CineSational: A Stirring New Nighttime Show at Universal Studios Florida

You’ve got just about a month left to see CineSational: A Symphonic Spectacular, this summer’s cool new nighttime show at Universal Studios Florida. It runs on “select nights” through Aug. 25, and if you were planning a Universal trip in the next few months, the show’s good enough to warrant going there before it wraps up. And I’m surprised I’m saying that, as somebody who has gone on record as never particularly caring about theme park shows or parades.

Like Universal Studios as a whole, CineSational is a tribute to the power of movies and the nostalgia we feel for them. The 22-minute show invokes some of the most beloved movies ever made through music, water projections, fireworks, and drones. In turn it also calls upon the history of Universal Studios Florida itself; the 34-year-old park is well into its middle age, and has reached the point where the children who grew up with it in the ‘90s are now bringing their own children, who will forge their own memories of the park.

If you’re familiar with the movies that have inspired attractions at Universal Studios Florida over the decades, you can probably guess most of the films that are referenced in CineSational. Spielberg’s trifecta of Jaws, E.T., and Jurassic Park all show up, with iconic scenes projected onto giant water screens, drones recreating Elliott and E.T. flying on their bicycle, and the most memorable motifs from their scores appearing in the show’s medley. The Harry Potter, Shrek, and Despicable Me franchises all play a part, and at one point the show quiets down for Bowser to play “Peaches” from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Even movies that no longer have a regular home in the park make an appearance, like Ghostbusters and a show-closing arrival of the Back to the Future Delorean. The Universal Monsters, the Fast and Furious franchise, How to Train Your Dragon: movie history from the past century is represented, with something for every age group to feel nostalgic about. 

This mash-up of Universal-related properties is brought to life through an impressive and complex tangle of techniques. It uses the park’s central lagoon as a stage, with jets and screens of water serving as a backdrop for footage from the movies, all set to a triumphant and overpowering medley of film scores. Fireworks shoot off above the lagoon in coordination with the music and projections, and amid all that a fleet of drones form famous images in the night sky. It’s an amazing sight when everything is going off at once—an elaborately synced tour de force of show technology.

If you’re ever in Orlando and are startled to see the unforgettable image of Shrek and Fiona’s kiss looming large in the sky above, worry not; it is no portent of doom, but merely part of CineSational.

Universal doesn’t always have nighttime shows; the parks in Orlando often close at sunset in the off-season, and special events at other points in the year require a separate ticket to see any nighttime entertainment. So CineSational is a little bit of a rarity for the park. (There’s also a nighttime show that often runs at the Harry Potter section of Universal’s Islands of Adventure, consisting of fireworks and projections on the castle.) As somebody who still tends to view a theme park nighttime show as an opportunity to find shorter lines at rides, I don’t consider myself an ideal audience for something like CineSational. As somebody who’s squarely in the age bracket that will feel most nostalgic for many of the movies included in the show, though, I can confirm that seeing and hearing these movies that I loved as a kid blown up to such an awe-inspiring degree and recreated in such an ingeniously designed multisensory way struck something with me. CineSational is stirring, even if, like me, you typically find nostalgia to be an easy and overdone way to appeal to an audience.

Nostalgia has always been a major factor in theme parks, of course. Somewhere along the way that shifted from feeling nostalgic for the park itself to feeling nostalgic about specific movies and other intellectual property featured in the park. Universal Studios Florida has always been about movies, though, from its original, long-gone Jaws and King Kong rides, to the new Dreamworks Land that opened in June. CineSational fits perfectly within that tradition, updating it with the state-of-the-art tech of the modern nighttime spectacular. If you’re headed to Universal in the next month, make a point to watch it; if you’re on the fence about when to go, consider making a trip before it closes on Aug. 25.

Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.