• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

[2024] Europa-Park General Discussion

I’m struggling to understand this one. Isn’t the point of VR that it synchronises to the forces experienced on a ride system? With a trackless dark ride, surely the forces are going to be pretty negligible for any VR to sync with.
 
This is all just conjecture but I think I understand it from at least one perspective and unfortunately it seems like more of a business decision than the future of themed entertainment.

About five years ago Disney announced--but never built--a "black box" attraction that would effectively be a trackless ride in an empty building, with an emphasis on screens and projections such that the entire thing could be changed from one theme or intellectual property to another very quickly and, more importantly, on the cheap.

The comically-named #FLOWRYDE seems like the next iteration of that concept in the sense that there is quite literally nothing physical to it other than a big empty room and a load/unload station. It could change themes overnight, or even halfway through a park day, since nothing physical would need to be altered and you'd only need to switch the ride sequence and the audio-visual component on the goggles. If you already had this ride system installed in your park and suddenly needed to capitalise on a recent hit movie you could probably do so in a matter of months rather than years.

All that said, as great of a business decision as it seems, something that could be replicated at home with a €300 VR headset and a rolling office chair does not seem like it would make an especially memorable or even all that fun ride. The Ratatouille ride is already "trackless vehicle plus screens" combined with a handful of physical sets and I find it boring as sin. To remove all of the physicality entirely and replace it with the generally subpar CGI that is normally found in these types of rides seems like a step in the wrong direction if you're a dark ride fan and not looking at this from a spreadsheet point of view.
 
That makes sense and is fascinating to consider.

Another point against it though is that it's still not cheap or easy to create a new experience, just cheaper. Look at Star Tours, that was meant to have the same gimmick, but it ran for decades without the addition of a new adventure, and even when it finally did they still only update it very infrequently. Credit to Mack they do add new VR experiences every few years. But it does add the logistical question; if like Alpen Express you could chose your own adventure would their be a risk of cars colliding unless they stuck to a mostly fixed path anyway? This prohibits them changing modes through the day without briefly closing the ride.
 
Regarding new Star Tours scenes, I would chalk that up to the dysfunction of the modern Disney company and specifically the absolute dearth of new Star Wars shows or movies that have been worth adding. When they have added new scenes it happened in multiple parks simultaneously and without any downtime to any of the rides, which is mainly the point I'm making: new "content" can be added entirely without downtime or physical construction, which are generally very costly in terms of both time and money.

I think another thing this sort of ride allows is for park operators to make smaller bets. A physical ride's lifespan is normally two decades, give or take a few years. With this you could have the physical ride in place and then change the content annually, for example every summer when a new Pixar film comes out you could already have the synergistic ride up and running since nothing physical needs to be changed. If you put out a movie about an ice princess that becomes more popular than you could have ever imagined then this ride system would let you get that movie into the parks in a matter of months, potentially, rather than years.

All that said, I actually don't see this at Europa Park, because I don't think it will be that great of an experience. Again this is all just guesswork but this seems like something Mack wants to sell to other parks where this kind of cheap and modular experience makes financial sense. I could maybe see it as a YULLBE-style upcharge but not as a full-on addition to EP.
 
It's Roland's 75th birthday this month, and the park is inviting everyone to send him a Happy Birthday video:

 
Kind of retreading old ground, but I went for the first time last weekend and was amazed at their operations and capacities of the rides. Except for Arthur briefly stopping while we were in the queue, pretty much every main queue was constantly moving. I wonder what ride has the largest PPH? Perhaps one of the omnimover rides.

For the rollercoasters they were the quickest operations I've experienced anywhere.
 
hogofwar said:
Kind of retreading old ground, but I went for the first time last weekend and was amazed at their operations and capacities of the rides. Except for Arthur briefly stopping while we were in the queue, pretty much every main queue was constantly moving. I wonder what ride has the largest PPH? Perhaps one of the omnimover rides.

For the rollercoasters they were the quickest operations I've experienced anywhere.
Click to expand...

So excited to visit this park one day because of comments like this!

It’s amazing what a difference to your experience and perception good operations and queuing make.
 
Ride ops are the key reason why I consider EP to be the best park I've ever visited. When you're spending most of the time in queues then parks need to make the effort to make that time as pleasant as possible - EP ops mean on most rides you always feel like you're making progress, which is the easiest way of doing that. On paper, the Mir queue is dreadful but because it moves they get away with it, conversely you could theme a queue line as much as you like but if it doesn't move for 10 minutes at a time it's not going to be a fun experience
 
hogofwar said:
Kind of retreading old ground, but I went for the first time last weekend and was amazed at their operations and capacities of the rides. Except for Arthur briefly stopping while we were in the queue, pretty much every main queue was constantly moving. I wonder what ride has the largest PPH? Perhaps one of the omnimover rides.

For the rollercoasters they were the quickest operations I've experienced anywhere.
Click to expand...
The PPH numbers can be found on the Europapark website when you visit the page for the individual attraction; there is a tab "technical data" or so. From memory I would say, Castello Medici may be the biggest, probably over 2000, followed by Madame Freudenreich, Piraten in Bavaria and Silver Star which has the highest capacity of the roller coasters, with Voltron a close second.
 
John said:
On paper, the Mir queue is dreadful but because it moves they get away with it, conversely you could theme a queue line as much as you like but if it doesn't move for 10 minutes at a time it's not going to be a fun experience
Click to expand...

Nah, Mir's external queue is still arguably a form of torture.
 
All we know so far is the movie and new ride below foodloop, but sure they’ll have plenty planned.

Like those above I think we’ll definitely get a new parade and new shows. Possibly almost all shows will get a refresh, maybe an ice show going through the years of EP.

Knowing EP some random new dark ride will just appear somewhere on park.
 
Looks like it is in the Traumatising Dome! Nice idea and another little thing for guests to do during their day.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top