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Lost Disney Rides Recreated in CGI
Dan Howland writes "Disney closes the rides, but the CGI geeks love them too much to let them disappear. 'Adventures thru Inner Space,' the Disneyland ride in which you shrunk down to the size of a molecule, ran from 1967 to 1985. Atommobiles.com is a fan site which includes this elaborate CGI recreation.
The Walt Disney World version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride closed in 1967. Virtual Toad is in the process of re-building it." I was born after 1967, and I've ridden MTWR many times, so perhaps they're talking about an older version.
If they can do a good enough job recreating the rides, their Whuffie's going through the roof!
Sadly, I'm so out of touch -- it's been so long since I've been to Disneyland, I never realized they shut this ride down (Inner Space). This and Space Mountain were my absolute favorite rides as a kid.
I'm sad to find out (very belatedly) that it's gone, but happy to see that someone is doing something to preserve it. Even looking at those images of the huge ice flakes brings back a lot of very old memories.
to the best "make-out" ride ever.
At least to this hormone driven teen in the late seventies (before the geek gene fully asserted itself). Ahhh memories.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Most of the people getting killed on amusement park rides have only themselves to blame. The idiots dont follow the rules, end up getting killed, and its the park owners like Disney who get blamed for it by the press and idiotic family members.
I went to Disneyworld 20 years ago and was inside the big golf ball- Epcot's "Spaceship Earth"- when there was a mechanical failure of some sort and the cars stopped moving. They sent someone to run down the track and tell everyone to stay in their seats. We were stuck there for almost an hour. When it happened we were passing by the Renaissance scene. There was an animatronic setup where a bunch of Renaissance Italians were gathered on some steps, and one of them was teaching the others from a book. The other was nodding like if he was listening- nod, nod, shift down, nod, nod, shift up, repeat. If you see less than one cycle of that, it looks convincing, but after a few hundred cycles it starts to look fake, like the guy isn't really listening or learning anything.
I felt bad for the people a bunch of cars behind us. They were trapped in the Dark Ages. But the real victims must have been whoever was passing by the animatronics of the 19th century telegraphist- with the telegraph rattling up and down and the guy spelling out letters of nonsense. They must have lost their minds.
This reminds me of a website called Virtual Midway, which features some defunct attractions at Cedar Point. No fancy CGI but still fascinating (to me, at least).
on.
That feeling is actually in your inner ear, and it can be simulated by stimulating it with lowlevel electrical shocks. I remember a couple companies were working on bringing this kind of device to the mass market, but it never materialized, probably for legal reasons.
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Power to the Peaceful
The Tomorrowland Flying Saucers were the ultimate futuristic version of the old bumper cars...individual pods that actually hovered above the ground, supported by bursts of air blasted from below. .
Each saucer would carry one big guest (or two little ones), and they could steer their saucer just by leaning their body in the direction they wanted to go. The saucers would become the bumper cars of tomorrow, and your mission was to plow into as many other saucers as you could before your time was up.
The saucers debuted on August 6, 1961. Their 16,000 square foot arena was divided into two sections, each with 32 saucers. .
Beneath the floor of the arena were four 100-horse power motors. Together, the motors blew more than 300,000 cubic feet of air per minute up towards the bottom of the floor. A small amount of air escaped through little openings between the thousands of circular plates that made up the floor itself. If a saucer was over one of the plates, the saucer's hollow bottom deflected the air back down to the plate. The force of this downward air flow popped the plate open fully, allowing a massive amount of air to pass through. It was the force of this air that caused the saucer to rise. When the saucer moved away, the plate snapped shut.
From the first day, the Flying Saucers were plagued with problems. If a guest was too heavy, there wasn't enough air in the world to lift it up. And if a guest was too light, it was difficut to tip the saucer in any one direction, so it simply stayed in one spot, bouncing up and down. And the constantly colliding saucers did little to help the condition of the guest's spinal cords. Worst of all, if two sauces collided just right, the speeding saucer would wedge under the saucer it rear-ended (if, indeed, a circle can have a rear end) sometimes flipping it upside-down. . . The attraction finally closed for good on August 5, 1996...
Recently, it seems, that the park has gotten better at security and designing rides to keep the guests safe, even the stupid ones. OTOH, people are dying because of faulty maintenance.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I took a quick look at both sites (only one of which worked) and didn't see the obvious: where are they getting data? They need a plan showing ride track, figures, effects and show lighting. They may also need speed profile data - I believe the Toad vehicles are dual-speed, actuated by a cam that follows a hump in the floor. Are they simply going to fudge the geometry based on recollections? Guests do not get a good feel for how a ride is built by riding it. And yet, I think even the unremembered details contribute to the overall impression.
Audio tracks are also an issue. For the simulation to feel right, they have to be localized to the location of the speaker. A tape recording made in the ride usually sounds like muck, and would probably violate copyright as well.
In the absence of a convincing plan, I guess that this will be an impressionistic reconstruction that misses a lot of the detail. Really, there is no way, either technically or legally, to do a good job without the cooperation of Disney.