FUN FACT: a friend of mine who worked on Kongfrontation said that they eventually had to turn off the banana breath because the chemical used was melting Kong’s vinyl skin!

As a theme park attraction designer who was visiting Sequoia Creative, I was privileged to climb INSIDE the head of one of the Kong animatronics as it was being finished prior to its move to Universal Orlando.  And then while between theme park projects, I was invited to be an extra for several Universal Orlando projects; and so for many years, I was seen in the guest map brochures and on highway billboards, and even in this YouTube video, riding Kongfrontation!

This one was so scary for me as a kid. My parents tried to explain that the drop was only "one dad tall", but that didn't help one bit 😅

Also: Kongfrontation is most likely the best name for a ride ever!

I'm honestly kinda disappointed i never got to ride this one. while the modern kong ride is cool, a giant animatronic just can't be beat.

I was born in Orlando and went to the parks very often. I was so young at the time, my memories of Kongfrontation and Michael Jackson in Disney's Captain EO combined themselves into one memory of Michael Jackson singing in front of the shops as Kong destroys the city.

It deeply saddens me that Universal abandoned so many important movies over the years. Twister, Back To The Future, Jaws, Ghostbusters, frankly it's a miracle The Mummy has survived for so long as a ride. I'd love to see Universal maybe do revamps of their older rides and shows since those have all aged far better than most of the properties that replaced them.

Also, while I'm sad that I never had a chance to ride Kongfrontation, I'm glad that Skull Island has a similar massive King Kong animatronic. My dream theme park ride would probably be a Godzilla dark ride similar to Kongfrontation

I remember my mom picking me up from school and telling me that King Kong burnt down. I was devastated. Even tho I was so young, I always had great memories experiencing it on the tram tour :/

Kongfrontation crawled so Expedition Everest could disco.

I rode Kongfrontation many times in 90's...then ironically worked at Mummy in the 00's.  There are a couple other Kong tributes and hidden oddities not mentioned here.  

Both attractions hold a special place in my heart.  Ultimately, what made Kongfrontation so amazing was the scale of it.  The soundstage is massive.  Being elevated in the gondola and looking down onto NYC streets was a perspective other theme park rides never matched.

Best ride I've ever been on. The level of detail in the queue was insane. The smells, cold air, news stories. Graffiti. Being a kid and seeing it was just indescribable. You felt like you were up so high and just so much detail and scale.

love the fact that the ride uses the Roosevelt Island Tramway as the ride vehicle. The Roosevelt Island Tramway is one of my favorite things in NYC as someone who lives in the NYC metro area.

The Roosevelt Island Tramway has an interesting history: Roosevelt Island was once an isolated, institutional enclave known as "Welfare Island". For over a century, it served as a quarantine zone for New York City's "undesirables," housing prisons, asylums, and hospitals. Before the aerial tramway, there used to be a trolley/streetcar line that ran on the Queensboro Bridge, and it stopped in the middle of the bridge at an elevator that took passengers down to the island. The last streetcar retired in 1957 shortly after the Roosevelt Island Bridge was completed in 1955, connecting the island to Queens. After the NY state government leased the island from the city in 1969, the island's unique circumstance gave them a blank slate to build a (mostly, they allowed cars later on because the hospitals needed vehicular access) car-free community, a master-planned transit-oriented community with a subway station as the centerpiece. However, the Roosevelt Island station that was proposed was delayed. So the temporary solution to connect would-be RI residents to Manhattan was to build an aerial tramway which opened in 1976!  

When the subway station finally opened in 1989, residents didn't want the tramway to close because it provided a wheelchair-accessible connection to more bus routes in Manhattan than the subway did, and the RIOC (the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation is a New York State public-benefit corporation; they operate the aerial tramway and the island's Red Bus system, and they're responsible for developing the island) wanted to attract tourists as well, thus it stayed open and became a popular attraction! The fare on the aerial tramway is the same as the NYC Subway, and a transfer to the subway or bus is free (or vice versa, the transfer to the tramway is free)! The aerial tramway was actually the last in NYC to stop using tokens, as they still accepted them until March 2004, and during the NYC transit strike in 2005, it transported three times its passenger count! The island's free Red Bus does continuous loops around the island, as well as a Shopper's Bus for seniors and those with disabilities to Costco in Astoria. The MTA Q102 bus serves the island as well, connecting the island with Long Island City. Subway trains serving Roosevelt Island use the 63rd Street Tunnel, which was futureproofed to carry LIRR trains to Grand Central, with the lower level of the tunnel for the LIRR opening in 2023 when East Side Access was finally completed.

Besides the TOD proposal, the American Institute of Architects' NY chapter proposed that the island instead become a park (eventually the southernmost point became a state park in 2012, the Four Freedoms Park, with a memorial made of North Carolina granite and views of the United Nations), while another plan called for the island to become housing for United Nations staff. The TOD plan called for two neighborhoods named Northtown and Southtown, separated by a common area. With services such as parks and schools (it was planned with up to 16 schools serving grades K-12 with each accommodating 180 to 300 students; it had five by the 1980s and they were combined into PS/IS 217 in 1992) near every residence, and a pneumatic trash collection system which was the second AVAC system in the US after Magic Kingdom's Utilidors. Their AVAC system is one of the largest in the world, and trash is collected from each tower to the Central Collections and Compaction Plant at up to 60 miles per hour. Until 1989, Main Street was the island's only road! Main Street, along with the island's parks, was intended to be a communal area for the island's various ethnic groups and socioeconomic classes. The Octagon designed by Alexander Jackson Davis (who worked on the former 1833 North Carolina State Capitol, Litchfield Villa in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, and the Lyndhurst mansion in Tarrytown), a remnant of a hospital made famous by Nellie Bly, has since been incorporated as part of a large apartment complex! Not to mention, there's the Cornell Tech graduate campus on the island now as well.

I've worked at WDW for 40 plus years. Kongfrontation was hands down the best, most fun ride I've ever been on. It was truly that good. I'll never understand why they decided to remove the ride.🤨

Kongfrontation is the only ride that legit made me cry and damn near shit my pants. I was only 8 or 9 when my family did Universal Orlando, so all of the “Ride the Movies” rides left a lifelong impression on me. Even watching this video is bringing up some repressed traumatic memories! I can still smell the chunks of burnt shark from the Jaws ride  over 20 years later, and I’ll never forget the T. Rex lunging at us from behind the waterfall.

I’m soooo disappointed that I never got to ride Kongfrontation just because it looks SO good. Wish I had been able to see any of the giant animatronics in person, partially because my mom has some old vacation photos of the tram tour and the photo her aunt snapped of Kong looks absolutely terrifying

Happy 36th birthday to Universal Studios Florida. Great time to release this video.


I really loved this ride! I miss it.

One last thing, during Halloween Horror Nights 10, people were able to walk through the themed street level of New York on this ride. It was called Nightmare Creatures II

Have to mention  that  the Jaws ride at night  was Awesome

I absolutely loved this ride . I worked for Universal Orlando back when this ride was operating and I would end my work day by going to Tiwster , then King Kong , the animatronic was massive and thrilling to witness , it was a bummer when they removed the attraction, the park did however put one of the giant hands down in the gift shop so you could take a picture with it . If this ride was around today it would be a hit of course as long as they made some updates to the effects and the monster to be even more life like . These original attractions will be missed ,  the last one still standing is ET and if it wasn’t for Spielberg, they most likely would have done away with it long ago .

Not only did I get to ride it, but one time the ride was having a bit of a bad day and after we had loaded into the ride vehicle, they told us they needed to do a system reset and as part of that reset, the ride vehicle needed to go through the track with all the other ride systems in standby mode. Rather than go through the hassle of unloading and reloading everyone, they dispatched the ride vehicle with us on board and the "tram operator" just did commentary on how the ride worked. At the conclusion, they were able to then dispatch the ride vehicle with us on board, this time with the ride in full operation.

My grandparents have been going through their attic recently and came across some old video tapes from when we went to Universal in 1999. Most of the tapes are of us walking around the parks, but one had a full ride through of Kongfrontation that my grandma had taken. It was a bittersweet surprise to say the least.