Universal Studios Hollywood has finally stopped saying “this summer” and started saying an actual date. Its Fast & Furious coaster opens Wednesday, September 16, which the park confirmed on August 31. That lands six days ahead of the autumnal equinox, so the Vin Diesel-narrated ad campaign that promised a summer opening gets to keep its word by roughly the margin of a good launch control start.
What’s opening is more interesting than the usual movie-tie-in people mover. Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift runs 4,100 feet of aerial track down and across the terraced hillside of the Universal lot, hits 72 mph, and pulls up to 3.6 Gs. For context, a well-sorted street car on summer tires generates roughly 1 g in a corner. This thing generates more than three times that, repeatedly, on a hillside above Lankershim Boulevard.
The propulsion is the story
There’s no chain lift here. The manufacturer specification lists it as an Intamin LSM launch coaster, and LSM stands for linear synchronous motor. Think of an electric car’s motor unrolled and laid flat along the rails. Instead of a rotor spinning inside a stator, the “rotor” is a set of magnetic fins on the underside of the train, and the stator is a series of electromagnet coils bolted to the track. Energize the coils in sequence and you get a traveling magnetic wave that pulls the train along.
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The practical upshot for anyone who cares about drivetrains: LSM launches have no clutch, no gearbox, no hydraulic accumulator, and almost no wear surfaces. Torque is delivered without contact, which is why Universal can stack four separate launches into one layout. It also means the ride’s acceleration curve is a software parameter rather than a mechanical limit. If the neighbors get louder, engineers can dial the profile back without touching hardware.
Universal is running a dual-launching, split track that alternates trains from dispatch. That’s a throughput trick more than a thrill trick. Two dispatch paths means the station isn’t the bottleneck, which matters when your ride cycle is short and your park is space-starved.
What “drifting” actually means here
The cars rotate 360 degrees, but they’re not the free-spinning teacup-style vehicles you’ve seen on smaller spinning coasters. The rotation is programmed. Each of the four cars on a train runs its own script, which is why Universal says you get four different experiences depending on which vehicle you’re strapped into.
That’s the right engineering call if you’re chasing the sensation of a drift. Real drifting is a yaw angle problem. The car’s nose points somewhere other than where the car is actually traveling, and the driver holds that mismatch with throttle and steering input. A free-spinning car gives you random rotation, which feels like a carnival ride. A commanded yaw angle held through a banked corner is a lot closer to what’s happening when someone pitches a car sideways at Irwindale.
The vehicles are modeled on the Dodge Charger, Mazda RX-7, Nissan Skyline GT-R, and Toyota Supra, with lap-bar restraints and an independent onboard audio system tuned to the car you’re in. Universal says the engine sounds are true to type. Whether that means a genuine rotary buzz for the RX-7 versus a 2JZ’s turbo whistle in the Supra will be the first thing enthusiasts check on opening day, and it’s the easiest detail in the whole project to get embarrassingly wrong.
The noise fight is a jurisdiction story
Toluca Lake residents spent the summer complaining about screaming during technical rehearsals, and Los Angeles City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian’s office announced in August that Universal would install two additional sound barriers, with work wrapping in early September.
Here’s the part nobody explains properly. Universal City is unincorporated Los Angeles County, and Toluca Lake is inside the City of Los Angeles. A city councilmember has no direct regulatory authority over the park. The binding rule is the county’s noise control ordinance, and Section 12.08.390 specifically covers a sound source in the unincorporated county measured on any other property, “either incorporated or unincorporated.” That clause is why this is enforceable at all.
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The county’s residential thresholds, laid out in its general plan noise element, start at 50 dBA between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. and 45 dBA overnight, with allowances climbing as the duration shortens. The interesting wrinkle for a coaster: the ordinance knocks five decibels off the limit for sources emitting a pure tone or impulsive noise. Intermittent human screaming every 40 seconds is a much better fit for “impulsive” than a steady mechanical hum, and that’s the argument residents have on their side. Universal maintains the ride tested compliant. The track itself was built with sound-reduction technology from the outset, which tells you the acoustics were a design constraint years before anyone was screaming.
Practical notes before you go
Nothing goes in your pockets. Universal requires all belongings in complimentary lockers in the queue and sends every rider through metal detection before the platform. Phones included. If you were planning a POV video, plan something else.
The queue is worth the walk for car people. Universal has staged recreated film props including the Fast 5 vault truck, a roll cage and winch rig from a 2010 Charger SRT8, a mocked-up NOS system with a Charger engine, and Letty’s F9 motorcycle, with QR codes tied to behind-the-scenes content. Part of the track also passes through a transparent enclosed section of the queue, so you watch trains go by while you wait.
The broader trend is worth noting. Universal killed the Supercharged tram simulator and replaced it with real hardware, and Orlando is getting its own version in 2027 with a 170-foot vertical spike over CityWalk. With Fast Forever not reaching theaters until March 2028, the coasters are now carrying the franchise. Car culture’s biggest mainstream ambassador has moved from the multiplex to the midway.
Images Via: Wikipedia
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