* **Tribute Store**: Along with fake showings of Jaws, the theatre's "Local news" area of the bulletin board was a story about Brody and his team being able to kill the shark, along with a photo of the suspended shark in the 2022 summer tribute Store.
* **The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - Diagon Alley**: This is the area which replaced the Jaws ride. Shark jaws appear in certain parts of *Diagon Alley*, referencing how it replaced the Jaws attraction. There is a shark symbol on the upper levels of a store in a kind of zodiac wheel, further tributing Jaws. A record sleeve in one of the shop windows in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (which replaced Jaws) is from the, "Quint Trio" and has them covering *Here's to swimmin with bowlegged women*, which Quint and the two other main characters sang in the Jaws. Various (somewhat offensive racial caricature) shrunken heads in Knockturn Alley sing *Show Me the Way to Go Home* which was likewise sung by the characters of said scene. According to Universal Studios Florida tour-guides, the audio-animatronic shark from the Jaws attraction was buried underneath the statue of a banker goblin caricature from *Harry Potter*.

## Trivia

* Due to the impact of the Jaws franchise, it is worth noting that real-life, Great White Sharks are virtually harmless to humans and are essential to the health of underwater ecosystems which is presently vulnerable to extinction.
* The ride system, submerged animatronic animals and cast-member actors named, "Skippers" seemed to be a parallel to the classic Disney Parks attraction the Jungle Cruise. Incidentally, the Jungle Cruise's animals were largely designed by Bob Mattey (1910-1993) who also designed the original Jaws shark for film.
* Stevens Cannery was named in tribute to Jaws ride show-team Greg Stevens.

## Gallery

The Shark attacking the Tour Boat.The Shark burnt up.Broken Up and Sinking Boat after the shark attacked it.The shark's dorsal fin nearby the Tour Boat.
## References

1. ↑ https://touringplans.com/blog/the-saturday-six-looks-at-the-universal-studios-florida-windows-tributes-easter-eggs-and-more/