24 Feb 2017
Guests could experience historic Disney rides in VR
BY Alice Davis
Ride Archive, an experience that enables guests to try out now defunct rides in VR, is gaining traction online with a pitch asking Disney to set up such an attraction at one of its parks.
"Anyone who's been to a theme park has a favourite ride. But what about all the rides that went away before their time and still linger in the childhood memories of grown-ups today?”
A video pitch explaining the concept, hosted at RideArchive.com, has been viewed 620,000 time on Facebook.
“Anyone who's been to a theme park has a favourite ride. But what about all the rides that went away before their time and still linger in the childhood memories of grown-ups today?” said the founder and creator of Ride Archive, Jay Kristopher Huddy.
In the concept, the attraction is like a hub where VR footage of historic rides can be experienced. Guests enter the attraction, choose which ride they want to try – say Disneyland’s Captain EO, Tomorrowland’s old Skyway or Epcot’s Horizon – and experience a virtual simulation of how that would have been.
Once a guest has done a ride, the VR content can be sent to their mobile device, so they can relive it again at home.
Huddy is asking people to sign an online petition – which currently has almost 2,000 signatures – asking The Walt Disney Company to make the ride a reality.
“The dark ride is mechanical performance art. We preserve art in so many forms, whether it’s paintings, literature, sculpture, music, or architecture. All of these are singularly embodied in a theme park ride and yet no one seems concerned with preserving that unifying cultural experience,” said Huddy in a recent interview with DCTC. “I want to change that.”
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