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Parkscope Blog (Parkscope)
Technical Wizards. Creative Masterminds. The Walt Disney Company's ultimate secret weapon. They are the artistic geniuses behind every Disney theme park experience, ride, and attraction. They're called Imagineers, and they might just have one of the best jobs in the world. We'll go inside their wonderful world of insidious elevators (Tower of Terror), realistic robotic figures (Hall of Presidents), and spectacular splashes (Splash Mountain). And, find out how they design and create the amazing rides and mind-boggling attractions that delight, thrill, and terrify the entire world. We've gone straight to the secret vault of Disney's Imagineers and uncovered footage that has never been seen before. Watch now, because we're revealing the unknown secrets behind Disney's biggest and best attractions: going inside the top-secret world of the master magicians who bring them to life. They're Disney's Imagineers!
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updated 7 years ago
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#10 Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen
#9 Coney Island, New York
#8 Nagashima Spaland, Japan
#7 Six Flags Magic Mountain, California
#6 Kennywood, Pennsylvania
#5 Parc Asterisk, France
#4 Blackpool Pleasure Beach, UK
#3 Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Virginia
#2 Cedar Point, Ohio
#1 Universal Orlando, Florida
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Join the Travel Channel for an in-depth look at America's Top Ten Water Parks!
#10 - Noah's Ark, Wisconsin Dells
#9 - Wet n' Wild, Las Vegas
#8 - White Water, Marietta (GA)
#7 - Water World, Hyland Hills (CO)
#6 - Soak City, Buena Park (CA)
#5 - Splish Splash, Long Island (NY)
#4 - Water Country, Williamsburg
#3 - Raging Waters, San Diego
#2 - Blizzard Beach, Walt Disney World
#1 - Schlitterbahn, San Antonio
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Disney had just recently purchased the ABC network and in typical Michael Eisner-era fashion, decided to really shake those assets! As per usual for theme park opening/preview specials, this one not only previews the headliners of the new Animal Kingdom theme park (Kilimanjaro Safaris, Pixar's It's Tough to be a Bug, Countdown to Extinction, the Tree of Life, Festival of the Lion King), we will also be subjected to countless minutes of headliners from Hollywood, from our host Drew Carey to special guests such as Lebo M, Paul Rodriguez, and Paul Rodriguez's teeth. Also, since it's the 90s, it was written into Disney's bylaws that every Disney sponsored-event be 75% Lion King songs. *I've just been handed a note from our sponsors...it seems Michael Eisner is the only true celebrity in this TV selection, according to Michael Eisner. Michael Eisner will be hosting the show, singing Lion King songs, and controlling the camera...End of note*
The Gravity Works Sky Rocket (multiple locations)
Skycoaster (multiple locations)
Ultra Twister (Houston Astroworld)
Alpengeist (Busch Gardens Williamsburg)
PitFall (Kennywood)
Big Shot (Stratosphere Las Vegas)
The Axis (Knoebels)
Superman: The Escape (Six Flags Magic Mountain)
Thunder Rapids (Lake Compounce)
A new breed of ride has emerged. Taking its inspiration from radical sports, the Extreme Ride taps into the fear factor and adrenaline rush of skydiving, bungee jumping, drag racing, and whitewater rafting.
They shoot you straight up, and drop you like a stone. They can twist you in a knot, and turn you inside out. While others rocket through the sky, others race across the ground. They make some scream for mercy, and others beg for more. They test your courage and push you to the limit. They are speed, thrills, and fear, all rolled into one. They are EXTREME RIDES.
Recorded on January 26th, 2018
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Find all Parkscope Podcasts at https://parkscope.simplecast.fm/episodes
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Recorded on January 11th, 2018
Find all Parkscope Podcasts at https://parkscope.simplecast.fm/episodes
NOTE: In the podcast we note providers of interactive dark ride to UAE parks. W were corrected, Alterface provided Ghostbusters at MotionGate, Resident Evil at HubZero, Gears of War at HubZero, Gumball at IMG, and Benno's Great Race at Ferrari World. We apologize for the error.
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Recorded on December 13th, 2017
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The Future Begins here!
Relive the glory days of early-1990s Walt Disney World!
This version includes segments cut from the home VHS and DVD releases including "Sleigh Ride", The Muppet Babies segment, and more.
Thanks for watching, make sure to check out our theme park blog (www.parkscope.net) and subscribe to the channel.
At Paramount's Kings Island, the Nickelodeon characters expanded beyond the then-Hanna-Barbera land and created a new mini-land called Nickelodeon Central. With it came smaller kids rides themed to Nick characters like the Rugrats and Wild Thornberries, a huge water maze called the Green Slime Zone Definery, and this 30-minute stage show.
For you Nick fans, this show looks like something you would expect to see at Nickelodeon Studios at Universal Studios Florida. A takeoff of Family Double Dare and What Would You Do, the idea of course for this show would be "now you are the star!"
The tagline for Mega Mess-A-Mania in the park guidebook was as follows: "Watch as the Gakmeister guides the audience through the History of Mess and, in the process, through some of the messiest, slimiest, sloppiest physical challenges ever seen! Who will triumph? The Red Team or the Blue Team? Prepare yourself for mess hysteria!"
Since the show offered so much audience participation, a videocasette was offered of each unique show to those who were included as a souvenir. Enjoy the the mess hysteria!
Today, there are few people alive with more knowledge of Euclid Beach Park than Chuck Russell. Making his first visit to the park in 1946 at the age of 4, Chuck began a 47-year love affair with Euclid Beach Park.
Through his production of "Euclid Beach I" and this sequel, "Euclid Beach II," Chuck has made it possible for generations of park fans to relive their carefree days of their youth. As you watch Chuck's video mastery, close your eyes and you can almost feel those cool Lake Erie breezes and smell the popcorn balls and hot oil on the tracks of the Thriller. Cleveland, Ohio will never be the same after the departure of one of its finest amusement parks.
By Chuck Russell, a Russell-Kelleher Production.
Included in this video are highlights of all of Disneyland Paris's major attractions, including Pirates of the Caribbean, Phantom Manor, Big Thunder Mountain, Alice's Curious Labyrinth, It's a Small World, Star Tours, and the soon-to-open Space Mountain. Also included are the ancillary activities of the Disneyland Paris Resort, including the hotel accommodations (with the Newport Bay Resort being featured), the Buffalo Bill dinner show at the Hotel Cheyenne, and the offerings at Festival Disney, Disneyland Paris's equivalent to Downtown Disney. You can also see all the popular Disney characters during the afternoon and evening parades, including Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Pluto, Donald Duck, Ariel, Aladdin, Belle, Snow White, and many more. The end of the video features information on how to book your trip to Disneyland Paris, as well as transportation and travel options.
Featured in this video are the following attractions:
ET Adventure
Back to the Future...The Ride
Ghostbusters Spooktacular
The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera
Kongfrontation
Earthquake -- The Big One
Jaws
Hitchcock's 3-D Theater
Murder, She Wrote
Nickelodeon Studios
Animal Actors Show
The Gory, Gruesome, and Grotesque Horror Makeup Show
Fievel's Playland
Lucy: A Tribute
The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
Dynamite Nights Stuntacular
Beetlejuice's Graveyard Revue
The Wild Wild Wild West Stunt Show
And More!
Ride the Movies!
Hear classic songs from animated movies such as Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins, as well as endearing theme park originals like It's a Small World After All and Grim Grinnin' Ghosts.
Some of your childhood memories are packed within 30 glorious minutes of musical Disneyland Fun!
A Day at the Happiest Place on Earth is a very special item for me. This video was released in 1993, when I was 7 years old. Our family visited Disneyland that year, and I was just old enough to ride everything and have the absolute time of my life. On the way out, of course, we bought this video tape, which acted as a “This year at Disneyland” type of video souvenir. But make no mistake, these videos were heaven on earth before the YouTube generation. This was LITERALLY the only place to get ride-through coverage of attractions in video form, save your own personal home movies. So every time we see a ride-through of Pirates or even Snow White, we giddied with excitement! This video particularly stood out because Fantasmic! was not yet a year old, and it was mind-blowing to everyone in all the right ways. Getting home to watch the video, we were astonished and delighted to see the extended video coverage of Fantasmic! at the end of the presentation, which helped us relive our joy and wonder from our trip. I adored this video and practically wore it out. I was surprised to find it in such good condition when I finally digitized it a few weeks ago.
Recorded 11/24/2017
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Recorded on 11/8/2017
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This is the official 1993 Vacation Planning video for Walt Disney World. Included are the major features and amenities of the Walt Disney World Resort, including:
--The Magic Kingdom
--EPCOT Center
--Disney-MGM Studios
--Typhoon Lagoon
--River Country
--Pleasure Island
--Discovery Island
--The Walt Disney World Resorts
--5 Championship Golf Courses
--Transportation options, including monorails
Back in the day, Disney Vacation Planning videos combined all sorts of presentation elements to make you DROP EVERYTHING AND GO TO DISNEY WORLD RIGHT NOW YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!! They showed an opportunity to relax and have a vacation. They showed options for all walks of life, not just the core demographic. And they use phrases like “fun is the only thing Mickey takes seriously.”
My favorite part about these videos (besides the EPCOT Center footage obviously) is the music. They are special, barely-recognizable BGM versions of classics from Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast, Journey Into Imagination, and Spectromagic. You really have to listen to hear them, but they’re there in full glory. And they’re tuned in such a way to make you FEEL like you’re in a more relaxed era, where the best way to spend an afternoon is to sit at the Dixie Landings food court, and the best way to spend an evening is to golf or go ride World of Motion. There’s literally no pressure. No Fastpass+ to make. No advanced dining or character reservation to run to. Just relaxation and fun.
Notice how Disney by this time still wasn’t afraid to be authentic. I mean, just look at how many REAL PEOPLE they interview! And you can tell it’s authentic. These people are not being fed lines. Especially the British guy who rhapsodizes about the Country Bears (saying pithily they’re “a bunch of bears dancing and singing”) or the teenagers who literally can’t remember what they saw in the costume warehouse portion of the Backlot Tour, or the woman who says Space Mountain “hits the ceiling” (whatever that means). And the Cast Member interactions are authentic too. You can tell they’re not actors. And it makes all the difference.
Enjoy this nostalgia romp through the Vacation Kingdom!
Top 10 lists are REALLY fickle. Especially when we’re focusing on the theme park industry, which has a new “best thing” du jour every year and twice on Sundays. This little gem comes to us from the far-off land of the Year 2000. These were the coolest thrill rides (well, at least according to TLC) in the world at the time.
It’s interesting to see which ones would still make a Top 10 list today (I’m thinking probably the top 2, maybe still #4 as well) now that we’ve been privy to the flowing sands of time and a thousand new paint jobs. It’s also interesting to play Joe’s favorite game with specials like this, “guess which rides are still standing!” Or at the very least, which rides are still in their original incarnations. Some rides have been taken down. Some have been moved to other locations, some have new paint jobs, some kind of run backwards or whatever. It’s another worthwhile nostalgic look at the past.
In all seriousness, how would you structure a Top 10 thrill ride special? The structure presented here is not bad: they try to have as much variety as possible, so there’s one stand-up, one water coaster, two inverted (both very different), one flyer, one hyper, one giga, one Woodie, one freefall, and one reverse freefall. Besides being a Rollercoaster Tycoon fan’s wet dream, that’s a good amount of variety for a Top 10 list.
Or, would you stack your favorite rides on it, regardless of what kind? I’m sure there would be more than one giga or Woodie, right? But then you have to push out some quirky rides that might bear mentioning. Would you include themed non-coasters like Spider-Man or Tower of Terror? Certainly they would qualify as thrill rides, yes? And what’s the deal with having Buzzsaw Falls rather than Atlantis? I guess Buzzsaw is more roller coaster-y, but it wasn’t really that interesting of a ride.
This special is also noteworthy for the whacked-out elements it has to try and keep the material entertaining, as if the Top 10 thrill rides on the planet weren’t interesting enough. Among the more bizarro elements are the insane desire to have the feature riders be as random as humanly possible (we go from a team of ACE-ers in the first segment to, I’m not kidding here, the American Superstars female dance troupe. Aesthetics?) as well as the straight-out inexplicable tags and adjectives they give to each ride (Volcano is dubbed the “ultimate hot coaster.” Not sure how big the field is in that category). (Thinking more about the feature riders, I have this hilarious image in my head where all the feature riders come together at the end of the show and perform a finale number, Country Bears style, with Ric Turner doing a chorus line with the American Superstar dance girls). Also, take a shot every time the narrator makes a terrible pun. Here’s the hit parade:
“The Riddler STANDS for Revenge!”
“This water ride delivers a helping of H2-WHOA”
“Volcano is the hottest ride in Virginia”
“If you don’t roll with this ride, you’ll come up snake eyes”
“This is the coaster you’ll love the most-er”
It’s unfortunate that TLC went through a cringing “hip and edgy” phase at the same time that Disney decided to flog that horse. Seldom it works. But next time, how about letting the “ultimate 10 thrill rides” speak for themselves, huh TLC?
The past is covered through the occasional references to Russian ice slides and switchback railways. The present is explored through a whirlwind “best of” tour of the greatest thrill rides on the planet circa late-1990s. To be fair, the top of the lists are pretty bad (I won’t spoil them for you, but woof), but of course they cover all the late-1990s crazes, from inverted coasters to woodies to stand-up to hyper. Each one is given a quick feature and an obligatory post-ride interview with the Ric Turners of the world.
The next segment is focused on the creation of the coasters, and the construction. These features will be familiar with those of you who have been keeping up with our weekly YouTube output.
And then halfway through, the show does a complete 180. Because it’s not about roller coasters anymore. We’re going to the malls and arcades, and to the Vegas strip, and to Universal. Because we’re going to talk about the thrilling simulators which are just the bees knees these days (how many times do you think I can use the words “thrill” or “thrilling” in this article? I think at least a few more times). These, we are reminded, are called “immersive thrill rides.” Cue the Gary Goddard cameo appearance.
But when we get introduced to simulators, of course we have to explore the 1990s Vegas simulators! That’s right, for the first time on a theme park doc, we get an extended sequence featuring In Search of the Obelisk, Race for Atlantis, and Star Trek: The Ride! This has to be my favorite segment of the show, since I love love love me some Vegas simulators. My brother and I spent many a vacation visiting these rides constantly, since we weren’t yet old enough to gamble this was the next best thing. And we actually get to see some behind-the-scenes action! The IMAX camera for In Search of the Obelisk, some real 3D models and a feature for the HUGE 3D glasses for Atlantis (with an interview with Rhythm & Hues!), and a tour of the bridge and the simulator cabins for Star Trek! This makes me happy, since Star Trek: The Ride was one of the most mind-blowing attractions anywhere in the world when it opened in 1998, Disney or otherwise. I always wished they could have moved it to Universal after it closed. It’s that cool. And the Star Trek museum! Absolutely fantastic. The Transporter Room to this day is one of the greatest-ever pre-shows of all time.
And lastly of course, we get the future. And the future is not only Universal Studios but video games. And I’m not just talking about Sega Rally Championship or another one of those you’ve seen a million times. Ladies and gentlemen, I present….Vertical Reality. That’s right. Vertical Reality. At 43:12.
How many of you remember this one? It’s a 25 foot-tall freefall tower in front of a giant shooter game. When you shoot someone else, you go up. When you get shot, you drop. WHERE HAS THIS BEEN?! What happened to this idea besides the predictable number of lawsuits?
We end the show with an exploration of what this show considers the “ultimate thrill ride.” I don’t know what TLC’s obsession is of going out into the real world and saying the “future of thrill rides” is something we’ve been able to do for decades (like bungee-jumping and sky-diving). But anyway, this particular show’s idea of the ultimate thrill ride is Air Combat USA, a really for-real Top Gun simulation where participants actually get to shoot at each other. In real planes. Driven by Air Force pilots. That’s cool. I wonder if it’s still around? *Does a quick Google search* Hey it’s still around! And it’s in FULLERTON??!! How did I not know this when I was living in Anaheim? And it’s only…$1,700! And you save $50 when you book two people! That’s so cool!
And FYI, Alan Schilke (the guy who always interviews with Arrow D) just wants to throw out there at 51:30 that the “ultimate thrill ride” or roller coaster is one that can turn you independently in the car in any position at any time along the track. Direct quote: “if you can change the rider’s position relative to the car, it’s almost like a fourth dimension.” These words are actually said. In 1997. Isn’t that spooky? Nay, isn’t that…thrilling? (ha! I did it!)
This is when TLC really started to get serious about talking roller coasters. Once they got a few coaster notches on their docu-belt, they started really letting it fly (the next two weeks will feature the two coaster specials that really made TLC a must-watch destination for coaster fans).
Much like our Coastermania feature, this special is geared to talk about the craziness of roller coasters. We follow (again) some ACE members around and talk to them about why they like coasters and why we like coasters and why we like to ride them.
The late 90s was right at the tail end of the epic decade-long coaster wars (which never really end, but the 1990s were extra intense). The big blockbuster coasters of the late 90s are featured here, such as Millennium Force (though technically 2000), Goliath (ditto), Superman, and Stealth. This special can be hilariously dated because the narrator claims that amusement parks have to fill the seats because “it’s hard to convince folks to visit when admission prices are starting to climb above $40!”
Then we get into a surprising amount of coaster lingo. We learn about protein spills and code yellows. We learn how similar a launched coaster effect is to an F14 carrier landing, and what happens to the body during a blackout/greyout. We also get a cool side-by-side comparison of a Space Shot and the ejector seat training tower for the Navy.
The narrator then brings in a couple of behavioral psychologists (one of them has an eye patch! Seriously! If I were his patient I would BEG him to start our therapy sessions with “How ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR you feeling? I would lose it!”). They explain how coasters are designed to keep your brain in constant sensory overload, and that these surprises lead to euphoria when the coaster is successfully conquered. They also discuss the different types of screams (there’s 4 of them!) people use while riding coasters and how it relates to real life communication.
We have a few interviews with coaster designers who, in a departure from most coaster specials, actually talk about the tempo of the ride, and the psychological tricks they use to make the ride seem scarier. The anticipation of the first drop. Placing objects (or wooden infrastructures) near the track to make it seem like the ride’s going faster. The head choppers. The point is to straddle the line between terrifying people and getting them to come back. There’s also an interesting piece of rider narrative here that, though most coasters are un-themed, designers still approach coasters as a story, with the rider as protagonist, and every drop and loop a dramatic story element. It makes heroes out of everyone on the ride when the coaster is conquered. And that’s a nice lead-in to the IOA segment.
So I don’t know if they have this anymore, but apparently back in the day IOA had a “coaster stress management” course for coaster phobics. We follow some of their stories as they go through the class. And then the first coaster they go on is Hulk! Jeez, talk about a trial by fire! Some of them are predictably wetting themselves.
We then go into the Arrow Dynamics segment and the “FUTURE OF COASTERS!!!” segment now becoming all too familiar for these shows. We follow Arrow engineers as they help design the very strange Tennessee Tornado looper for Dollywood, then talk about the future of thrill rides which are, say it with me, CyberSpace Mountain, Universal, simulators, blah blah being successors to coasters. “But nothing will ever replace the real WHOOOOSH you get on a coaster!”
We talk about how “in the future, coasters will go 200 mph and will be 800 feet tall and yada yada” until we get to…ARROW-BATIC. It’s here! We finally found it!
Like the ThrustAir 2000 and the flying coaster, the Arrow-Batic was a ubiquitous “coming soon!” coaster through many coaster specials in 1999 and 2000. Arrow-Batic was, to paraphrase, sort of like an earlier version of Intamin ZacSpins like Green Lantern: First Flight. It featured two or three rows of overhanging cars that, because it was so compact, could perform many maneuvers that inverted coasters couldn’t, like diving down 90 degrees! Oh and flips and other stuff. It’s good that one of our specials finally turned up this old chestnut!
But wait, it gets better! Following Arrow-Batic we get even more ridiculous nonsense that never made it off the drawing board. Like Vekoma’s Cliff-Hanger Tilt, which stalled the coaster train on a platform and would tilt it straight down. Or how about Vekoma’s Hammerhead Stall (!), which…is basically an Intamin Impulse coaster except with standard above-the-rail trains and straight vertical towers and…trains shaped like airplanes. You can’t make this stuff up! Anyone ever heard of these? Now you have!
We then get some almost interesting discussions of how ride designers look to lure guests in the parks to the coasters (unfortunately, only the “it’s big and cool and loud” and “we try to place them over walkways” discussions are had, nothing new here) before we get into the “we’ve-seen-this-a-million-times” segment of some community college physics professor teaching his class how roller coaster physics work (you can get an idea how cringe-inducing it is when the phrase “that’s right kids, that’s called inertia!” is actually used here). We then get the standard trip to Magic Mountain to ride Superman and float things in the air. It was cool the first thousand times. (BUT, to be fair, the kid on this trip hilariously throws the orange up instead of letting it float and completely whiffs catching it, sending it on a 400-foot vertical death spiral. Probably the highlight of the show).
The only genuinely interesting segment for me starts at around 41:35, where we meet the minds behind the Duell Corporation, the spatial master planners of over 40 theme parks worldwide. In this all-too-short segment (which actually should have at least been the beginning of the program, if not the longest segment, since this is really what the show should be about), Randy Duell and his associates discuss the thought that goes into the spatial design of the benches, bathrooms, food stops, water fountains, etc. of the parks and why certain designs are the way they are. Duell is famous for the “Duell Loop” formation of park walkways, which encompasses a half mile to a mile of walkways and is usually covered in 6-8 hours, which also happens to be the average time for guests to spend at a park. There is also a short trip to Magic Mountain to show the effect of plazas, curves and bends in the walkways, and the specific placement of trees and foliage. Honestly, WAY more time should have been spent showcasing these folks.
And finally, since this is a park special, at the end that means we get a glimpse into THE FUTURE OF THEME PARKS. And of course, since this is the mid-1990s, the future of theme parks is VR, video games, arcades (RIP DQ), and simulators. What’s nice is we get to see some attractions not seen in other park specials, such as the giant XS New York arcade (a precursor to DQ) and the New York Skyride simulator at the Empire State Building. We can’t wait for the future of fun!
Overall, as I stated before I give this special a pass because it’s obviously one of the earlier examples in the canon, and a lot of the shows following can be accused of somewhat plagiarizing the material and the presentation format. But still, for a show that pretends to be about “the secret world of amusement parks,” it tells us a lot about coaster wars and very little about amusement parks. But still, some good stuff if you know where to look. I feel like this could have been a great multi-part miniseries if given the chance.
In a nutshell, Coastermania an hour of interviews with coaster fans/nuts/crazies, with musical interludes that are an inexplicable combination of Thus Spake Zarathustra from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Vangelis synthesizer soundtrack from Bladerunner, and feeling of cosmos-level expansiveness as we watch a train slow-mo through a cobra roll. There are interviews with priests and psychologists. There are interviews with people who got married on roller coasters. In case you couldn’t tell, there couldn’t possibly be more interviews.
One of the highlights of the show is the emphasis on Blackpool Pleasure Beach in the UK, a Cedar Point-level thrill park on par with the Cedar Fair parks and Magic Mountains of the world and is usually summarily ignored by the American-dominated cable media. This show must have been made in the 1997/1998 time period (perhaps 1996), so the Pepsi Max Big One is the real BIG NEW THING for this special. Another unsung relic from the mid-1990s coaster wars, a hyper on par with the Steel Phantoms and Desperados of the age.
I know we are all obsessed with roller coasters, but this special really gets you thinking why the living heck are we so obsessed with roller coasters? Believe me, you’ll meet plenty of people in this video who have your obsession licked. Well, at least the UK bus tourist group isn’t obsessed with Cedar Point’s Iron Dragon. They “boo” the ride on the bus on the way to CP.
Anyway, I could go on a bit about humanity’s quest for companionship and connect it to the forming of coaster clubs, or talk about the need to be challenged/need for danger/excitement/fear and adrenaline rush and everything else and how roller coasters are a form of safety valve for this desire. But, you know, filling up blog column inches with psychological analysis would somewhat legitimize this video, which is something that simply shouldn’t be allowed to happen.
So I present this video without further comment. Now enjoy Ron Toomer pontificate on the Desperado.
Which brings us now back to Billion Dollar Fun, and my observations. I agree with the show that today’s E-Ticket attractions share a lot in common with Hollywood blockbusters. Neither of them are released in short intervals. Each studio will have only one or two major blockbusters a year, and theme parks (since there is limited space to build and popular E-Tickets bring in far less immediate revenue than popular movies) only release E-Tickets once every 3-5 years (or in Epcot’s case, once every Peter Quill visit).
Both have become billion-dollar industries in themselves, and thus have captured the attention of movie studios. They’re always looking for more ways to make money after all. Especially if you’re, say, Paramount, and don’t currently own any theme parks, you could license popular properties such as Star Trek or Mission: Impossible to Universal for huge fees (plus a percentage of merchandise revenues of course) and have absolutely no downside if the ride flops, since you didn’t spend any money to build the thing to begin with. So this area is a potential cash cow.
I was very impressed with the number of major Hollywood and theme park players TLC was able to put on camera (it seems the earlier the special, the more celebrities were willing to be interviewed). In this special we get not only the ubiquitous Steven Spielberg and Douglas Trumbull Universal interviews, but also Stan Lee, Gary Kurtz (producer of the original Star Wars trilogy), Jan de Bont (director of Speed and Twister), Gary Goddard, James Cameron, and even Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (directors and producers of Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow).
And that’s where film-based attractions, from Mr. Toad to Gringotts, succeed. It’s happening to you. You are Snow White, and in tonight’s episode, you are the star. Trumbull notes that rides are like dreams or out-of-body experiences. They exist in a hyper-reality so beloved by John Hench and other theme park philosophers. Jan de Bont chimes in by saying that audiences “want to be closer to danger.” Rather than simply see the shark attack on the screen, they want the shark to attack them, as long as nobody actually gets hurt, like a good magic trick. Rides based on films work best when a particular visceral action sequence can be identified and connected with the audience’s preconceived notions of the film on which the attraction is based. James Cameron adds that rides “break down the barrier” between the audience and the characters. The audience in T2: 3-D can see the characters jump from the screen onto the stage, and then back. Lines of reality are blurred. And lastly, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the producers of Godzilla say probably the most prescient item about this subject, when they mention that a film-based attraction has to be an extension of a movie, not merely the exploitation of a movie. Disney certainly has a lot to learn in that area nowadays. But it’s certainly correct. I’ll be nice here and point out that the most successful film-based attractions, especially recently (Forbidden Journey, Gringotts, Flight of Passage) are extensions of the movies they represent, with new scenes and actions by the characters. They are not merely there to be a “Harry Potter ride.”
So where is this technology taking us, or, more specifically, where does our celebrities think the technology will take us? Douglas Trumbull thinks that there is the possibility for an audience member to have a one-to-one encounter with Harrison Ford or Harry Potter, where the characters directly interact with you (you know, all these other people think I’m talking to them…). Jan de Bont wants to take the theme park potential beyond the berm and into the movie theater. For Twister, he wished every theater could have moving seats, blowing air, and the smell of the humidity so the audience can better feel what the characters were going through. I guess we still have yet to figure that one out. But things to think about for you future three-dimensional entertainment designers.
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