After a day of marathoning The Simpsons and trying to get their Homer chia pets to grow, Universal Studios executives came down with a severe case of yellow fever and greenlit not only The Simpsons Movie, but a Simpsons theme park ride as well.
But you can’t make a Simpsons omelette without cracking a few eggs. Only this particular egg was a time-traveling DeLorean.
To make space for the new Simpsons simulator, Back to the Future: The Ride was officially closed at the parks in 2007. The ride had been a big draw when it opened in 1991 (1993 in Hollywood), but its declining popularity, coupled with the fact that Homer Simpson plushies sell better than Biff Tannen dolls, sealed its fate.
The ride was completely overhauled, the 70 foot simulator screen bumped up to 80 feet, and 1,600-calorie pink donuts started popping up everywhere around the park.
But Universal didn’t just chuck Back to the Future to the side like an old Flux capacitor, and a couple references to the original ride were worked into the Simpsons experience.
The queue video features The Simpsons‘ Professor Frink wondering why Doc Brown’s Institute of Future Technology (which was a key location in the Back to the Future ride) has been replaced by the Krustyland theme park.
To find out, he goes back in time using a DeLorean and finds Doc Brown (voiced by Christopher Lloyd) attempting to borrow money to save the Institute so he doesn’t have to sell it to “that mercenary clown.”
For those who don’t remember the Back to the Future ride, there was always more truth in this little queue video than you realized.
The second reference is seen as you’re embarking on the Simpsons ride vehicles. Instead of having normal swinging doors or no doors at all, the vehicles feature “gull-wing” doors that swing upward, a direct callback to the vehicles used in BttF: The Ride.
The Simpsons Ride often gets a bad rap from fans for replacing Doc Brown’s time-traveling experience with a CG animated romp through Springfield. But to those of us who grew up with Krusty and his lead vests, every ride in the clown-faced vehicles is a time-traveling trip down memory lane.
The donuts are pretty good, too.
Watch your shows. Wear your shows.
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