Where Are My Coaster Capsules!?
– By Ben Cober, director of business development and research
On my drive to work this morning, I started to wonder to myself, “why are there no roller coasters that are encapsulated in bubbles?” To me, it seemed like a pretty cool design idea. If you were creating some kind of space or aquatic-themed ride, or The Jetsons, putting the riders in some kind of glass dome – matched with some Minority Report-esque projection – could make a pretty cool ride.
I plumbed the depths of my memory and couldn’t think of a time I’d ever seen that. Now, I wouldn’t say that I have any kind of respectable set of notches on my theme park belt – a handful of times I’ve visited SeaWorld Orlando, Walt Disney World and Land, Universal Studios Hollywood and Islands of Adventure, King’s Island, Six Flags St. Louis, and Holiday World – so I’m not a complete roller coaster troglodyte, but by no means an aficionado.
Also important to note is that I am not an engineer, architect, or designer – I’m a business strategist and marketer; so to you ride engineers out there, the answer to this query didn’t seem so apparent to me. So as always, I went to some of our ride experts: Mariusz Bleszynski, Jeff Havlik, Jim Wible, and Josh Rodriguez (you can hear those last two mixing it up on the Season Pass Podcast).
They had some, now looking back on it, rather obvious answers:
- As people would bang the capsules shut, scratch them with their clothing, slap the inside, and potentially spit or get sick on the glass – they would be awful to maintain.
- It would slow down load and unload times tremendously – ruining daily, and therefore annual, throughput.
- And the grossest reason – people’s BO and breath (from screaming on the ride) would be trapped inside the capsule, even when opened: ready for the next rider to sit down and become awash in it.
But here’s where it got really interesting. Turns out:
we almost did it!
14 years ago, PGAV Destinations was working on a new roller coaster for SeaWorld Orlando that would one day be called Kraken. The ride itself was turning out to be rather noisy – but that was a pretty easy fix: filling the “spine” of the track with sand dampened the sound of the coaster by 50%. But there was still a really big problem: people scream on roller coasters, and just to the east of SeaWorld across International Drive was the neighborhood of Williamsburg – a town full of retired, vocal individuals who did not want to hear the screams of millions of thrilled people from around the world day-in-day out, 24/7, 365. So we had to figure out how to quiet the riders – OR relocate the town of Williamsburg (patent-pending on town-relocation vehicle).
The first test of muting the screams was actually a transparent ‘hood’ that would come down over just the riders’ individual heads as they secured themselves into the vehicle. However, considering the height difference of children and really, really tall people, there was no simple way to ensure the ‘hood’ would adequately cover everyone’s’ heads.
So then the team tested a full shield-like, front-dome to mute the screams – even taking it through to a full-sized model; but due to all the aforementioned problems with domes, that effort was cancelled.
In the end, the team chose to position the ride in a way so that riders’ screams were actually directed back into the park, rather than over into the neighborhood. They worked with an acoustical engineering group out of LA (now El Monte) called Navcom to build brand-new, highly sophisticated (at the time) modeling software to map how and where screams would travel – and then helped position the ride to direct the sound away from the town and into SeaWorld. PRETTY cool, actually…..
Josh went on to give me a few examples of semi-encapsulated attractions. The Sum of All Thrills at Disney’s Epcot is an exhibit powered by the KUKA RoboSlim 4-D Simulator, a similar mechanism as Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure. Riders custom design their virtual thrill ride and then simulate-ride it. So, not exactly what I was looking for – but getting there.
Jeff noted that Mack developed the Galaxie Express coaster, which had full helmets with video display and sound for each rider. Sadly the ride with relatveily poor graphics was only open for about a year as the German space-themed park closed shortly thereafter.
Josh also pointed out the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland and the 20,000 Leagues under the Sea ride at Tokyo Disney Resort as examples of enclosed rides. Both require excellent cooling and ventilation systems to keep people comfortable and smelling well and both leverage double-layered windows with water in between where bubbles are pumped through to simulate diving (instead of actually being under water the entire time). Not exactly the capsulated coaster I was imagining, but a good example of some of the challenges it would face.
So a line of Viper fighters strung end-to-end on a coaster track with HUD displays on my cockpit chasing Cylon raiders along a track may still be out of the question for now – but at least I now understand why!
