In many ways, the tram ride came to define the theme park.

Over the years, countless riders have enjoyed close encounters with a robotic shark depicting the blood-thirsty animal in the movie "Jaws," a terrifying stop outside the Bates Motel from the film classic "Psycho" and a harrowing escape from the clutches of King Kong.

Newer film franchises have joined the tour, including a stroll through a suburban neighborhood wasted by aliens from the 2005 film "War of the Worlds" to a western-themed sideshow from Jordan Peele's 2022 movie "Nope."

The tram tour got its start in 1964, when Universal Studios executives noticed that food sales at the studio commissary shot up after local tour buses were allowed past the studio gates to let fans get a glimpse of the back lot movie sets and props.

The first iteration of the attraction were the pink-and-white Glamour Trams, which carried about 38,200 riders in the first year. Passengers paid $2.50 for a two-and-a-half-hour tour that included stops to see a stunt show and a movie makeup exhibition.

Later renamed the Universal Studios Studio Tour, the trams have since endured real-life fires, labor strife, a series of expansions and at least one fatal accident.

The theme park launched a renovation project in 2022 to begin converting the diesel-hydraulic-powered vehicles to run on electricity to reduce emissions. It is not clear whether the tram that struck the guard rail was a newer electric vehicle or an older version.

This is not the first time an accident happened at the theme park. In 1986, a park employee was run over by the tram during a special Halloween "Fright Nights" show. Paul Rebalde, 20, was stationed on a parked tram filled with mannequins dressed to look like corpses, the Sheriff's Department said at the time.

While in costume, Rebalde was to leap from among the mannequins on the parked tram and frighten people passing on moving trams, but was trapped between the third and fourth sections of one of the four-section trams and was run over and dragged to his death, according to authorities. The Halloween-themed attraction was paused for several years and later rebranded "Halloween Horror Nights."

More recently, a stunt performer was hospitalized after performing in the "Waterworld" show in January 2023. The performer was set on fire shortly before taking a leap off a tower in the show's finale. The "Waterworld: A Live Sea War Spectacular" show is inspired by the 1995 Kevin Costner film and opened months after the movie's debut.

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(Times editor Hugo Martin contributed to this report.)

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