As much as I love Epic Universe attraction rumors, some of my favorite content is of the fan variety as parkgoers enjoy their time on all the rides and attractions at the still-new theme park. One of the best is getting to meet Toothless in How To Train Your Dragon: Isle Of Berk, and feeling the very alive movement of the wondrous dragon, his pebbly skin and his interactions with his best pal Hiccup. Honestly, though, watching this viral video of Toothless “dead” and having to be covered up is almost the opposite experience.
An amused visitor recorded what happened on the day he waited in line for the Toothless and Hiccup Meet and Greet. Unfortunately, the famed dragon went down and employees swiftly hid the evidence. On Instagram, the moment was paired with Sarah McLachlan’s “Arms of an Angel,” aka the song that used to be used in the early aughts in those heart-wrenching animal cruelty ads for the ASPCA.
Kudos to the team at Universal for seemingly getting this process down to a science, however. I’ve never seen Toothless malfunction in real time before, and like rides and other attractions going down, it’s always disheartening to be in a line and waiting for a long while only to realize you’re never making it to the front. I also would not want to be the adult in the conversation for any kid who wondered what was going on under these circumstances. In the video, Toothless just looks… dead.
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The parkgoer took the experience with pretty good humor, however, though it was maybe a wee bit mean-spirited to include the McLachlan track. (Also funny. Two things can be true at once.) We know, for example, even the singer can’t get through those heartbreaking ads, and they have emotionally impacted most of us at one point or another. So it was both apropos and a bit “omg” to include it in this situation.
Meanwhile, for me, the moment is almost as emotional as the first movie’s ending, which as we all know, sets the viewer up to think a major character has died. He’s actually just been out of it for an inordinate amount of time, has lost his foot and needs a prosthetic… just like his dragon. Like the first movie, we know Toothless also rose from the dead and has lived to see another epic day at Universal Orlando Resort. That’s the magical Lazarus effect of theme parks, baby.