fast

Universal Studios Hollywood surprise-opened its flashy new high-speed roller coaster Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift on Monday. After much hype and anticipation — and even some unfounded rumors that the coaster would not hit its promised summer launch — Hollywood Drift is at last ready for its close-up.

Billed as one of the most intense roller coasters in Universal Studios’ global ride portfolio, Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift can reach speeds of 72 mph while taking guests through multiple inversions in vehicles that can rotate 360 degrees. It is the fastest coaster that Universal Creative, the division of the company responsible for theme park experiences, has designed.

There is some fine print.

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift has still not announced its official grand opening. The ride is operating in what Universal is calling “technical rehearsals.” Think of this as a soft opening.

What that means: Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is not guaranteed to be running if you visit the park. It’s still, for all intents and purposes, in a testing phase, and can be closed down at any time. If you’re thinking about rushing to the park to be one of its first riders, proceed with caution. Until Universal gives the coaster a proper opening — and expect some sort of gala to go with it — Hollywood Drift may not be fully operational.

Technical rehearsals help ensure that when a ride does receive a formal opening, it can operate, in theory, without any issues or prolonged downtime. My advice: Visiting a theme park is an investment, and if experiencing Hollywood Drift is vital to your day at Universal Studios, it would be safest to wait until the coaster gets its date. At this point, it should be a matter of weeks, if not days.

A view of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift when it was still in testing mode.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

But I certainly understand that theme park FOMO.

Hollywood Drift has long been circled as the most important theme park attraction opening in North America in 2026. The ride has been about 10 years in the making, and has many unique attributes. Not the least of which is its location, as the coaster is built on a steep hill between the park’s upper and lower lots, meaning at times it will go over and under its famed escalators.

“It wouldn’t be your first choice,” says Jon Corfino, Universal Studios Hollywood’s lead creative, of the topography. “But in a way, it makes it more dynamic that we were able to do it.”

Meanwhile, the ride has also raised eyebrows among the community surrounding Universal Studios Hollywood. The park’s neighbors in the adjacent Toluca Lake neighborhood have been none too pleased with some of the rider screams that emanated from the coaster on a day of testing earlier this summer. I talked to several residents as well as Universal and representatives from Los Angeles County for a story published last week, “Fast & Furious’ coaster screams rattle quiet neighborhood: ‘Like someone is getting murdered.” Whether those concerns fade, or how that issue is ultimately resolved, will be but one of the storylines that will follow the attraction.

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift on a test-run. The coaster has been the most anticipated theme park opening of 2026.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Yet most guests will simply be concerned with how it rides. While other coasters can rotate 360 degrees, they don’t do it at this speed and through this many twists, turns and loops. And then there’s the design. Hollywood Drift puts riders in mini cars, each one heavily detailed and with unique engine and breaking noises. Of course, the ride may simply move too fast to pay attention to all that.

“It’s a high level of intensity, absolutely, for sure,” Corfino says.

Stay tuned to Mr. Todd’s Wild Ride for detailed impressions of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift.

This week in SoCal theme parks

A glass slide from the Medusa portrait in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion is going up for auction.

(Matt Roppolo / HA.com)

• Bid on a piece of Disneyland history. I have mixed feelings on auctions involving Disneyland artifacts. And by mixed, I mean mostly negative, as they tend to inflate prices for the fans who care about the items most, and many of these treasures belong in a museum rather than someone’s private collection. But if you’ve ever wanted a mummy prop from Indiana Jones Adventure, or — gasp — an original glass slide from the Haunted Mansion’s changing Medusa portrait, now’s your chance. The Disney Experiences Auction — Rare and Remarkable Finds is part of next month’s all-things Disney fan convention D23, and is hosted by Heritage Auctions. The live auction is Aug. 16, but online bidding is open.
• A Halloween Horror Nights original. Spooky season is now just a few weeks away, and Universal Studios Hollywood’s lineup for Halloween Horror Nights is mostly set. The latest addition to the event, which begins Sept. 3, is an exciting one, as it’s a brand new haunted house not based on any existing film or television properties. The maze, Dead, Deader, Deadest, is set in a funeral home, based on a plot involving a “miracle drug” that can restore the features of the deceased without embalming. Halloween Horror Nights mastermind John Murdy revealed on socials that it connects to past original haunted houses at the park, for those deep into Halloween Horror Nights lore.
• Hope you like Kraft Mac & Cheese, Disney fans. Times Business writer Samantha Masunaga reports on a deal between the Walt Disney Co. and Kraft Heinz. As part of the agreement, more Kraft Heinz products will be available in Walt Disney Co.’s U.S.-based theme parks and on cruise ships, including Heinz, Philadelphia cream cheese and Kraft Mac & Cheese.

Tell us your stories. Ask us your questions.

Have a theme park tale to share? Whether it was a good day or less-than-perfect day, I would love to hear about it. Have a question? A tip? A fun photo from the parks to share? Email me at todd.martens@latimes.com. I may feature your note in an upcoming newsletter.

Ride on,

Todd Martens

Leonard R. Garner Jr. loves roller coasters. And the mostly-retired television director and actor has a place in his heart for Universal Studios Hollywood, the theme park atop the studio where he spent many days behind a camera.

He also adores the tranquility of his home. As a resident of Toluca Lake, the tiny neighborhood nestled below the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Super Nintendo World and other park staples, Garner watched with curiosity as Universal Studios began erecting Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, its new outdoor, high-speed thrill ride. He continued to track the construction over the next three or four years while out on afternoon walks.

At last, when Universal Studios began testing the ride this spring, Garner breathed a sigh of relief. “I was amazed at how quiet it was,” he said. “I could not hear it at all.”

But he wasn’t considering one detail: There were no people on it.

Everything changed, Garner and numerous other Toluca Lake residents said, the summer day when Universal Studios began running the coaster with a full slate of riders. There were screams. They were loud — piercing even double-paned windows. And they were constant.

“Disturbing,” said one resident, Dr. Christopher Zito.

“You think something is happening,” said Patrick Nazari, another resident. “Like someone is getting murdered out there.”

Garner said he stopped in his tracks. “I heard it, and I thought to myself, ‘There are going to be problems with this.’”

Universal’s new Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift coaster can be seen (and heard) from Toluca Lake.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Headaches at least, both for the residents of Toluca Lake and for Universal Studios Hollywood in the days before the ride’s opening this summer. For residents, there’s panic as to what, if any, recourse they may have at this late stage, with one man joking he may forever have to blast loud music all day to mask rider screams. For Universal Studios Hollywood, the complaints, first reported on social media and quickly picked up by media outlets, have added a sudden jolt of negative publicity around what was intended to be the North American ride of 2026.

Longtime Toluca Lake residents have had to get used to its high-powered neighbor making changes over the past few decades. Through the last 10 years in particular, Universal Studios Hollywood has accelerated in growth, evolving from a behind-the-movie-magic showcase to a park that’s increasingly ride-centered, each addition bringing with it new worries of disruptions to the community. None, say residents, have been more tone-altering than this one.

Karen Rogers has lived in Toluca Lake for more than 20 years. “It was a never a roller coaster kind of park,” she said. “When a lot of residents moved in, it was about the history of film, and everything was inside the park. This is different because it’s hanging over a neighborhood. It’s just disappointing.”

Rob Cerny remembers the moment he heard the screams. He had just exited the Metro B Line across the street from the studio.

“Every minute you hear this big scream,” he said. “When I got home, my wife was upset. It’s made our backyard unusable. It’s extremely prominent, the noise. I really don’t think this is going to be tenable.”

Around the issue of noise, Universal Studios Hollywood has been proactive with Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, devoting a website to just how silent and unobtrusive its groundbreaking coaster would be. Multiple noise mitigation efforts were undertaken — sound walls, scream shields and even pea gravel in the coaster’s tracks.

And those were all welcome, say Garner, Cerny and other residents. All are eager to speak out, but they’re also cautious. They’re aware that some of those who have gone to the press have been attacked on social media, with many a non-Toluca Lake resident appearing unsympathetic to their cause, comparing them to not-in-my-backyard complainers.

Toluca Lake residents are fearful Universal’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will be constant noise.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

If you live next to a theme park, goes the primary argument, what did you expect?

“That’s a good point,” said Cerny, who has resided next to Universal Studios for 30 years, around the time the park was opening what is now known as Jurassic World: The Ride, but long before additions such as the “Harry Potter” franchise or Nintendo.

“This was not Magic Mountain,” Cerny continued. “I grew up here. It was a studio tour place. Now it’s a major thrill theme park. That’s a different deal.”

And it’s not, he said, background noise, such as the barely audible soundtrack from Wizarding World. “It’s screams,” he said. “Screaming is a disturbing noise. It’s not a lullaby.”

Universal says it’s listening.

“We appreciate hearing from the community, and that feedback is an important part of the process,” reads a statement from Universal Studios Hollywood. “The coaster is currently in its testing and commissioning phase, which is designed to evaluate the attraction over time and under a variety of operating conditions. As part of that process, we are actively reviewing sound levels to ensure the coaster is operating in compliance.”

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift has been about a decade in the making. It’s a feat of engineering, situated on a hill between the park’s upper and lower lots, extending out toward Lankershim Boulevard. Universal has its own interest in limiting noise from the ride, beyond being a polite neighbor, as it is still a working studio.

The theme park has made outreach into the neighborhood over the years in an attempt to assuage concerns, be it distributing fliers or attending community meetings. And many a Toluca Lake resident enjoys some theme park perks courtesy of Universal, such as free parking, and invites to pre-opening events at the park. Garner still speaks fondly of getting on Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge before the bulk of the public.

“We all went to meetings about it,” Rogers said of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift. “Universal says they want to be a good neighbor. They made a big deal about making it the quietest coaster ever. Well, that’s nice, but you can’t put tape over people’s mouths.”

While residents say the screaming is crushingly loud, there’s no indication as of yet the ride violates any county standards. The path for the coaster was cleared with 2013’s Universal Studios Specific Plan. Presented to and approved by the County of Los Angeles, the documents outline studio, theme park and hotel expansion plans, detailing requirements such as as height, noise and more. While nothing in the papers explicitly previewed any potential ride specifics, such as a 72 mph coaster with 360 degree rotating cars, county officials note there was also nothing in the pitch for Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift that would violate terms of the plan.

Thus, say county officials, there was no requirement for Universal to hold public hearings to be granted approval to build the coaster. That’s left some residents feeling slighted, saying they were unaware of the attraction until ground was moved.

Universal Studio Hollywood’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will reach speeds of 72 mph and take riders on multiple inversions.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

It should be noted, however, that before construction began, Universal Studios did place speakers on its old special effects and stunt buildings to see how noise traveled down the hill. And as per the documents, Universal Studios Hollywood must track noise at six designated monitoring sites outside and around the park. At least three are in the heart of Toluca Lake, situated on or near Valley Springs Lane.

Residents are also given a number to call for complaints such as a noise. Zito has been in touch with park technicians near his home, noting they are sitting with microphones and equipment to capture sonic readings. “I always go up to them and say, ‘You’re not here when it’s really noisy,’” he said. Another resident spoke of downloading a smartphone app to track decibel levels throughout the day, intending to document the noise of the coaster screams and report any violations.

Allowable decibel levels in the neighborhood vary depending on the time of day, as well as the type of noise. Operational sound, such as those from an attraction, are classified differently than “impulsive noise,” such as a gunshot from a film production. A scream, said county officials, is considered operational noise, and decibel levels should hover somewhere around 50 dBa during peak hours.

Most decibel charts consider that moderate noise, somewhere between steady rainfall and a dishwasher. Over the years Universal has been required to make alterations to its attractions, such as replacing some live special effects in its “Waterworld” show with prerecorded digital tracks.

The office of county supervisor Kathryn Barger is aware of the complaints of Toluca Lake residents. Her staff has been facilitating a conversation with people at Universal Studios and has found them to be “very willing partners,” said Helen Chavez Garcia, Barger’s communications director. “They are very interested in finding common ground to address the community concerns, while also meeting their bigger objectives of bringing a new attraction to keep their theme park thriving. They’ve been good partners at the table and this is going to be a continued work in progress.”

With the coaster slated to open in the coming days or weeks, residents aren’t optimistic for change or the sudden construction of more noise buffers. Rogers, for instance, said her and husband have begun shopping for water fountains, wondering if installing them in their backyard will mask the screams. Coaster fan Garner, however, said the only recourse may be to find a way to live with — and enjoy — the ride.

“I’m dying to get on it,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to be something to experience and I’m sure it’s going to be great.”

Then he pauses for a moment. “But I don’t want to have to listen to it all day and into the night.”

SACRAMENTO — California has spent millions of dollars to combat sex trafficking, and yet it can still be found in every city and town, hiding in plain sight.

Whether it’s online, on places such as Figueroa Street in L.A. or Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, or even in the hotel rooms where our World Cup guests stayed, there are thousands of women and girls being sexually exploited in California right now, despite all that money and all the resources it has purchased.

“The reality is that few threats to a woman’s safety are as brutal or as overlooked as sex trafficking,” First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom said Monday, sitting with her husband, the governor, in a tiny second-floor dance studio built for survivors of trafficking.

Siebel Newsom was there to watch Newsom sign an executive order that was driven by her work as an advocate for survivors of trafficking. On its surface, the order may not sound like much and isn’t likely to make the news. It calls for most of the major state agencies to come up with a plan within 60 days to work together to curb trafficking and help survivors.

Hardly an earth-shattering demand. But believe it or not, one of the biggest barriers that our state faces, in this great age of technology and always-on connection, is that there is little collaboration between the folks fighting traffickers.

Yes, we have about 35 task forces statewide working on this issue and sometimes they run joint operations. But more often, those fighting trafficking live in their own silos, doing their own work, and often failing or refusing to share even scant details with other jurisdictions.

The same holds true for the many organizations that work with survivors, most of which have come on the scene only in the last few decades as sex trafficking morphed from a crime in which children were viewed as complicit to one in which we understand that they are victims.

Those organizations often do great work, but they too often do it alone. A survivor — or a girl being trafficked and looking for escape — has no easy way to find someone to help her. It’s largely luck, the right outreach person in the right place at the right time, or a cop who has taken the time and care to know what the resources are.

“We are so fragmented,” Sharmin Bock told the governor. She’s a former prosecutor in Alameda County who tried the first sex trafficking case in the U.S. Now, she’s advising the first partner on how California can do a better job fighting the predators — traffickers and buyers alike — who daily trade cash for the use of a human body, willing or not.

Bock points out that while those fighting against trafficking lack collaboration, the opposite is true of the criminals. Up and down the state, they are organized. A trafficker might pick up his victim in one city, only to transport her to another city to meet buyers. Victims are moved often, and even sold or traded to other traffickers.

Once a victim crosses a jurisdictional line, everything that happened on the other side of it too often gets lost in the nowhere land of bureaucracy and red tape. A move from Los Angeles to Riverside, and the girl might as well be in Taiwan, as Bock puts it.

“We need to stop asking whose case is this, and rather ask how do we solve this case together? How do we solve the problem together?” Bock said. “Collaboration recovers children sooner, links investigation, dismantles trafficking organizations and holds traffickers accountable. A trafficker should never escape accountability because critical information was sitting in another agency’s database.”

So while Newsom’s demand for a 60-day plan might not sound like much, it goes to the heart of what ails the system.

“Traffickers collaborate every day,” Bock said. “Traffickers have built networks to exploit children. We must build stronger networks to protect them.”

Newsom drew a parallel to the plague of retail theft that captivated the state not long ago, and which the state has successfully combated. Though careful to draw the obvious line that stealing a tube of toothpaste is a far cry from sexually exploiting a child, he pointed out similarities — online platforms that turned a blind eye, a lack of coordination between agencies, criminals that knew how to exploit not just victims, but systems.

Now he’s looking for that kind of “momentum,” to solve this most stubborn of abuses.

“For the last few years, I thought I could buy my way out of this,” Newsom said with a shocking bit of honesty, pointing to all that budget money that has been invested. But, he said, he’s clear now that it’s not a money problem. It’s a people problem.

“How is that possible? “ the governor wondered. The executive order, he said, is about saying “enough of just good intentions … we’re not delivering fundamental results.”

A report at the end of 60 days isn’t results. But it’s an acknowledgment that California needs to do better, and a road map to get there.

That’s crucial. Like Siebel Newsom and the governor, I’ve got two teenage daughters and I know just how vulnerable girls are, in the best of circumstances.

With all our resources and good intentions, California can’t continue to let predators win simply because they’re more organized.

Universal Studios Hollywood has long been slated to have the biggest theme park opening of 2026 with its new high-speed coaster, Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift. But with no officially announced opening date, questions have started to intensify and rumors have begun to swirl as to what may be causing the park to go radio silent on what is expected to be its centerpiece attraction.

According to Universal, there is no need for concern.

Yet speculation has zeroed in on the potential noise of the coaster as being a problem for residents of the nearby of Toluca Lake. Rumors were fueled Friday by Fox 11 Los Angeles reporting, via a since-deleted post on social media network X that Hollywood Drift’s opening had been delayed at least until the end of year due to neighborhood complaints. Videos of audible screams of riders on the coaster have gone viral in recent weeks.

A spokesperson for Universal said reports that the coaster’s opening is postponed until the end of 2026 are “not accurate” and disputed the notion that the coaster has been delayed. Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, the spokesperson said, is still on target to open before the end of summer.

“We expect to announce an opening date soon,” read an official statement from the company. “The information online is incorrect.”

The summer season lasts through the end of September. The park begins its popular fall Halloween Horror Nights on Sept. 3. Tickets for the latter are currently on sale, and Universal is promising access to Hollywood Drift for those who purchase its line-skipping express pass, which starts at $259.

Sources familiar with the coaster’s operations have also disputed the notion that noise is a cause for the coaster having not yet opened, instead pointing to more routine mechanical issues that have arisen during its test and adjustment phase. One theme park insider, however, stressed that when Hollywood Drift does open, it will likely be considered a “top-5, or top-10 coaster, in the world.”

The view of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift from Universal Studios Hollywood’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is unique in that it is a 72 mph ride with vehicles created to rotate 360 degrees through multiple inversions. Designed to mimic the feel of stunt cars, its four-seated vehicles will twist and turn through banks in the track in an effort to create a drifting sensation.

Universal’s own website earlier this summer posted June 26 as an opening date, and while that was once the targeted launch, the date was quickly removed from the site. Universal began hosting media for walkthroughs of the coaster in May.

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift has been in the works for than a decade. Built essentially on a cliff between the park’s upper and lower lots, the ride’s existence is a feat of engineering, and Universal has described it as among the most intense attractions in its global park portfolio.

Before land was moved, Universal began a series of tests to track how noise would travel through the surrounding neighborhood. Universal placed speakers on the old special effects and stunt buildings to see how ride screams traveled down the hill.

Ultimately, the tracks would be complemented with multiple sound walls and shields, the latter clear structures designed to block coaster rumbles and audience screams. And because the cars can rotate 360 degrees, Universal can in theory direct rider yells away from the studio below and the neighborhood nearby. The actual track has been filled with pea gravel, designed to minimize noise from any reverberations.

“It’s incredibly quiet,” said Jon Corfino, the lead creative at Universal Studios Hollywood. “We were able to do that by putting materials inside portions of the track to deaden the sound. I’m not sure we would have needed it, but it was important to do the right thing. It’s pea gravel and rocks. It’s quieter than I ever thought it was going to be.”

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift isn’t the only notable coaster slated to open in Southern California this year. Buena Park’s Knott’s Berry Farm initially intended to launch its reimagined Montezooma’s Revenge, now known as Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress, on Monday. Late last night, the park indefinitely delayed its public unveiling, with a spokesperson citing additional fine-tuning that surfaced during its final days of testing.

The delay is not expected to be a prolonged one.

“We appreciate everyone’s understanding and look forward to welcoming media and guests in the coming days when we can showcase the attraction exactly as intended,” read a statement from the park. Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress has been in development for the past four years.

“Imagine the scenario; one of our Havoc hypersonic missiles loaded on an F-15EX Eagle with a mission profile locked-in and ready to go. This new missile is designed for low-cost and high-effect – it’s very difficult for an adversary to track in flight,” explains Chris Spagnoletti, chief executive officer of Ursa Major, as he discusses the company’s expanding hypersonics activities. Part of a company strategy to help overcome critical Department of War munitions shortages, Ursa Major’s Havoc was unveiled in early 2026. With a unique 3D-printed propulsion system, Havoc has been envisioned as a hypersonic missile that aims to re-write the rulebook for these types of weapons.

Ursa Major’s ambitious vision comes at a time of something of a renaissance in U.S. aerospace development and defense manufacturing, with newer firms establishing major positions within a rapidly evolving marketplace. These fresh takes on cutting-edge defense technologies also come as the United States celebrates its 250th birthday and looks back on a history of unlikely up-starts changing the world with new ideas and ways of doing business. It’s in this same spirit that Ursa Major looks to stake its claim.

The firm is evolving from a propulsion provider into a prime contractor and integrator with a keen focus on hypersonics and solving a need for affordable high-speed missiles at scale for the U.S. and its allies. In recent operations, the U.S. has fired a vast number of standoff air-to-ground weapons including more than 850 Tomahawks cruise missiles in the recent war with Iran and hundreds of high-end interceptors, stressing a system that’s been constrained by prolonged replenishment timelines. 

Spagnoletti says he strongly believes that hypersonic missiles are “the most important and pressing issue within critical munitions, with solid rocket motors coming close behind.” The company’s approach to design and production in both of these areas means Spagnoletti sees Ursa Major as being “well positioned to solve” these pressing requirements for the U.S. military.

“We are innovating on manufacturability and on new munition systems,” he continues. “It’s all under the umbrella of scalable munitions. Ursa Major’s founders really focused on developing very complicated propulsion systems, but with a strong propensity on design for manufacturability – essentially developing very high performing rocket engines as low-cost and as reliably as possible.”

Ursa Major has produced hundreds of engines and motors and accumulated more than 135,000 seconds of hotfire test time in under a decade. From its very beginnings the company has innovated through advanced manufacturing techniques that have evolved to leverage AI-enabled 3D-printing, specifically metal printing. “We’re looking at the problem set, and the landscape here is about how we can help the United States catch up as quickly as possible. We don’t just want a “me too” product, because we find there’s a lot of that in this space. This is about finding real answers to the desperate need to replenish our critical munitions fast,” says Spagnoletti.

Solid rocket motors in high demand

Having started out with liquid rocket engines, Ursa Major increasingly saw a burgeoning requirement for solid rocket motors (SRMs) for munitions, which Spagnoletti says have remained tied to traditional manufacturing approaches. Ursa Major says its approach to SRM manufacturing is designed to complement and strengthen the broader defense industrial base by providing flexible manufacturing capacity, common architectures, and modernized production methods.

Ursa Major’s manufacturing approach fundamentally changes how SRMs are designed and built using additive manufacturing, modular tooling, and software-backed production cells. This enables rapid switching between SRM variants without expensive retooling, which reduces production timelines and increases flexibility. 

In addition, Ursa Major’s highly-loaded grain technology increases motor performance and range without increasing motor size. By leveraging common architectures and using a limited set of qualified propellants, it says it can reduce qualification timelines and simplify production across multiple variants. The company’s energetics (solid propellent grain) strategy aims to expand domestic propellant capacity and reduce dependence on fragile supply chains, while using reliable mix, cast, and cure processes.

“Both in the liquid rocket engine side, and in solid rocket motors, the approach from the outset is deeply embedded in our culture; how we design, how we build, how we scale,” says Nick Doucette, co-founder and vice president of strategic operations for Ursa Major. “We came at the manufacturing problems from a completely different direction. We started out building liquid rocket engines, which were – to a degree – supporting the launch industry. That approach allowed us to develop new platforms that use new types of fuels or higher performance rates and lower costs.”

“From the start it helped support a growing launch industry, but very quickly it started to find its way into the hypersonics community as our engines, products, and performance points really started to solve some interesting problems. As we leaned heavily into the hypersonics needs, we realized that the early Ursa Major approach in manufacturing and the types of tech that we’re using are really solving some of the actual problems, and that led to our solid rocket motor programs.”

When building solid rocket motors, the inert part of the manufacturing leverages additive manufacturing heavily – Ursa Major avoids fixed tooling. “For example, after we qualify a motor, say a specific diameter booster, and then the government comes back to us and says that the adversaries have adapted. Now they want slightly different thrust, or maybe get additional range. We’ve already thought about that, our manufacturing line doesn’t need to change. We can use the same manufacturing line and adapt it,” explains Spagnoletti.

“We kept the energetics formulation essentially the same – it’s tried and true and it has been munition-tested for years – but we looked at the problem from the manufacturability of the entirety of the system. From a contracting point of view, this gives the government a lot more flexibility and to be as agile as the adversary. This has been happening on the development side for the past three years, working with several primes and the U.S. Navy. They’re inherently leveraging our ability to turn things fast, and now that’s translating into contracts for us.”

“The Navy really understood our approach to manufacturing,” adds Doucette. “They challenged us to apply our approach with liquid rockets to the solid rocket motor industry. To look at the problems and peel back the onion on solid rocket motors. What we found is that the choke point actually lies the metallic components that make what we call the inert tube section, that then gets packed with the energetics. The energetics are difficult for sure, but what actually chokes the supply chain is the 36-plus months to make the metallic tube structures. To compound the problem, all these production lines of the last 30, 40, 50 years are designed around one platform. Can you imagine an automotive company that has a huge expensive factory but only ever makes one car model! I mean, it would economically go out of business.”

“We have demonstrated that, by looking at the steps to make a solid rocket motor, be it metal printing the end domes or how we do the internal features and make the actual case to how we in some cases load the highly-loaded grain to get more performance, we can do all of it on the same production line for any motor between two inches and 22 inches in diameter. The same equipment, the same people, the same factory footprint. If we want to scale, we just copy paste the factory. If the demand signal changes in a year – which if recent conflicts give us any indication they probably will – that factory can switch over to a different munition. We just stop making one size and tool up for the new size in a matter of months.”

Ursa Major’s primary 93-acre corporate headquarters is located in Berthoud, about an hour north of Denver, Colorado. Here the company has the facilities to test its liquid rocket engines on site and it also designs, develops, and manufactures here. “Our main building is really split in half,” explains Spagnoletti. “On one side we have liquid rocket engine manufacturing and development to power hypersonics, and on the other behind a steel rolling door are the solid rocket motor development and low-rate production as part of our replenishment of critical munitions.”

“At the Colorado site, we’re actually grinding, mixing, casting, curing thousands of pounds of energetics per year for our solid rocket motors, with a lot of automation built-in to not only protect the people but also to make the process more consistent. We have another site for our high volume solid rocket motor production – it needs a lot of space – and we are targeting to manufacture hundreds of thousands of pounds of energetics for use in various shapes and sizes by the middle of 2027.”

The company has expanded with more than 400 acres for SRM production in Galeton, Colorado.

Solid rocket motors of all sizes

Nick Doucette already sees the solid rocket motor work evolving. “We will eventually boost-power our Havoc system with our solid rocket motors. Remember, we got into SRMs due to seeing the critical munition needs, with an open door for manufacturing innovation and a problem we want to help solve. So we’ve built a manufacturing approach and we are now building a multitude of different size classes for different customers.”

The smallest SRM that Ursa Major is actively working on is for the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System, or APKWS, from BAE Systems. “This currently uses a very dated motor and there’s been a lot of need in the industry to essentially innovate on that motor,” explains Doucette. “So we’ve been working extensively with both BAE Systems and the U.S. Air Force on that particular platform, especially with highly loaded grain, and we see a very promising future there.”

Doucette explains that Ursa Major has already made several hundred 2.75-inch motors for testing and development. This will be an extended range version of the motor, packing a significantly larger amount of energetic material into the same size rocket casing.

In 2024, Ursa Major won a contract with the Naval Energetics Systems and Technologies (NEST) program to develop and test a new design to apply its SRM manufacturing processes to the Mk104 dual-thrust rocket motor that powers the U.S. Navy Standard Missile 2 (SM-2), used for surface-to-air defense, and the SM-6 anti-air, land, and sea missile.

Trusted solid rocket motor providers are in limited supply, and the versatility of Ursa Major’s production process opens up a raft of potential opportunities, particularly in the missile defense space. The 10-14-inch range is what Doucette calls a “sweet spot” for interceptor missiles.

Asked about air-to-air missiles, Doucette says: “of course, we’re looking at it. There’s been a lot of conversations around how Ursa Major would approach the problem, but we have a lot going on already, so we’re making sure we don’t try to swallow the whole critical munitions list at once.”

“Most of these larger hypersonic weapons are all boosted,” adds Doucette. “These have a booster in the back end, and we have additionally completed internal work to develop that 22-inch diameter SRM capability. So now we can do anything from 2-inch to 22-inch on that same production line using our common modular manufacturing approach.”

Unleashing Havoc

Ursa Major’s parallel efforts in hypersonics brings the story full circle. Alongside the solid rocket motors business, hypersonic missiles have become a critical part of the company’s efforts, as Nick Doucette picks up the story. 

“There’s two specific products that Ursa Major makes in the hypersonics realm right now. The first is an engine that’s liquid oxygen-powered with rocket fuel. We call it Hadley, and we’ve had that for the better part of a decade. Hadley powers the Stratolaunch hypersonic Talon A testbed, for example. We don’t make the vehicle, we just provide the engine and support services, and Hadley has flown 10 times now.”

“The challenge with Hadley is that it uses cryogenic liquid oxygen, which presents a whole suite of issues from a tactical perspective. A military user can’t sit and wait for the propellant to get cold, like you do with liquid oxygen. We needed to make a similar engine, slightly lower thrust, a little smaller, but essentially in the same packaging, make it storable and most importantly, make it tactical, so that you can drop it from a plane or shoot it vertically from a ship. So we switched from liquid oxygen to hydrogen peroxide.”

“The catch there was that the only way we were able to do that in the right packaging, tightness, and density, was to use 3D-printing. Fast-forward through six years of insane additive development and the Draper engine became a reality. It simply would not have been possible without massive advances in the additive world because of the complexity of what we’re doing geometrically. It’s a really challenging thing to do.”

Draper is a 4,000-pound-thrust engine that is powered by hydrogen peroxide and rocket fuel. Its use of non-cryogenic storable propellants enables long-duration storage, rapid deployment, and operational flexibility in real-world conditions. Its massive potential drove Ursa Major to search for a suitable hypersonic vehicle design to match it with.

“We strongly believed that Draper introduced a differentiating threat vector for any adversary,” Doucette continues. “China has had boost-glide hypersonics for a decade. Other hypersonic designs use a scramjet, which are costly and complex. Draper opened up hypersonic performance, where you have a wide range of trajectories and adaptability as well as other really creative mechanisms that, to be honest, the adversaries don’t have. I mean it’s wildly different, which we see as being a very valuable asset to the national security arsenal.

“The concept of using a liquid rocket engine for a hypersonic weapon is absolutely game changing. Draper can be throttled – unlike solid rocket motors that use a pre-mixed propellant and oxidizer that cannot be controlled once ignited – plus it’s designed to be more safely stored than other liquid rocket engines, providing the tactical storage capabilities that are typical of a solid rocket motor.”

Doucette says that Ursa Major looked to find a partner for the vehicle itself, but concluded that none were suitable, particularly when it came to moving fast. The decision was made to go it alone in-house with an air vehicle. The result is Havoc, which is designed like other hypersonic programs to fly in excess of mach 5, and intended to be launched in a variety of ways; as a single-stage from an aircraft or ground-launched with added booster stages. It’s also designed to run out at circa $3-million apiece. “We entered a rapid campaign in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory and we went from concept to flight-ready in about six months,” Doucette says.

Hypersonic missiles currently in testing with the USAF include the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), which is a boost-glide hypersonic system, with rocket boost and an unpowered glide vehicle inside. The Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile, or HACM, also features rocket boosters, but with an air-breathing scramjet second stage vehicle. Both are limited to operations in the Earth’s atmosphere – whereas Havoc can operate either in or above the atmosphere.

“With regard to propulsion in aerospace defense, there’s three main types; air-breathing, solid powered, and liquid powered,” Doucette explains. “In the world of hypersonics, specifically, we’re talking about fast-moving, somewhat unpredictable, missile systems that are moving at over five times the speed of sound. You have the same propulsion methods, but liquid fuel has never really been introduced.”

“The air-breathing hypersonic weapons are typically scramjets and ramjets, which the U.S. has been developing for a very long time. They’re expensive and exquisite, but very long range.

“China has something in the order of 600-700 operational boost-glide systems in its arsenal right now. This is not new to them. They’ve been practicing, watching, and rehearsing.” Doucette warns that the U.S. fielding a boost-glide or scramjet hypersonic weapon may not really change the dynamic, which is why Ursa Major’s argument for its liquid-powered weapon is so strong.

“The novelty of being liquid-powered is that it carries its own oxidizer and fuel, which means it can go anywhere – in the atmosphere, out of the atmosphere, high, low. A solid rocket can technically do the same thing, but the big difference with the liquid system is that it can turn on and off an infinite number of times. A solid is going where it’s going, but a liquid could be on one trajectory and a split second later turn it off, then instantaneously head on a different trajectory because you can maneuver it from a powered vector perspective. Draper is also fully throttleable down to 10% all the way up to 100%.”

There are currently no competing systems that have the ability to bridge the gap between running in atmosphere and out of atmosphere with such a degree of throttle control. Ursa Major is currently the only company with a hypersonic vehicle and experience in the liquid-powered hypersonic realm. It has twice ground-launched from a rail what it calls “Havoc Block 0” in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory, under its Affordable Rapid Missile Demonstrator (ARMD) program. These demonstrator flights have been designed as multi-domain tests. “The great thing about Havoc is that we can alter the wings, add our solid rocket motor boost system, and it means we can ground launch, VLS [vertical launch system] launch, or air-launch,” Doucette says.

“Havoc provides something the Department of War has not previously seen,” adds Chris Spagnoletti. “Having a mid- and long-range tactical weapon that can deep throttle, turn on and off at will, is agnostic to atmosphere, rapidly change vector, accelerate and de-celerate, skim the sea, fly outside the atmosphere – this really opens up the aperture of what a munition can do. This is very tough for conventional systems to figure out what it’s intending to do.”

Rapidly scaling production

Spagnoletti says Ursa Major’s hypersonic program can scale quickly because of the company’s additive manufacturing and AI-driven manufacturing processes. Draper’s liquid propellant also has additional advantages when it comes to production. “We can drain the fuel, bring them into a facility, and that now-inert system doesn’t need massive keep-out distances,” explains Spagnoletti. “So, say in a 100,000 square foot building, we can produce 500 full-up missile systems per year inert, then fuel them right before we ship them or at the operational location.”

“Some companies are advocating for things like multi-year contracts, and that really matters to them because they’re setting up rigid long-term production lines. We’ve flipped that on its head where if a customer decides in say five years they want this weapon to look different, we have a common modular approach that we can swap things out. Most of the aerospace systems I’ve worked on in my career have long five or 10-year windows. Design, build, qualify – they don’t want to make hardware changes because it’s going to take ages and cost a lot of money to modify and qualify those systems. They’re inherently resistant to change, not because they don’t want to help and adapt, but because the system allows a massive amount of inertia, production lines have rigid tooling and processes, they can’t adapt. What’s different about Ursa Major is, again, that we design for manufacturability and leverage advanced manufacturing.’

Ursa Major Additive Manufacturing

In addition to its Colorado facilities mentioned earlier, Ursa Major also has a plant in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a center of excellence for 3D-printing, they then ship to Berthoud for final assembly and test. A lot of parts and components are manufactured in house, including valves, tanks, pressurization systems, avionics, but it does have dependency on some external suppliers where appropriate. “We have some really strong partnerships where we can’t bring things in-house. We’re such experts in additive manufacturing that we know when not to do it.”

“Importantly, we are not reducing costs by using the cheapest parts. In my 36 years in the aerospace industry, when it comes to building a critical munition, I know the devil’s in the details – it has to work every time and there’s only so cheap you can go before you start to sacrifice reliability. Some of our competitors are trying to achieve a lower cost hypersonic system, which is great, but those are typically salvo weapons where you just launch a lot of them. The Havoc missile system is more of a strategic asset.”

Ursa Major is making significant moves in the U.S. military’s missile stockpile recapitalization effort. It has opened up versatile methods of producing solid rocket motors, and it has demonstrated the functionality of Havoc with the Air Force Research Laboratory, including the concept of operations with the liquid rocket. Spagnoletti points out that the U.S. used to use liquid rockets prior to the advent of solid rocket motors. Use of additive manufacturing and 3D-printing is always in the conversation too, it’s how this company can scale its innovations fast.

The next major milestone it’s driving towards is a follow-on demonstration phase for Havoc – a boosted, full hypersonic flight. “We’re pushing for that in 2027,” says Spagnoletti.

As America marks its 250th year, the dream of a hypersonic missile with a 3D-printed engine that can be delivered in large quantities at an affordable price could materialize into another significant landmark in the story of American defense innovation. At least that’s Ursa Major’s goal, and it appears to look more promising by the day.

Fans are hailing the film as a ‘masterpiece’ and calling it their favourite movie of the year

A gripping thriller based on a popular novel has finally landed on streaming and viewers are calling it a ‘masterpiece’.

The action-packed movie, adapted from a novel by Stephen King, hit cinemas last year and is tailor-made for fans of nail-biting franchises such as Mission: Impossible or Fast and Furious.

Its IMDb synopsis reads: “A man joins a game show in which contestants, allowed to flee anywhere in the world, are pursued by ‘hunters’ hired to kill them.”

The film was helmed by legendary director Edgar Wright, celebrated for cult favourites such as Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and Baby Driver.

The Running Man is the most recent 2025 adaptation of King’s iconic novel, with Glen Powell taking on the lead role of Ben Richards – a part previously made famous by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1987 original.

The supporting cast boasts an impressive line-up including Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones and Martin Herlihy, reports the Express.

The film currently holds a 61% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes alongside a 6.4 rating on IMDb, with legions of fans applauding this fresh take on the dystopian tale.

Now available on Paramount Plus, the streaming platform has teased: “The Running Man is a fun, unhinged deadly game show where contestants must survive 30 days while being hunted by professional assassins, with every move broadcast to a bloodthirsty public and each day bringing a greater cash reward.”

Over on IMDb, one enthusiast awarded the film a perfect 10/10, declaring: “Let me put it this way. I saw it at a matinee this afternoon and now I’m going back with my husband. I’m not a Glen Powell fan but I do live Edgar Wright movies and this one delivers. Don’t go see it if you want to relax!

“I read the Stephen King novel years and years ago and saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie years ago as well, so i can’t tell you how it compares, but this one stands on its own as the best action movie of the year… and maybe the decade…so far.”

A second viewer hailed the film as a ‘masterpiece of literary adaptation’, remarking: “Hands down the best adaptation of King’s work. You can literally watch the movie and turn pages. Powell’s Richards jumps out of the book.

“The ending got the Hollywood treatment, but still accomplished the same goal. I waited 34 years for a faithful version of this, and now we have it. The casting feels like they all read the novel.”

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Another cinema-goer commented: “One of the best movies of the year. After being trailer after trailer at the cinema for what seems the whole year, I was fearing this would be a total flop.

“I need not have worried because this is an action packed, well scripted remake of the original. Everyone is cast perfectly and all performances are great. It keeps you guessing throughout the movie and the twists and turns keep it going. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Well worth a visit.”

One further viewer chipped in: “It was perfect. Edgar Wright nailed I.T. on this expensive movie. The action, everything. A lot better than the 1987. It follows the book. Glen Powell did a great Job on playing the character Ben Richards.”

They even drew comparisons to other beloved action franchises, adding: “This film feels like a big mix of Fast and Furious and Mission: Impossible. I love the chase scenes.”

Over on Rotten Tomatoes, one enthusiastic viewer gushed: “Excellent film! Glen Powell did great with his character, Ben Richards.”

“Fresh! Intensely gripping all the way through. Great acting on all parts,” another remarked, while a further viewer noted: “Loved this. Im 100% certain that Stephen King will be so happy with this version of his brilliant book. Great all round really enjoyable watch.”

Not everybody was won over, however, with one person writing: “A real disappointment, falling flat both as social commentary and as an action movie.”

Another disgruntled viewer complained: “The first one was way better. Loved the satire and Richard Dawson, who was a game show host in real life, as the host in the original. Tired of remakes with all the social commentary without improving the whole movie.”

The Running Man is available to stream on Paramount Plus now.

When the creators behind Universal Studios Hollywood’s soon-to-open “Fast & Furious” coaster discusses the attraction, they speak of it not only as the most grown-up, intense ride at the park, but also as one of the most extreme coasters in Universal‘s global portfolio. That means, in theory, a ride as vaunted as its Florida coasters Jurassic World VelociCoaster and Stardust Racers.

For riders, some of the perception of danger will come from the coaster’s location. Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is set on a hill between the park’s upper and lower lots. It will careen over, under and around guest escalators, and take attendees on a journey that includes multiple inversions and speeds of 72 mph, making it the fastest coaster at any Universal park. A particularly unique facet is the ability for its cars, each meticulously designed after a real vehicle, to rotate 360 degrees.

Plenty of coasters have the capacity to spin, but Universal has been hyping the high-speed “drift” sensation of its cars. Each ride vehicle will have distinct programming along the coaster’s 4,100 feet of track, and the hope is to create the feel of a stunt car just barely maintaining its control.

I like a coaster, but I’m also, I’ll admit, a tad squeamish. Hollywood Drift is expected to open by mid-summer, and at the time of writing, only Universal stakeholders had been on the attraction. Jon Corfino, the park’s lead creative executive, was one of those riders, so as he gave me a tour of the coaster, I pressed him to describe what the experience is like. Here’s what I learned.

So Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is intense. But just how intense is it?

A loop on Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

The late, great theme dark designer Eddie Sotto once devised a simple formula for what makes a good coaster: Fear minus death equals fun. I wanted to ask Corfino just how scared I would be. Answer: Pretty frightened. Probably.

“It’s a high level of intensity, absolutely, for sure,” Corfino says.

And yet Corfino tried to calm my nerves. Hollywood Drift, he explained, is designed to feel relatively slick — polished, if you will.

“I’ve ridden coasters that I would say are high intensity, but they’re very aggressive,” he says. “They’re very rough. But if you look at what we tried to achieve here, it’s that you’re in a [car] vehicle. It’s very smooth. It’s not something that would be not natural for a car, if that makes sense.”

Well, except for the whole going upside down part. Based on Corfino’s assessment, we can expect some white knuckles, as Hollywood Drift will lift riders off their seats at multiple points.

“You definitely feel you’re coming out a couple times, and not the least of it is when you’re upside down,” Corfino says. The coaster will utilize a lap restraint that extends from the top.

“You’ll be holding on,” he says. “When you’re upside down, you’re holding on.”

What about the drops?

Unversal Studios’ Hollywood’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is set to open this summer.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Corfino didn’t pinpoint the exact steepness of the drops on Hollywood Drift, but riders will encounter one immediately after launch. When exiting the show building, designed to look like a warehouse garage, Hollywood Drift will take a sudden dip off a cliff. The sharp drop is one of many.

Riders will encounter, for instance, a so-called “bunny hop,” which is typically a series of small hills that provide airtime. But Hollywood Drift will play with riders’ expectations through its terrain. Those mid-ride hills are “actually pretty darn steep,” Corfino says. And then before the ride ends, riders will go up, over and under Universal Studios’ most recognizable feature (except perhaps Stuart the Minion): its escalators.

“When you go up over the loop, that’s very steep. You’re coming straight down over the stairway and then underneath the stairway,” Corfino says.

How real are the cars?

The minicars of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

The coaster will feature four heavily detailed miniature cars as ride vehicles. These four-seaters — mimicking a Dodge Charger, Mazda RX-7, Nissan Skyline GT-R and Toyota Supra — all come complete with working taillights. And each has its own distinct sound effects, engine and brake noises that match their real cars. Guests will hear brakes each time the vehicle drifts or turns.

The minicars aren’t complete tiny re-creations. The odometers in the coaster cars, for instance, are for show only.

“The truth is I was really laboring,” Corfino says of the accuracy of the coaster cars. “They all have realistic sound effects, and when you hit the bottom, the big launch, I wanted to hear the NOS kick in. But you’re going so fast, at 72 mph, and with the wind, you’re not hearing anything. Quite frankly, your vision is even kind of shaky because you’re going so fast.”

That sort of attention to detail is what separates a Universal or Disney coaster from so much of the industry — even if riders will be clutching their restraints too hard to notice the discrepancies in each car’s engine roar.

I’m eager to get on the ride. I will, however, pretend I didn’t hear Corfino say that thing about “shaky” eyesight.

This week in SoCal theme parks

Dataland is now open in downtown Los Angeles. Theme park fans should give it a look.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

• “Stranger Things” lives at Halloween Horror Nights. Universal Studios Hollywood’s trickle of announcing haunted houses for its Halloween event continues. After unveiling a “Sinners” house earlier this year, Universal has added “Stranger Things” to the roster. “Stranger Things” is no outsider to the festivities, but this house will be themed specifically to the show’s fifth and final season. Expect, of course, some Demogorgons and other nasty creatures. Halloween Horror Nights is set to launch on Sept. 3.
• Theme park fans, pay attention to this new museum. Now open in downtown Los Angeles is Dataland, which was described by this outlet as a “25,000-square-foot immersive, environmental, generative, multisensory AI arts museum.” While there’s much to discuss and debate regarding the center’s use of AI, Dataland’s inaugural exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” is the kind of all-encompassing, wrap-around display theme parks are known for (I’d argue Dataland is, in fact, more indebted to theme parks than the world of fine arts, but that’s another column). No doubt those in the immersive space are paying close attention as to how Dataland is received.
• “Toy Story 5” has arrived, in theaters and at the Disneyland Resort. Fans of the “Toy Story” franchise will want to make their way to Disneyland’s Pixar Place Hotel, where a second-floor exhibit features drawings and sculptures from the new film. And for hotel guests, coming July 2 is the “Disney Poolside Splash Bash,” a pool party with music, trivia and appearances from Jessie, Bo Peep and Woody. If you’ve seen the movie, I encourage you to check out Amy Nicholson’s review of the work. She found, perhaps, that the toys have overstayed their welcome.
• Bag checks and metal detectors arrive at CityWalk. Universal Studio’s theme park adjacent shopping and dining area is home to a couple should-be cultural institutions: the Los Angeles outpost of Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville and one of the finer Imax theaters in the nation. Now getting to either comes with an extra hurdle, as Universal has placed CityWalk within the theme park’s security zone. Prepare for bag checks, metal detectors and extra time if you’re heading to a sold-out screening of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.” The local film community, as reported by The Wrap, is having a fit.

What I’m thinking about

A media image distributed by Adobe and Walt Disney Imagineering is designed to show how AI software can be used in the design process.

(Adobe / Walt Disney Imagineering)

Generating attention this week was an announcement from Adobe and Walt Disney Imagineering, the creative arm of the company responsible for theme park designs, regarding a new AI partnership. AI is a term I generally believe is rightfully viewed with skepticism, especially when it comes to creative work. As a writer, I view utilizing AI to help craft a story as strictly forbidden; journalism, after all, is a storytelling art. But I’m not above tools that can help accelerate tedious aspects of the process, such as using AI to help transcribe an interview.

So places in which Adobe’s Firefly Foundry could, say, transform drawn 2D renderings into potential 3D models seem not entirely troublesome, especially for an industry in which one of the most time-consuming aspects is the build. And yet there were components of the announcement, as well as the press materials distributed with it, that made me cringe. The generation of on-demand, on-brand assets, for instance — one of the promised abilities of the software — is a job for an artist, not a computer.

And Adobe and WDI proved my point. Accompanying the press release was an image of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride vehicles, the Doombuggies, as re-imagined by the program. A perfect, coffin-like design from Bob Gurr was now bedazzled with garish, grotesque imagery that had little similarity with anything in the Haunted Mansion. That the two companies viewed something this amateurish as a prime example of what the software could achieve should raise an eyebrow.

Tell us your stories. Ask us your questions.

Have a theme park tale to share? Whether it was a good day or less-than-perfect day, I would love to hear about it. Have a question? A tip? A fun photo from the parks to share? Email me at todd.martens@latimes.com. I may feature your note in an upcoming newsletter.

Ride on,

Todd Martens

P.S.

Changes are coming to Disneyland’s classic Autopia ride.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Disneyland’s classic Autopia attraction is facing a deadline. The Disneyland Resort has already stated that the gas-powered minicars of Autopia would be on the way out in early 2027. Disneyland officials confirmed just a few weeks ago that the park has an agreement with the California Air Resources Board to retire the current engines next year. No closing or reopening date has been announced, and no details on the new cars have yet been released.

But, thanks to new reporting from environmental reporter (and former Times staffer) Sammy Roth, it’s been revealed that the theme park faces a strict deadline to begin making the switch. In a recent edition of Roth’s Climate Covered Goggles, the writer noted that due to an agreement with the board, Autopia in its current form must shut down by Feb. 1, 2027.

While that doesn’t shed any clarity on when the ride may reopen with refreshed vehicles, it at least provides a timeline as to how long it will likely exist in its current form.

For my 50th birthday, I bought a Toyota Corolla. Wait. Is my midlife crisis car really a Corolla, the best selling and most boring model of all time?

Well, yes. And no.

I have “modded” it, or in layman’s terms, modified the stock components and tuned the engine. This is not your aunt’s Corolla. When I hit the gas, the car pulls hard and the engine buzzes as if it’s powered by a hive of killer bees.

I get thumbs-ups from Mustang drivers and cool head nods from Challenger owners. My favorite is when kids at red lights ask me to rev the engine like I’m F1 driver Lewis Hamilton.

Probably a lot of my drive-by admirers are fans of the movie “The Fast and the Furious,” which was released 25 years ago this month. Fans of modified Japanese import cars, like me, have a love-hate relationship with the $7 billion “Fast and Furious” franchise. On one hand, the movies helped popularize modified Japanese cars. People all over the world fell in love with them and the import car culture they publicized.

On the other hand, the movies left out so, so much of the story.

In Southern California in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, people lived, for the most part, phone-free. The internet was nascent — a repository for flyers and ’zines — and most websites looked like Tetris.

The fashion was baggy everything for guys and short shorts, midriffs and little backpacks for girls. The hair was outrageous. And the cars, especially Japanese import cars, had reached the pinnacle of automotive engineering.

During this era, I was in college at UCLA. I saved up and bought a red 1989 Honda CRX Si. It also had a slick five-speed manual transmission, peppy engine and nimble steering. That car got me to work and through college, and from the mountains of California to the border of Oregon. It probably helped me get girlfriends. It consoled me through breakups. It helped me move to the San Francisco Bay Area for my first grown-up job.

And then, stupidly, I sold it, and all the precious memories it carried.

Now when I hit a loopy freeway interchange at night and my GR Corolla carves through the turns, it’s 1996 and I’m cruising in my CRX, getting pho in San Gabriel or rushing to a flyer party at Naga in Long Beach. That’s the magic of certain cars. A regular car takes you from place to place. A special car takes you back in time.

To be completely honest, I bought the CRX to fit in.

The ’90s import car scene was as diverse as Southern California. But there’s no doubt it started with Asian Americans (specifically Japanese Americans in the South Bay city of Gardena) who were influenced by modified car culture in Japan. Soon, Asian American kids all over the region were taking their inexpensive, underpowered four-cylinder, front-wheel-drive Honda Civics (our parents preferred Japanese reliability over American muscle) and turning them into street rockets.

Not only were they building race cars from scratch, they were also building one of my first experiences with a collective Asian American identity: one that wasn’t overtly about politics and activism, or immigration and assimilation. It was about Asian American joy. It was Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Vietnamese Americans building cool-looking, fast cars. It was kids stereotyped as nerds going to parties where the awful stereotype of Long Duk Dong from “Sixteen Candles” was shredded into rubber and obliterated by exhaust blasts.

At the time, the Asian Americans we saw in the mainstream media were negligible or offensive, especially for Vietnamese Americans like me. But in import car culture, I saw, for maybe the first time, Asian guys and Asian girls in a centered and even glamorous light.

We made our own cars and our own car shows. We raced each other and then got fast (with turbos, superchargers and nitrous oxide) and raced others. And we won. We published our own magazines, built our own automotive businesses and, for good and bad, promoted our own outlaw street racer image and our own beauty standard. In those 1990s clubs and car shows, you could see and feel that Asian Americans weren’t assimilating culture. We were creating it.

“The Fast and the Furious” picked up on that. Based on a 1998 Vibe magazine article about street racing import cars in New York, the film was transplanted to Southern California. But it got so many details glaringly wrong. Its street races looked like street raves on major, four-wide roads packed with pedestrians. The races of our scene were clandestine, underground events in industrial, under-policed areas, where cars faced off two at a time.

But the most egregious and inexcusable Hollywood crime to me is that “The Fast and the Furious” whitewashed Asian Americans, the creators of this world, out of starring roles. The Korean American actor Rick Yune appears in the movie, sure — but he plays the villain, Johnny Tran, a guy who hates Vin Diesel’s Dominic Toretto for a crime deal gone bad (understandable) and for sleeping with his sister (ditto). Of course, in a tradition that goes back to “Madame Butterfly” and “Miss Saigon,” Tran dies at the end, shot dead by the blond-haired, blue-eyed hero, Paul Walker’s Brian O’Conner.

A few months ago, seeking a mechanic to mod my Corolla, I was referred to an auto shop in Garden Grove aka Little Saigon. The guy who sent me asked me, “Do you even know who’s working on your car?”

“No,” I replied.

He told me the name, and I Googled it.

Apparently, back in the ’90s, this Vietnamese American mechanic from Orange County had one of the fastest Honda Civics in the world. A true OG of the import car scene modified my car with his own hands. What an honor, and what a connection to the past.

This import car story ends in a full poetic justice circle. As a pioneer and legend of the real-life import car scene, my mechanic wasn’t the villain. He was the hero. He was the fastest, and his car was the most furious.

That’s the heart of my GR Corolla journey. Asian Americans created import car culture. We all deserve to be the hero of our own story.

Ky-Phong Tran is a Vietnamese American writer from Long Beach. He is a professional artist fellow with the Arts Council for Long Beach. This article was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Square.

Aid cuts and poor sanitation are deepening fears that Ebola is spreading through displacement camps.

Seventeen medics have died from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as the death toll surpasses 200 in an outbreak tearing through a health system already weakened by years of conflict, displacement and chronic underfunding.

A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official confirmed the death toll on Friday and said that 75 healthcare workers had contracted the virus since Congolese authorities declared the outbreak on May 15 .

“The outbreak remains serious” and is “evolving so fast”, said WHO emergency director Marie Roseline Belizaire.

“It is a really high price that the system, the healthcare system, is paying, because we don’t have enough of healthcare workers in DRC,” she told reporters by video link from the outbreak epicentre in eastern DRC.

Health officials believe the rare Bundibugyo strain of Ebola had been spreading for months before the government formally announced the outbreak, leaving doctors, nurses and other medical staff exposed before they knew the virus was present.

Even now, basic protective equipment remains in short supply, with some facilities struggling to secure gloves, masks and other essentials needed to limit infection.

The DRC has one of the world’s lowest ratios of healthcare workers to population, with about 11 health workers for every 10,000 people, according to WHO data. Belizaire said China and Uganda were sending medical teams to support the response.

She added that the WHO was providing psychological support to medics who feared treating patients after seeing colleagues fall sick.

“When they are explaining to you how they live it, how they were infected … [it] can break your heart.”

Outbreak yet to reach its peak

Congolese authorities said on Thursday that the outbreak has killed 232 people and infected 896 others across 31 health zones in the country.

African Union member states have pledged nearly $1bn to respond to the emergency in eastern DRC and neighbouring Uganda, which has confirmed 19 cases and two deaths.

Health officials warn that the outbreak has not yet reached its peak.

The crisis is also raising alarm in camps for displaced people, where overcrowding, poor sanitation and resistance to testing could allow the virus to spread undetected.

At least 30 people have died since early May in Kigonze camp in Bunia in Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak. Camp officials described the death rate as unprecedented.

Authorities could not confirm the causes of death because patients and relatives had refused testing of both the living and the dead until Thursday, according to a camp spokesperson and aid organisation Caritas.

But witnesses and aid sources told Reuters that the dead had symptoms linked to Ebola, including headaches, fever and vomiting.

“People didn’t just die like this before,” camp spokesperson Desire Grodya Bapi told Reuters.

Kigonze is home to more than 15,000 people. The rising number of deaths there has increased fears that Ebola may be spreading among the more than five million displaced people in eastern DRC.

Aid workers say funding cuts have made the emergency more dangerous. Donors, including the United States under President Donald Trump, have reduced support for water, hygiene, and sanitation programmes, which are vital in fighting the disease spread through bodily fluids.

UN data shows funding for toilets and handwashing stations in DRC more than halved between 2024 and 2025, falling to about $38m. This year’s $80m appeal is only 21 percent funded.

DRC has hundreds of displacement camps, some housing up to 100,000 people. Ebola deaths have already been recorded in another camp in Ituri province, which accounts for more than 90 percent of nearly 900 confirmed cases.

When Jon Corfino was among the first to test ride Universal Studios Hollywood’s new high-speed “Fast & Furious”-inspired coaster, it was the culmination of a convoluted decade-plus journey filled with uncertainty. For before any track was laid, before the ride was even associated with “Fast & Furious” or any film franchise, Corfino, the park’s lead creative executive, didn’t know whether a coaster could even exist.

Universal Studios Hollywood is landlocked, constructed around a working film studio, meaning space is at a premium. And then there’s the problem of noise. Coasters, historically, are loud, and film productions necessitate a quiet environment. The theme park is also nestled against a neighborhood full of homes and apartments.

To make it work at all, the coaster would need to stand on a relatively steep hill, winding over, under and around escalators between the park’s upper and lower lot. It extends significantly beyond guest-accessible areas, visible even from nearby Ventura Boulevard. “It wouldn’t be your first choice,” Corfino says of the topography. “But in a way, it makes it more dynamic that we were able to do it.”

He continues, “Everything we do is a bit of invention.”

When discussion on the project first began a decade or so ago, Universal Studios Hollywood was far from a thrills park. While the Wizarding World of Harry Potter was nearing completion and would open in 2016 — a full-scale re-creation of a fictional world that would alter the tenor of the park — the vast majority of Universal rides were designed to place guests inside the world of stories they had already seen on the screen. Or to let them “ride the movies,” as Steven Spielberg once coined. The park’s portfolio was also dotted with stunt and animal shows.

Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift will reach speeds of 72 mph and take riders through multiple inversions.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Universal was once heavily dedicated to pulling the curtain back on how movies were made. A coaster simply didn’t fit the vibe.

“It was never a thought,” Corfino says of his earliest days at Universal back in the 1990s. “It was a different ethos. We were going to take you behind the scenes and show you stuff. But during the epic transformation of bringing in ‘Potter,’ and immersing you in different environments, it became more of a reality.”

And so began the process of looking for a franchise to associate with the coaster, one that would still make sense with Universal’s inside-the-movies mindset. At the time, there already was a “Fast & Furious” segment on Universal’s behind-the-scenes tram tour (now shuttered, a replacement is expected to be unveiled in 2027).

“You go through a lot of ‘what ifs,’” Corfino says. “I can say, one of the earlier ‘what ifs’ was ‘what if this,’ in terms of brand. We already had one [‘Fast & Furious’ attraction] on the backlot, but we didn’t know what else we were going to be doing, so you go through a lot of different ideas. But it was early on that we said, ‘This brand speaks to it.’”

The view of Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift from Universal Studios Hollywood’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Fast & Furious, the street racing mega-franchise that’s celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, works in part because Universal could theme the coaster around cinematic stunts. Before guests board the ride, they will walk through a twisting queue area that will focus on prop cars with installations designed to show how movie magic is brought to life. Guests will be prodded to scan QR codes to further go behind-the-scenes, that is if they’re not distracted watching the coaster, which will launch directly above them and then go on a journey through multiple inversions on the side of a hill.

And then there was another problem: Would it be too loud? Before land was moved, Universal placed speakers on the old special effects and stunt buildings to see how noise traveled down the hill. “We did recordings all over the place and really established a baseline on which to design,” Corfino says.

Ultimately, the tracks would be complemented with multiple sound walls and shields, the latter clear structures designed to block coaster rumbles and audience screams. And because the cars can rotate 360 degrees, Universal can in theory direct rider yells away from the studio below and the neighborhood nearby. What’s more, the actual track has been filled with pea gravel, designed to minimize nose from any reverberations.

“It’s incredibly quiet,” Corfino says. “We were able to do that by putting materials inside portions of the track to deaden the sound. I’m not sure we would have needed it, but it was important to do the right thing. It’s pea gravel and rocks. It’s quieter than I ever thought it was going to be.”

VP of Universal Creative Jon Corfino, who led the creative development of the Fast & Furious coaster, photographed in 2019.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

A 72-mph coaster with 360-degree rotation and multiple loops and inversions that’s relatively muffled? Perhaps. I can only say that as I watched test cars speed by me last week from an upper lot lookout, the soundtrack from the Jurassic World water ride below was certainly louder.

An opening date for the coaster has not yet been set, but it’s soon. The other week the Universal website briefly posted June 26 as a launch date, and while that was once a targeted day, it will not be the coaster’s grand opening, which is now expected after the Fourth of July holiday (the coaster will be open intermittently for tech rehearsals for some time before its official date).

But Corfino is willing to make one promise. “Given the physical realities of putting this on the side of a hill,” he says, “this is the best view in Hollywood.”

That is, if you’ll be brave enough to keep your eyes open to take it all in.

Universal Studios Hollywood first began exploring a high-speed coaster more than a decade ago.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

This week in SoCal theme parks

• Los Angeles loves a parade. Head to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday evening for the Art Parade, which is designed to showcase L.A.’s thriving creative community with a colorful procession down Museum Row. Of particular note: Experiential art firm Meow Wolf, which is in development on its first-ever Los Angeles installation, will be participating. Meow Wolf’s L.A. exhibit, influenced equally be sci-fi and cinema, is on target for a winter opening.
• Disneyland history is Los Angeles history. The Autry Museum of the American West has a new exhibit, “Life, Liberty and Los Angeles.” As part of the show, which highlights how SoCal reflected and contradicted our nation’s founding ideals, guests will come across a 1967 Autopia vehicle from Disneyland. Now perhaps a bit quaint, the ride once exemplified our region’s dreams of an open freeway. Autopia is due next year to be remade with electrical vehicles.
• Plan a tour of Walt Disney’s former Los Feliz home. Disney and his family in the 1930s lived in a storybook mansion. Keepers of the house have announced that it will be open on a few select Saturdays this summer for tours. Though a private residence, tours are led by Disney expert Dusty Sage, who oversees the Micechat website and fan community. I’ve been inside, and can report the house is full of unique design quirks as well as a number of only-in-SoCal historic tales.
• A lively night at Downtown Disney. Head to Downtown Disney on Friday at 5 p.m. for Yardfest 2026, an evening to honor the music and traditions of historically Black colleges and universities. Expect performances from the Texas Southern University Ocean of Soul Marching Band near the area’s live stage, which itself has a unique design paying homage to famed Black architects, as well as specialty food offerings and Mickey Mouse in his drum major outfit.

Ride report

Knott’s Berry Farm has a new show inside the Calico Saloon dubbed “Spirits and Shenanigans.” The production is part of the park’s summer offerings.

(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)

Today’s report is on a show. It’s summer season at Knott’s Berry Farm, which means a new storyline for its popular Ghost Town Alive!, a heavily improvised, actor-led experience that unfolds like a live-action role playing game. New this year is a hootin’ and hollerin’ good time of a show in “Spirits and Shenanigans,” which takes place in the Calico Saloon inside the park’s historic Ghost Town.

At 25-minutes, the production centers on the fictional husband-and-wife bar proprietors, who sing of leaving Illinois to open the spot, as well as its boot-tapping, can-can dancing staffers. Just ever-so-slightly risque with a bit of a patriotic feel, it’s a fast-moving ode to drinking holes and the sense of local community they provide. Expect tap dancing as well as numbers that will turn the entire stage into a drum kit. So if you’re heading to Knott’s this summer, “belly up to the bar,” as they sing, and grab a Boysenberry IPA and one of the few inside seats for this lively, can’t-miss production.

Tell us your stories. Ask us your questions.

Have a theme park tale to share? Whether it was a good day or less-than-perfect day, I would love to hear about it. Have a question? A tip? A fun photo from the parks to share? Email me at todd.martens@latimes.com. I may feature your note in an upcoming newsletter.

Ride on,

Todd Martens

After stops in Dallas-Ft. Worth and the Bay Area, FuelFest, a global car-enthusiast festival, will cruise into the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa on June 13.

Those in attendance will get to watch the rubber hit the road on a drift course, gawk at more than 700 performance-built cars on display and behold some of the vehicles that introduced Japanese tuner cars to the American market in “Fast and Furious.”

“FuelFest is where good people, car-culture people, come to meet one another because they share a common interest, a common passion,” said Cody Walker, founder of FuelFest and the brother of late actor Paul Walker, who was known for his role in Universal Studio’s “Fast and Furious” franchise.

Audience members get to ride in the passenger seat of a professional driver’s drift car.

(FuelFest)

Organizers expect thousands of people to flock to the OC Fair & Event Center for FuelFest, moved not just by the sight and sounds of muscle cars, but by what surprises are in store to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first “Fast and Furious” movie.

“This is a love letter to the city of Los Angeles and Orange County,” “Fast and Furious” actor Tyrese Gibson, a co-sponsor of the event, said on a recent video call about FuelFest.

The event will be something of a homecoming for Walker, Gibson and the “Fast” franchise. Walker, raised in the Sunland-Tujunga area, said the event will include tributes to cars made popular by the seminal Southern California car scene, including a lowrider and exotic car display.

Of course, FuelFest is also a tribute to Paul Walker. To continue his brother’s legacy, Cody Walker quit his job as a paramedic and took charge of Reach Out Worldwide, a disaster-relief charity founded by Paul in 2010, and he created FuelFest as a means to raise money for his brother’s initiatives.

“[Paul] was 40 years old, and we thought he had about 70 to go,” Walker said on a video call, referring to his brother’s fatal car crash in 2013. “He didn’t care about being this significant person; he didn’t see himself that way. The charity is the kind of stuff he cared about.”

As for this edition of FuelFest, Walker and Gibson said they didn’t want to spoil all of the surprises, but here are six things to know before you head to the event.

1. ‘Fast and Furious’ cars will be on display

Some of the Japanese Domestic Market and American muscle staples seen in the “Fast and Furious” films will be at FuelFest.

Gibson might not know specs like RPMs or cylinders, but he said he appreciates the “Fast and Furious” characters’ gorgeous cars, including Dominic Toretto’s 1970 Dodge Charger and Brian O’Connor’s late ’90s Mitsubishi Eclipse. Those cars and other iconic “Fast” wheels will be at the fest.

“It was because of these films that people in the United States became familiar with the tuner culture of Japan, which was super niche up until that point,” Walker said. “We’re talking about 25 years. There’s iconic cars from the franchise, from a bunch of the movies that will be there.”

2. Children age 12 and under get free admission

As children, Cody and Paul Walker were practically programmed to love cars. Their maternal grandfather was a race-car driver and mechanic, and their father was a photographer for Street Chopper Magazine. An event like FuelFest, Walker said, can be formative in fostering a lifelong passion and creative outlet for car-curious children.

Gibson said organizers wanted to make tickets free for children so that entire neighborhoods in the Los Angeles and Orange County areas could have a low-cost day out. Therefore, a general admission ticket for SoCal FuelFest costs $58.24 including tax and fees, but children age 12 and under get in free with a ticketed adult.

“If you’re a single mother and you have three kids all under 12 and you want to bring your friends in the neighborhood with you, whether they’re you’re kids or your neighbors, they’re getting in for free,” Gibson said.

If you want to splurge, there’s a meet-and-greet with Gibson plus VIP Platinum admission for $739.38, including tax and fees.

At FuelFest, a global car-enthusiast festival, more than 700 cars will be on display.

(FuelFest)

3. Performances by DJ Quik, Flesh-n-Bone and more

In addition to DJ sets and live performances, ’90s rap legends DJ Quik and Flesh-n-Bone will host an evening concert on the festival stage.

Walker and Gibson are mum about who else might show up during the concert, but they promised that audiences driving in from L.A. will find the trip down to Orange County worth it.

“There are no limits to the West Coast friends that DJ Quik has,” Gibson said.

During FuelFest, ’90s rap legends DJ Quik and Flesh-n-Bone will host an evening concert on the festival stage.

(FuelFest)

4. A Lucha Libre sideshow

If that’s not enough, there will also be a Lucha Libre show with, according to Walker, a “full-blown” story that has extended across FuelFest locations.

Lucha Libre Voz, an independent professional wrestling company based in California and Arizona, will host its worldwide championship match between Tigre Uno and Septimo Dragon.

“It’s gonna be insane,” Walker said. “Best show of the year.”

5. Ride passenger in a drift car (with a helmet)

After signing a waiver, strapping on a helmet and paying a $30 fee, audience members can ride along in the passenger seat of a professional driver’s drift car. Walker calls it: A “full-blown throttle therapy session.”

Reservations for the drift car ride-along will be handled on-site. Pro tip: Get there early to beat the lines.

6. Reach Out Worldwide’s event goal

A portion of the revenue from the event, mostly from on-site activities such as the drift car ride-along, will go to charitable efforts at Reach Out Worldwide, which has assisted with cleanup, repair and resource efforts for victims of natural disasters, including Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica and the Los Angeles County fires in 2025.

FuelFest has raised about $1 million for Reach Out Worldwide since the charity resumed in 2024, more than a decade after Paul Walker’s death paused the group’s work. Cody Walker predicts the revenue from the SoCal show will help Reach Out Worldwide pass the $1-million milestone.

“I gave up everything to make sure that Reach Out Worldwide could function,” Walker said. “FuelFest started as this simple idea, but now we’ve held over 30 events and we’re in 11 markets. … Paul would be very happy with where this has all gone.”

Arthur B. Laffer, professor, businessman and possible candidate for next year’s Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from California, speeds down the freeway in his telephone-equipped BMW 733i, sipping a can of Diet Pepsi and reflecting on his life in the fast lane.

The impatient energizer of the nationwide tax-cut movement–a tenured professor at age 28, chief economist of the White House Office of Management and Budget at 29–has long prided himself on his ability to keep several balls in the air at once. But he acknowledges that his high-speed juggling act can sometimes get him in trouble.

“When you move very fast, you rustle the fields,” said Laffer, whose choirboy looks belie his 44 years. “You cause a commotion. Without meaning to, you create squalls.”

Controversial Figure

As a result, his life has been marked by controversy as well as achievement. Squalls spawned by Laffer’s frenetic pace have cost him a marriage and two college professorships.

Most recently, the designer of the Laffer Curve–which illustrates his disputed theory that cutting taxes can actually increase government revenues while a tax hike might reduce them–relinquished his post at USC’s School of Business Administration last September after a bitter dispute with the school’s dean. Toward the end, Laffer, who by all accounts is an excellent teacher, and the dean, Jack D. Steele, refused to even speak to each other.

USC blames Laffer’s schedule for the rupture. “With all his outside affairs, he was spreading himself too thin,” said Cornelius J. Pings, USC’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “He just wasn’t meeting his obligations on campus.”

He Disputes View

Steele confirmed that Laffer’s extracurricular activities were a problem, although Laffer disputed that view.

As if to prove that he can run his $2.7-million-a-year economic consulting business and explore the possibility of seeking public office and advise President Reagan and teach, Laffer recently joined the faculty of Pepperdine University’s School of Business and Management. It was a step down in the academic world, though in many ways he and his new employer are well matched.

Pepperdine, founded in 1937 by a conservative auto-parts magnate, shares Laffer’s passion for the free enterprise system and his knack for self-promotion. Indeed, Pepperdine recently ran advertisements picturing “the renowned originator of the Laffer Curve” in the Wall Street Journal and The Times.

Although Laffer’s economic views mesh well with those of the Church of Christ-affiliated school, he is no fan of Pepperdine’s strait-laced social scene. Drinking is banned on campus and chapel attendance is mandatory.

Laffer, on the other hand, maintains an extensive cellar of German and California wines at his Rolling Hills Estates home. And, though raised as a Presbyterian, he doesn’t attend church–and says he won’t start should he decide to run for office.

About the only concession the plump professor has made to the image makers while testing the political waters has been to shed 15 pounds by substituting Very Vanilla Sego, a diet drink (“Yuk–I hate it!”), for his beloved sushi. Currently weighing in at 175, the 5-foot, 7-inch Laffer figures he has another 15 or 20 pounds to go.

Although considering a run for the Senate, Laffer is openly contemptuous of Congress. “If you look at congressmen and senators,” he tells audiences across the state, “you see a group who invariably prefer complex error over simple truth.” It is his biggest applause line. “If you ever saw what those guys actually did for a living, you’d recognize their banality and you’d throw them out of office.”

Six Children

Laffer’s personal life is as packed with activity as his professional one. Besides Traci, the 25-year-old second wife he fondly calls “my Valley girl” (she grew up in Ontario), the Laffer clan includes six children ranging in age from 6 months to 20 years, 15 rabbits, 10 parrots, 4 macaws, 3 tortoises, 2 horses, a Jack Russell terrier and a Norwegian blue fox. Laffer, an amateur biologist who once considered forsaking economics for a career in biology, manages to find time for all of them.

The menagerie used to be bigger. Fern, a pet weasel, drowned in the Laffers’ swimming pool, though her place in family folklore is secure. Laffer cackles when he remembers the time his daughter, Rachel, then 6, tossed the wriggling creature onto First Lady Nancy Reagan’s lap at a 1980 dinner party.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come so close to heart stoppage,” said Laffer, who at the time was trying to sell his supply-side theories to presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. “Everyone held their breath waiting to see how she’d react, but Mrs. Reagan was quite the lady about it.”

Unconventional Ideas

The economist revels in his new and unconventional ideas. He would reward elected officials and the head of the Federal Reserve Board with big bonuses when the economy booms and slash their salaries during recessions. He would wipe out the capital gains tax. He would amend the Constitution to provide for national referenda. And he would give $15,000, tax free, to the top 5% of scorers on the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

“Can you imagine if all of a sudden you could get out of the ghetto by studying instead of by playing basketball?” Laffer asked. “If you play basketball 16 hours a day, you become a great basketball player. If we could get these kids to study 16 hours a day, they’d become great students.”

Such schemes have won Laffer the friendship of “new ideas” Democrat Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado and the grudging admiration of some fellow economists. “Whatever you think of Laffer’s ideas, at least he thinks,” said Lester C. Thurow, a liberal professor of management and economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose views often differ from Laffer’s.

Some say Laffer’s boyish looks and small stature could prove a liability should he decide to seek office. Characteristically, Laffer employs humor to disarm the size issue. In speeches, he invariably mentions flat-tax advocate Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), the former New York Knicks basketball star. Then, in his best Joan Rivers delivery, he adds: “It’s disgusting how tall he is.”

Penchant for One-Liners

Indeed, Laffer’s penchant for jokes and one-liners (sample: “The British pound is so weak that they’ve started calling it the ounce”) have led some to question his seriousness. Samuel Armacost, president and chief executive officer of BankAmerica Corp., recently quipped that a speech by Laffer “isn’t economics–it’s entertainment.” Laffer says he uses humor to make complex subjects palatable.

Although he is a polished speaker, Laffer appears to be reining in his glib, shoot-from-the-hip style. He disavows a 1981 comment embracing “the freedom to smoke pot if we want to.” Laffer acknowledged having made the remark, but said: “I think I was probably showing off at the time–trying to show you don’t have to be a conservative on all issues to favor tax cuts.”

Other Laffer views reflect his coming of age as an undergraduate at Yale and a graduate student at Stanford during the turbulent ‘60s. He staunchly opposes the draft, contending that Vietnam-era draft resisters were the spiritual ancestors of today’s anti-tax movement. “The draft is a specific tax on your body,” Laffer said.

Still, Laffer rarely wanders from economic matters in his speeches and articles. He strongly supports the concept of a flat tax, predicting that some sort of bill equalizing personal-income tax rates will emerge from Congress this year.

‘Enterprise Zones’

Another Laffer idea that has been picked up and championed by the Reagan Administration is the establishment of inner-city “enterprise zones.” Corporations locating factories in such zones would get big tax breaks and relief from minimum-wage and other regulations. The economist argues that setting up such zones would break the cycle of poverty and dependency in urban ghettos.

Despite Laffer’s emphasis on economics, mainstream economists and even conservative allies question the quality of his scholarship. “He really wasn’t interested in the life of a scholar,” said George Stigler, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business, where Laffer held his first teaching job. “Doing painstaking, detailed work wasn’t his game. He went for quick and glamorous results.”

It was a trauma at Chicago, Laffer said, that turned him away from academia and pointed him toward the business and public policy arenas. In 1971, some colleagues at Chicago accused Laffer, who hadn’t yet earned his Ph.D. from Stanford, of misleading a faculty committee that had earlier promoted him to full professor.

Laffer quickly finished up his Stanford doctoral dissertation and got the degree. “It was just a question of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s,” Laffer said, explaining that he never finished in the first place because he got swept away by his other commitments. A university committee headed by Stigler investigated the matter and found Laffer guilty of nothing worse than “carelessness,” Stigler says.

Career at a Standstill

Nonetheless, as Laffer tells it, lingering suspicion from the incident “put a stop to my career.” For the next five years, he didn’t get a raise at Chicago and academic journals shunned his articles. Suddenly, the boy wonder was a pariah. “So what do you do?” Laffer asked, “sit there and commit suicide? No, you find new avenues of expression.”

It was during this period that Laffer in 1974 sketched his now-famous curve for former journalist Jude Wanniski and an aide to President Gerald R. Ford on a cocktail napkin in a Washington restaurant. “He just scribbled it out,” Wanniski recalled, “and I thought it was a useful device for getting the message across.” The message (see chart) was a simple one: that cutting taxes could actually result in an increase in government revenues by creating incentives for people to work harder and save and invest more.

The curve didn’t gain notoriety until 1978, when Wanniski included it in his book “The Way the World Works: How Economies Fail and Succeed.” “At first,” Wanniski said, “Art was embarrassed by the name Laffer Curve–until he started to make a lot of money off it.”

Indeed, Laffer has used his high visibility to build his consulting company, A. B. Laffer Associates, into a multimillion-dollar enterprise with 20 full-time and 15 part-time employees. The firm has about 300 corporate clients who pay between $6,000 and $8,000 a year for Laffer’s economic analyses; special contracts added another $200,000 to the firm’s 1984 revenues, and about 85 speaking engagements by Laffer himself yielded $433,000.

Two Homes

Business profits and Laffer’s Pepperdine salary afford the family a comfortable life style in their antique-filled Rolling Hills Estates home and a 17-acre mountaintop retreat in Rancho Santa Fe. Such wealth is nothing new for Laffer; his late father was chairman of the board of Gould Inc., the big electronics concern, and young Arthur attended private day school in a prosperous Cleveland suburb before going on to Yale.

Despite Laffer’s commercial success, the jury is still out on his celebrated curve. Donald W. Kiefer, an economist with the Congressional Research Service, calls it “an overly simplistic approach which ignores complex economic relationships.” Critics say that the huge budget deficits that followed the Laffer-supported Kemp-Roth bill that reduced personal income taxes by 25% underscore the shortcomings of Laffer’s theory.

Laffer, on the other hand, blames delays in the tax cuts and increased government spending for the deficits. Besides, he argues, this year’s $200-billion deficit is neither “a crisis” nor “a panic situation” given the U.S. economy’s underlying vigor. Like Reagan (and unlike most economists), he believes that economic growth eventually will take care of the problem. Laffer gets to promote his economic views at periodic meetings of the President’s Economic Policy Advisory Board, of which he is a member.

Moved to California

In 1976, with his academic career going nowhere, Laffer gave up on Chicago and moved to USC. In California, he became a key supporter of 1978’s landmark real-estate tax-cutting initiative, Proposition 13. A year later, his first marriage broke up, the victim of Laffer’s four-day-a-week travel schedule. “I came home from a business trip and the kids told me my wife had been gone for three days,” Laffer recalled.

He met Traci Laffer when she was a political science major at USC moonlighting as a secretary to Dean Steele. The pair hit it off when they realized they shared a love for exotic birds. Laffer proposed to her in Paris and they were married in 1982 in an elaborate Beverly Hills wedding attended by 800 friends.

“I got a package deal,” Traci Laffer said, referring to the four children from Laffer’s previous marriage and the large collection of animals.

Laffer still travels frequently, often sleeping on “red eye” flights to the East Coast, doing his business and flying home that day. “He has this idea that you can, in effect, live two lives by cramming as much as possible into your finite number of years on Earth,” said Wanniski, who now operates his own competing economics consulting firm.

None of Laffer’s friends expect him to slow down anytime soon.

The budget airline is offering a range of discounted flights from UK airports

Brits planning a holiday abroad have the next few days to book discounted flights. Budget airline easyJet is currently offering up to 15 per cent off certain trips.

The reduction applies to selected flights between June 1 and September 30. However, the deal only runs until June 3. On the easyJet website, it said: “For the next five days easyJet is offering customers up to 15 per cent off selected flights to and from the UK, giving Brits the opportunity to secure great value fares for their summer holidays. The promo applies to flights between 1 June 2026 and 30 September 2026, covering the peak summer season and school holidays.

“With flights available to a wide range of popular beach and city destinations across easyJet’s unrivalled European network ensuring there are options for all the family.” Going into more detail, it said: “Customers can book discounted fares between 8am on Friday 29 May until 8am on Wednesday 3 June 2026 via easyJet.com or the easyJet mobile app.”

The offer includes flights from airports across the UK, with thousands of seats available at reduced prices with fares starting from £19.99. Examples of some of the routes on offer include:

• London Gatwick to Paris and Reus from £31.99
• London Luton to Lyon from £22.99
• London Southend to Geneva and Pisa from £19.99
• Bristol to Malaga and Palma from £25.99
• Manchester to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bordeaux, Paris, Copenhagen, Geneva, Hamburg, La Rochelle, Nice, Oslo, Prague, Rennes, and Zurich from £31.99
• Liverpool to Amsterdam from £25.99, Barcelona, Split, Malaga, Palma, Naples and Nice from £25.99, Faro from £26.49

On top of this, easyJet holidays is also offering thousands of packages to popular city and beach destinations in Europe and North Africa this summer. “Customers can save £50 per person on beach holidays departing before 31 July 2027 when using code BEACH50, and £20 per person on city breaks departing before 31 August 2026 when using code CITIES20,” easyJet said.

Kevin Doyle, easyJet’s UK country manager, commented: “We know customers are always looking for great value when booking their summer holiday and with thousands of discounted seats available across our network, now is a great time to book a trip and enjoy Europe’s most popular destinations for less.

“To ensure people feel confident to book, we’ve launched our Book with Confidence Promise which guarantees that the cost of flights and package holidays will stay fixed after booking and we will not add fuel surcharges, protecting customers from increased fuel cost.

“We are operating as normal, not making cancellations and are looking forward to taking millions of people on their well-deserved holidays this summer.” For more information, visit teh easyJet website here.

US President Donald Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is still in effect, despite American and Iranian forces trading fire in the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday. Trump threatened pain for Tehran unless it signs a truce quickly.