ORLANDO, Fla. – Universal Orlando announced on Thursday night a 'Transformers' 3D ride will open at its park in summer 2013 after counting down the hours and minutes to their "big announcement" on their Facebook page.
Although Universal kept the announcement a secret, construction continued around the park. Local 6 news helicopter Sky 6 flew over two areas of the park that appeared to be under construction--one near the front of the park and a larger plot in the back of the park, where Jaws used to be.
Guests cheered Thursday night when they heard of the new ride and had a chance to meet the Transformers.
"It's awesome. I can't wait until the ride opens. As soon as I get here I'm going straight on it," said Transformers fan Stefan Fuchs.
"We'll have to remortgage the house again and come back, and then we'll probably have to buy more transformers toys," said Susan Fuchs.
The Fuchs family came from England for Harry Potter, and now they are already planning the next trip.
With construction underway, the ride will be exactly like the ones in Singapore and Hollywood. Visitors get recruited to help save the world from evil deceptions. Guests step into the ride vehicle, a new character named "Evac." Evac carries guests through the 3D mission.
"From the time you walk into the ride you immediately get sucked into this thing. It's totally immersive. The story starts right from the beginning. You get onto the ride vehicle and you are off on the most amazing adventure you can imagine," said Universal Creative Director Mark Woodbury.
The ride will merge the best action experiences from the three blockbuster Transformers movies.
"The films are awesome, the robots are awesome, I'm pretty sure the ride is going to be awesome too," said fan Christian Fuchs.
The announcement comes a little more than a week after bloggers posted on Universal's Facebook page about what they say they found hidden in the computer code of the countdown. Hidden in the code was the phrase, Transformers countdown or "TransformerCoundown_clock.swf" to be exact, according to a blogger post on their Facebook. Once bloggers figured it out though and posted it on Universal's Facebook page, the code appeared to have been rewritten.
Universal executives said they decided to bring the ride to Orlando the moment they saw how popular it was in Singapore and Hollywood.