Virtual Reality and the Themed Entertainment Industry
If you’ve ever had the chance to tour our Lab, chances are you were able to experience Epic Roller Coasters, a virtual reality roller coaster experience created by B4T Games. Virtual reality now provides the opportunity to experience the thrills and excitement of theme park attractions from the comfort of your own home. With the ongoing rise in access to immersive experiences through virtual reality, the themed entertainment industry is tasked now more than ever to find ways to leverage emerging technologies in the physical theme park setting. Since people can now access immersive experiences at home, themed entertainment organizations have to constantly give guests new reasons why they should visit in person.
This challenge is not a new one, however; the themed entertainment industry has explored the use of virtual reality in a physical theme park setting for decades. Below are several notable examples of themed entertainment organizations using virtual reality in theme parks:
- DisneyQuest — An interactive theme park experience that featured two VR attractions. Two locations were opened in Orlando and Chicago in 1998 and 1999, respectively. The Orlando location closed permanently in 2017, and the Chicago location closed permanently in 2001.
- Galaxie Express — The first physical rollercoaster to utilize virtual reality technology. On this ride, built-in monitors lowered down over a rider’s face after they had boarded the rollercoaster. It opened in Germany in 2003 and closed permanently nine months later.
- Alpenexpress Enzian — The first theme park to include VR headsets that guests wore during an attraction. For an extra fee, guests could choose to experience this thrill ride in virtual reality by wearing a Samsung Gear VR headset that showed scenes corresponding to the actual twists and turns of the physical rollercoaster as they rode. This VR overlay was added in 2015 and can still be experienced today at Europa-Park in Germany.
- Six Flags VR Overlays — Nine existing roller coasters at several Six Flags parks around the world were revamped with VR overlays in 2016. By 2018, four of these rollercoasters had reverted to traditional roller coasters without any VR component.
- Kraken Unleashed — A revamped version of the Kraken, a traditional rollercoaster at SeaWorld Orlando that opened in 2000. This VR overlay was added in 2017 and removed six months later.
- Battle for Eire — A simulator attraction at Busch Gardens Williamsburg created to be experienced in VR. It opened in 2018 and closed permanently during the COVID pandemic.
- The Great LEGO Race — A physical rollercoaster that was revamped in 2018 to be experienced visually in a VR headset as a race through a world made of LEGOs. It can still be ridden today at LEGOLAND Florida, LEGOLAND Malaysia, and LEGOLAND Deutschland.
The recurring pattern among these attractions is that most are no longer open. Common guest complaints about these experiences (especially hybrid VR rollercoaster experiences) were motion sickness, longer wait times as each guest was equipped with a headset, and sanitary concerns about the reuse of these headsets.
This doesn’t spell doom for the future of immersive technology attractions, however. At Universal Studios, the recently-opened Super Nintendo World in California and Japan features Mario Kart: Bowser’s Challenge, an AR Mario Kart ride where guests race through popular Mario Kart tracks in a physical ride vehicle as they see other Mario Kart characters through an augmented reality headset. Looking to remove the need for any type of headset on rides, Disney recently filed a patent for the use of a 3D projection system that could theoretically be used and seen by guests on a ride without the need to wear a physical VR or AR headset.
Behind the scenes, virtual reality can be leveraged during the design process by creative teams. The Digital Immersive Showroom (DISH), located at Walt Disney Imagineering’s headquarters in Glendale, California, is used to visualize new themed lands before construction ever begins. Imagineers can stand in this room and see a to-scale version of any proposed themed land on wall-sized monitors surrounding the room’s perimeter. Led by Mark Mine, a UNC alumnus (Ph.D., 1997), this virtual showroom was used to visualize Cars Land and its marquee attraction Radiator Springs Racers during the creation process.
Although the DISH doesn’t utilize a physical VR headset, themed entertainment designers have since started incorporating the use of VR headsets into their design process. Don Carson, a former Imagineer with the unique perspective of having worked in both the themed entertainment and gaming industries, has noted the upsides of using VR in the theme park design process. Using VR allows designers to quickly collaborate, iterate, and view proposed designs from a guest’s perspective without significantly altering designers’ current workflow. It is slowly becoming easier to export 3D models from software like Revit and SketchUp (which are commonly used in the themed entertainment industry) to gaming engines that can render a scene in VR. Carson also points out how having a conceptual demo in VR helps clients visualize the overall design from a first-person perspective more easily than a 2D image or sketch.
Ultimately, both virtual reality and themed entertainment should continue to overlap in the future. Both forms of design have some advantages over the other: virtual reality is more accessible to people who can’t afford to travel to a theme park, while theme parks are more tactile and communal experiences. But, at the end of the day, the core of both theme park and virtual reality design is creating immersive storytelling experiences. Theme park and virtual reality designers are placemakers and worldbuilders who create environments that people wouldn’t otherwise experience in their day-to-day lives.
At Blue Sky Innovations, we might not be building theme parks, but we’re always looking for ways to create engaging immersive storytelling experiences for our audiences, and we are certainly no strangers to virtual reality design. Moving forward, whether you’re a theme park guest or designer, the lines between the themed entertainment and virtual reality industries will continue to cross as both strive to further amplify the power of storytelling.
