When I think of the most iconic dark rides, my mind always travels right to Disney. Say the name "Pirates of the Caribbean" or "Haunted Mansion" to a park enthusiast, and you'll see their face light up with excitement. Within moments they start to pine for the day they can board their ship or doom buggies once more. These rides and others, such as Space Mountain, Peter Pan's Flight, and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, all have enjoyed decades of popularity, and Disney still relies heavily on them as drawing cards to their Magic Kingdoms.
These rides all share a foundation built on physical elements. The limitations of technology from the period in which they were created made Imagineers build the whole illusion into physical worlds we could immerse ourselves within. Would you feel the same if you were staring at HD screens when the boat drops into the first scene on "Pirates"? If it was made today, that might probably be a likely scenario.
On the other hand, who's to say that's bad? If it were done convincingly, it could be quite exhilarating. In a lot of ways, these changes from physical thrills to digital ones mirror the movie industry. Both rely on fantastic special effects, and more and more in the film industry we see physical effects getting swapped out for computer graphics. Some of the new rides have beautiful, giant projections that look great and get us totally caught in the moment. Most have very long wait times as well, proving their popularity is quite high.
Technology advances. Regardless of where you stand on that issue, it is an inevitability. With simulators you can create the illusion of the thrill for a fraction of the cost of actually creating it. So we pretend to fly through space, or ride broomsticks with Harry Potter, or soar over California's orange groves. And these rides are fun.
But will they be regarded in the same way as the classics 30 years from now? It's hard to say.
If you were to watch a movie made as recently as 2010 now — something heavily reliant on effects — there are quite a few moments you'd wind up thinking the effects were cheap-looking or dated. The technology advances so fast, it's hard for a new sci fi or action movie to look great as the years pile up. That same effect happens on the rides built today. Go from The Gringotts Bank Coaster to Forbidden Journey, and the difference in screen display is noticeable. The new ride looks new; the old ride doesn't look as clear. Not to say that it looks bad, far from it, but it's noticeable. The new versions of Forbidden Journey built around the world have their displays upgraded to 3D from the original, a ride that's not even six years old. As much as I loved the original Star Tours, by the time it closed I thought it was years overdue. (Not updating the cars you ride in to have a bigger screen was a bust in my opinion, but that's a topic for another article).
Perhaps the answer is to constantly upgrade the rides films, as we've seen with The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man and Star Tours, and we are going to see with Soarin' in Epcot. Keep the displays up to date, clear and fresh. Rides go through refurbishment all the time, even the classics. Throw in an exciting new character like Johnny Depp into a classic ride to keep it somewhat fresh.
My own personal taste always goes back towards the classic rides. I enjoy rides like Toy Story Midway Mania and Star Tours, but if I made a trip to Disney and for some reason The Haunted Mansion was closed, I'd be vocally upset. The animatronic world and physical backdrops add so much depth and realism to the world you're trying to get lost in, and as much as the simulator rides are getting better and better they can't have the same effect. One of the reasons I think the new Harry Potter rides are so popular, besides the obvious Potter-mania, is because they do a great job of blending both physical thrill with simulated. The rumors of the new Kong attraction are similar in description, which has me very excited to get my first ride. I hope Disney has a similar approach with its new Star Wars Land.
The first Haunted Mansion opened at Disneyland in 1969, using some old magician tricks to display the physical animatronics in a surreal, transparent way. Forty-six years later, it's a beloved icon of the parks we all love so much. With all the changes in technology, do you think the simulators that are built today will still be in the parks 46 years from now?
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There needs to be a good mix. The new additions in the haunted mansion is a great example. Combination of animation and video. Also, notice the mermaid tail at Pirates of the Caribbean? That a projection focused on bubbles in the water. Both animation and projection.
What get's older faster or has staying power depends if it's a good dark ride or screen ride not on the medium used.
For what it's worth (and it's worth nothing), I think Spiderman is the best dark ride ever, and I don't even care for super hero stuff. On the second place I have Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey because I actually could believe I was flying. I couldn't see the machine placing me there.
Walt was always on the cutting edge of what was possible and pushed it beyond that. Because of that I said his park would never be finished. I'm sure he would hate how his parks look now. Old relics of the past as museum pieces lined up as dead corpses. I won't say he wouldn't have It's a small world in his parks but he would plussed the hell out of it, making sure you couldn't see the ceilings and maybe added projections on the back to extend the scene's.
That's not at all to say I dislike screen-heavy attractions or simulators, because I don't, but I do hope (going forward) that there will be a balance of ride experiences.
True, but I think almost any new ride or e-ticket ride, screen or no screen has long lines these days. I don't think it's a fair or true measure of what's better based on wait times. It's personal preference, but I venture to guess most people prefer the practical effect route. Look at the brilliance of Radiator Spring Racers. As an IP, I think it's pretty mediocre in the minds of many theme park goers. As a ride, it's arguably one of the absolute best Disney Parks has to offer.
Soarin is a perfect use of protection. You could not realistically simulate flying over yosemite, downtown LA etc. with practical effects.
You could use all screens and sprits of water to replace the entire grizzly river run in DCA but how lame would that be!
Forbidden Journey is my favorite mix of digital projection and practical effects.
I would contest that Soarin' is actually a pretty terrible use of projection because the way the current film is edited you might as well be flying through a dark ride building past static sets like Peter Pan's flight or E.T. There's no story or context to why you jump from scene to scene, which would be a perfect use of screens to have better transitions. The only thing Soarin' is missing from the classic static scene-based dark ride is the ability of guests to look into the next scene or back to the previous scene when they get bored of what's right in front of them.
Forbidden Journey is obviously the best right now because there aren't a lot of examples currently that truly mix practical and screen effects, but I think a lot of people forget that Revenge of the Mummy really was the first major attraction to blend full-size animatronics and screens into a full ride experience. Now it seems that designers are moving away from animatronics (probably because they're expensive to create and maintain along with difficult to make look and be life-like), but perhaps Kong will start pushing it back. It makes sense if you think about it, because why use an animatronic Daniel Radcliffe that might not move or look exactly right and will require thousands of dollars of maintenance every single month when you can pay the real actor a few quid and capture his acting on a film that can be shown thousands of times a day with the only maintenance a few bulb replacements per year and a projector upgrade every 3-5 years.
As a local its the only ride that I like to ride over and over again. Toy Story does not have a plot and is just playing a video game in front of each screen. Haunted Manson is way to bright now (you can see the wire holding the floating head) and the walk into the ride is hooky now with the bubble machine, disappearing reappearing ink, and musical grave stones. The wait was better before when it was just a creepy graveyard instead of a cartoon treasure hunt play zone.
Pirates has been hurt by not allowing the pirates to chase women but still allowing them to sell women like the red head. A human trafficking scene is worse then a chase scene. Let pirates be pirates. Johnny Depp does not fit into the ride at all and makes everything around him look fake because they are not based on actual people. Now there is a ghost in beautiful technicolor and a dead mermaid skelton at the beginning of the ride ok. The ride is like a bad music video now because the same song plays but there is no plot or explanation for all the weird stuff you see.
One benefit of screens is that when they get updated its the whole ride so it never becomes a mismatch of technologies but they can become stale quick. The future I think is more rides like Men in Black where you determine the ending by how well you shoot aliens. When I go on the so called classic dark rides now most people are on their their phones not engaged at all
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