Universal Studios Theme Park Visionary Jay Stein Dead at 88
He was the man who took a simple movie studio tour and changed theme parks forever.
It would be hard to find someone more the opposite of Walt Disney than Universal’s Jay Stein. Brash, loud, and aggressive, Stein often seemed more like a mobster than an architect of family fun parks, but after Uncle Walt, Stein was the most important figure in their history.
Jay Stein has passed away at the age of 88.
Jay Stein worked his way up the Universal ranks through the mid-1950s and early 1960s before being put in charge of the studio’s famous Studio Tram Tour in 1967. At that point, the Universal City location was a working film studio that happened to have a bus tour through it that earned the studio a little extra money.
This was all about to change.
Stein saw potential in the Harper Goff-designed Glamour Trams, and a 1968 Screen Actors Guild decision banning visitors from sound stages forced Universal to let him try to spice up the experience. Over the next decade, the trams would narrowly escape a flash flood, a collapsing bridge, a trip through a collapsing iceberg; navigate dryly through a parted Red Sea, dodge a massive rock slide, and somehow preserve all of their passengers’ limbs during an attack of the shark from Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975).
The tour became so popular that Stein ordered it open seven days a week, something that Disneyland didn’t do until fifteen years later.
With the tremendous success of the tour, Jay Stein now had the clout to build an actual theme park around it: a new kind of theme park with rougher edges and wilder thrills than Disney’s. Jay Stein built a park where an audience could “Ride the Movies!”
In 1986, Universal Theme Parks, under Jay Stein’s management, decided to follow Disney to Florida and began designing a similar experience to the one they had in Hollywood. The plans were moving along until Michael Eisner, then Disney CEO, decided to edge their Hollywood competitor out of the Sunshine State by announcing Disney-MGM Studios with its own tram tour through a working studio and special effects encounters. Disney stole Universal’s thunder and had the money to fast-track their copycat park to completion.
Enraged, Jay Stein and Universal studio head Lew Wasserman changed tactics, teamed up with Steven Spielberg, and built Universal Studios Florida as an elaborate park, still movie themed, but with individual cutting-edge attractions. They created something new, with its own flavor, and changed the tenor of the industry forever.
The legacy of the two parks that Jay Stein brought to life is matched only by that of their prime competitor. Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios Beijing, Universal Studios Osaka, and now Epic Universe — these all evolved from Stein’s early theme park successes and his drive to try something new, to be a unique player in the field.
I started off by referencing Jay Stein as a sort of anti-Uncle Walt, but they did have one important thing in common. They both looked for that intangible moment where the right combination of elements brought a surprising and powerful emotional response. Stein searched for it in each attraction and show that his designers worked on. His staff called it a “Jay Bang,” the moment when they could see that their boss had felt something guttural and striking about a project.
Once you got your Jay Bang, you knew it would be a hell of a show.
Rest in Peace, Jay Stein (1938–2025)
Some of the attractions and shows created under Jay Stein’s tenure at Universal:
Studio Tour — Flash Flood
Studio Tour — Parting of the Red Sea
Studio Tour — Rockslide
Studio Tour — Battle of Galactica
Studio Tour — JAWS attack
Studio Tour — King Kong Encounter
Studio Tour — Earthquake: The Big One (Stage 50)
Animal Actors School Stage
The Land of a Thousand Faces
Castle Dracula Live Show
The Adventures of Conan: A Sword & Sorcery Spectacular
Miami Vice Action Spectacular
E.T. Adventure
Backdraft (Hollywood)
Kongfrontation
Back to the Future: The Ride
Jaws (Florida, original)
Earthquake: The Big One
Alfred Hitchcock: The Art of Making Movies
Ghostbusters Spooktacular
The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera
Murder, She Wrote Mystery Theatre
Dynamite Nights Stunt Spectacular (Miami Vice)
Nickelodeon Studios (tour)
Star Trek Adventure
Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show (Hollywood)
Screen Test Theatre (Stage 70 / Emergency! / Airport ‘77)
An American Tail Live Show
The definitive works on Jay Stein’s career are both from Sam Gennawey: Universal Vs. Disney: The Unofficial Guide to American Theme Parks’ Greatest Rivalry and JayBangs — How Jay Stein, MCA, & Universal Invented the Modern Theme Park and Beat Disney at Its Own Game.
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for the Boardwalk Times