Faster, higher -- and smarter

By Susan Carpenter

June 30, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

There are few places in the world where it’s not only normal but desirable to laugh uncontrollably and scream like a maniac. Those places are called theme parks, and nothing quite compares when it comes to temporary respites from reality.

Nowhere else can you so thoroughly check real life at the gate -- and, while you’re at it, whatever diets, budgets and codes of conduct you ordinarily follow. Any worries you may have had about your job, money or relationships before entering the park are quickly replaced with more immediate concerns, like whether you’ll throw up a funnel cake or if you really want to wear that ridiculous hat you just bought for $15.

About 20 million people visit California amusement parks each year, happily consigning away control of their lives for a while and generating $20 billion for the state’s economy, according to the industry. To make it worth the hefty admission price, those parks are constantly working to mix things up and make the experience more interesting to appeal to every age group. They tweak old rides, overhaul others, add entirely new attractions.

For years, all the attention went to roller coasters -- bigger, taller, faster coasters that could extract more ear-piercing screams. But for this season’s new crop of rides and shows, some of which already exist at sister parks in Florida, the trend isn’t extreme thrills so much as increased immersion and interactivity. Planned long before this month’s California Supreme Court decision holding theme parks to a higher safety standard on thrill rides, this year’s new attractions don’t just make your stomach flip, they give you the chance to get more involved. For some rides, that means customizing the level of intensity. For others, it means enabling competition among park attendees, live and online. Here we take a spin through some of the new and revised attractions.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Disneyland

Disneyland’s rides have long been inspired by the movies. Now that the video game industry has surpassed Hollywood, games are becoming just as influential. Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, which opened May 5 as part of the park’s kickoff to an ongoing 50th anniversary celebration, is, at its core, a video game transposed to the physical world. Riding in slow-moving “space cruisers,” participants use laser pistols to hit various targets along their route and rack up points.

Based on the popular “Toy Story” character Buzz Lightyear, Astro Blasters takes place in an imaginary space environment. Lightyear’s goal -- and yours -- is to defeat the evil Emperor Zurg and reclaim the little green beings that double as the galaxy’s power source.

During the all-ages ride, er, game, you do that by aiming a plastic gun at various DayGlo characters that pop up, spin around and taunt you with their targets. At the end of the ride, look down at the screen on your space ship to see if you managed to hit any. Look up, and a television monitor tells you exactly how few that really was -- the monitor lists the top 10 scores of the day. People who haven’t even stepped foot inside Disneyland can play Astro Blasters online as well, and their actions affect the point values on targets inside the ride in real time.

That’s a new concept for theme parks, and it’s one that simply wasn’t possible 10 years ago.

Space Mountain, Disneyland

Technology is light-years away from what it was in the 1950s and ‘60s, when theme parks first began sprouting up, and that’s apparent on rides new and old. When Space Mountain blasts off in its reincarnated version July 15, it may be closer to Walt Disney’s original vision than when it opened 28 years ago.

“We took a page from George Lucas,” says Chrissie Allen, Walt Disney Imagineer. “When he re-released ‘Star Wars,’ he went back in and used modern technology to do the stuff he couldn’t do before. We did the same thing.”

The world’s first “dark roller coaster,” or roller coaster in the dark, the basic experience of Space Mountain involves walking onto a space station, boarding a rocket ship and taking off into space. The ride was closed in 2003 for a major overhaul that involved not only replacing the whole track but reconfiguring the entryway and exits and revamping the effects inside the ride. Although the new track is laid in the same configuration, the audio and visual additions make Space Mountain feel like a completely different experience.

In 1997, onboard audio was added to the attraction, but it didn’t always work. The “re-Imagineered” version includes custom music from “The Incredibles” composer Michael Giacchino, which, like video games, adds to the ride’s emotional experience.

Ride creator John Hench had originally wanted riders to feel as if they were actually spinning in Space Mountain’s tunnel section. He was unable to do that because the only way to accomplish that feeling of motion at the time was to rotate the walls around the track and the walls couldn’t be moved. But thanks to the addition of visual effects, riders on the revised Space Mountain will feel that rotating sensation for the first time. They will also have less of a sense of where they’re going because, Allen says, “We’ve been able to make dark darker.” In the past, that illusion was created by beaming a red light into passengers’ eyes.

“When you go in there now, we don’t have to hit you in the face with a big light anymore because you can’t see where you’re going and you can’t see the track. All you see are millions and millions of stars and occasionally a meteor floats overhead or you blow by a nebula, but it’s dark. It’s fast and you feel like you’re just flying.”

You feel, in other words, like you’ve just taken a trip into space.

Turtle Talk with Crush, Disney’s California Adventure

Transporting guests into alternate worlds is what amusement parks do best, and creators are coming up with intriguing concepts to achieve that goal. In the case of Turtle Talk with Crush, opening July 15, parkgoers will have the chance to enter the world of the 2003 film “Finding Nemo” and have a real-time conversation with the movie’s turtle character.

In this 15-minute show, the audience sits in front of a movie screen that pictures the grommet-like turtle exactly as he appeared in his cartoon environment: Doing flips and tricks in an animated seascape of water, rocks and anemones and punctuating his vocabulary with surfer-speak staples, like “dude.” But instead of talking with Nemo’s dad, as he did in the film, Crush is talking with and answering questions from the audience.

“He knows who we are, can learn our names, can learn where we’re from, can answer questions and can ask us questions about our world,” says Walt Disney Imagineering vice president for interactive, Joe Garlington, who developed the attraction. “He’s able to see and hear the guests and respond to them as they talk to him. Most children think that’s the way the world’s supposed to be, right? Maybe some are frustrated because they can’t do it, and here they can.”

Garlington won’t elaborate on the how of the attraction. “It’s part of the Disney magic,” he says. But however it’s done, it is impressive. Crush’s interaction with the audience is seamless and seemingly off the cuff. There aren’t any scripted lags between questions and answers. No one’s peeking behind the screen to see who’s out there and relay the information back to some Wizard of Oz type character. It really seems as if Crush is right there in the room.

Disneyland has a history of bringing its most beloved characters off the screen and into the real world, giving guests the opportunity to kiss Snow White and mug for pictures with Mickey Mouse. But fun as the experience is for some parkgoers, those characters are ultimately just people in costumes playing dress up. Turtle Talk is the same concept gone high tech, and it’s tailored to a young, computer-fed crowd that’s growing up in an increasingly interactive world.

“There’s a sort of instinctive desire to get control over what you learn and how you do it,” Garlington says of visitors’ increased interest in interactive attractions. “The other thing is just the size of the population. As we grow more and more small in a large world, taking back control over some bit of the world feels like the natural thing to do.”

Knights’ Tournament, Legoland

With the new medieval-themed Knights’ Tournament “robo-coaster,” control is a matter of choice. Riders can choose the intensity of their one-minute experience, whether it’s a gentle swooping motion suitable for grandmas or the spinning force of 2Gs that appeals to adrenaline-charged tweens. Legoland’s target audience is kids 2 to 12, but Knights’ Tournament is part of the park’s effort to offer more attractions for its older attendees.

Knights’ Tournament is the first coaster of its kind in the U.S. You don’t ride in a car on a track but in a seat on a robotic arm. There’s nothing ahead of you and nothing behind you. You’re just sitting on a big robot with absolutely no idea of what’s coming next. Think of it as a sort of controlled loss of control. You get to choose how wildly you’ll be thrown around; you just don’t know exactly how.

Having trouble conceptualizing? Picture your forearm and hand, then picture a person sitting in the palm of that hand and all the different positions he can be put into. Now picture six of those arms protruding from a moat, with each arm holding two passengers. When the ride is at full capacity, the robotic arms are swinging their passengers around using dozens of movements. Come back in six months and those combinations will have been changed. Knights’ Tournament is capable of producing 1.4 million different types of movement to give riders a similar but ultimately new ride experience.

Walk up to the attraction and there are five animatronic Lego knights hanging out by the entrance. One whines in a mild British accent, “I need to rest. I’ve been slaying dragons all morning.”

Like many of the season’s theme park attractions, Knights’ Tournament is immersive as well as interactive. It is embedded in the context of a greater story. Here it’s the story of five knights who are trying to defeat a dragon. And, like video games, when riders choose a specific rider intensity level, they are also aligning themselves with a specific knight and his fighting style.

Wild Woods Golf, Legoland

Miniature golf is nothing new, but a mini golf course populated with animated Lego critters and embedded sound effects certainly is. Players at the Wild Woods Golf Course opening next week will have to putt past a growling grizzly, talking squirrels, squirting skunks and peekaboo gophers on their way through 18 holes.

Make your shot on one hole, and the cup says “ouch” as the ball rolls in. Putt another, and the ball’s pushed off course by an unanticipated wind. And if you get to the final hole, that doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. You have the commentary of two sports announcers to contend with.

Fear Factor Live, Universal Studios Hollywood

“When we started shooting ‘Fear Factor’ six seasons ago, we realized there was something about this show that really felt like a theme park attraction,” says Matt Kunitz, executive producer of the reality TV show best known for animal-organ smoothies and daredevil stunts.

Back then, the show’s producers didn’t have the connections or the success to make it happen. But as luck would have it, the show was a smash. Then, NBC bought Universal Studios.

“At that point, it was a no-brainer,” Kunitz says. “They weren’t going to do a ‘West Wing’ attraction.”

Fear Factor Live, which opened this month, is the first reality TV show to be translated into a theme park attraction. For better or worse, it is very true to the program. Each of the three main stunts in this live, half-hour version are variations of stunts that have already been on the show.

The spectacle begins with six contestants hanging from a horizontal truss 30 feet in the air. One by one, gravity prevails. The four who hold on longest are rewarded with a shackling and instructions to unlock themselves, the opportunity to fish around for flags in a tank of slithering eels and, finally, a chance to down a grasshopper and spoiled-milk shake. The lucky two who remain then battle it out by hand-spinning wheels that send increasing amounts of electricity to the opposing contestant. The person who lets go first is yanked away into the rafters. The last person standing wins.

But that’s not all. In two interstitial stunts, a handful of audience members will be pulled from their seats and trotted on stage to gorge on chocolate-covered bugs and don a plexiglass box loaded with scorpions.

Rewind and repeat eight times and you have the daily schedule. That amounts to 48 main contestants per day--or about 900 times the number who annually appear on the show. The selection process for the live version isn’t as drawn out or as selective as the one for TV, but in both cases the contestants are just regular guys and gals. The contestant pool for the live attraction is just smaller; it’s a mix of parkgoers who applied at the on-site casting booth and those recruited by a spotter.

“A common misconception is you want to go into the park and find the extreme athlete to participate in this show,” Kunitz says. “That’s the exact opposite of what we’ve taught them to look for. If that guy comes up and says, I’m a Rollerblader, mountain climber, pick his wife, pick his brother. Don’t pick the guy that’s an extreme athlete. This show is about challenging fears. It’s putting ordinary people in extraordinary stunts.”

The only difference is it’s live, the contestants aren’t as photogenic as those on TV and the stunts have been toned down. “What ‘Fear Factor’ the TV show can do is we can flip cars and dangle from helicopters,” Kunitz says. “You can’t really do that in a live theme park attraction.

Batman Begins Stunt Show, Six Flags Magic Mountain

Actually you can flip cars and dangle from helicopters. You just can’t have regular parkgoers doing it. For the new Batman Begins Stunt Show, it’s the stuntmen who dangle from wires -- and fall from buildings, crash motorcycles and jump the Batmobile onto the stage. Throw in dozens of pyrotechnics, some crumbling buildings and an exploding aqueduct that unleashes 15,000 gallons of water, and you have a show with double the number of dynamic stunts as the Batman and Robin show it is replacing.

Like Batman and Robin, Batman Begins is based on the movie. But unlike its predecessor, it completely mirrors the script, condensing the film’s 2-plus hours into a 21 1/2 -minute, action-packed show that doesn’t miss a plot twist or turn.

“For us to try and take that and put it in a live show in the bright sun of a theme park with roller coasters going in the background was a bit of a challenge,” says Alex Daniels, Six Flags Magic Mountain’s stunt show director for 11 years.

But challenge is what stuntmen live for. The show begins with Bruce Wayne entering the stage from the audience. Within moments, he’s surrounded by ninjas. One rappels upside down from a 45-foot line over the audience. Another crawls head first down the side of a building. Chinese pole fighting a la Cirque du Soleil ensues amid various pyrotechnics. Then it’s off to Gotham, where Wayne unveils his alter ego to fight the criminal forces that are spiraling the city into chaos.

After various scenes involving a real ambulance, clouds of CO2 gas, fires, falls and flurries of paper bats, the whole show ends with the Batmobile flying onto the stage, an aqueduct exploding with water and the facade of a building collapsing in a burst of 25-foot flames and 75-foot rocket explosions.

The whole thing is more immersive than interactive, though those seated near the stage may be treated to a little splash of water or gas in the face. Daniels says plans are in the works “that will involve the audience even more in the show,” he said, but declined to give details.

Silver Bullet, Knott’s Berry Farm

Like Six Flags Magic Mountain, Knott’s Berry Farm is best known for its roller coasters -- from the 80-mph gut twister, Accelerator, to the old-school wooden fave, GhostRider.

Silver Bullet is its latest. Opened in December for the 2005 season, it is the park’s first inverted coaster, meaning the cars are mounted on the underside of the track and the riders are harnessed in, legs dangling. There’s only one other inverted coaster in Southern California, and that’s Batman the Ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Silver Bullet is longer and taller.

At 8:30 a.m. on a recent Thursday morning, 100 members of the Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain are taking advantage of their exclusive ride time at Knott’s Berry Farm and taking Silver Bullet for a spin (or 12) before the park opens.

“We’re all coaster crazy!” they yell in unison, as the teal, red and yellow cars accelerate out of the gate, around a turn and head in to the first of six loop-de-loops.

“Brilliant. Enjoyed that,” one woman said, stepping off the ride.

“Excellent,” another said calmly.

Almost no one in the club even screamed, and it isn’t only because they’re seasoned roller coaster riders. Silver Bullet is one of the smoothest coasters around.

“Every roller coaster that’s good will leave you wanting more at the end, so when you get to the station, the first thing you say is, ‘Whoa. Let’s have another ride!,’” said Andy Hine, the group’s chairman, who’s taken 35,000 rides on 600 different roller coasters around the world. “If it does that, which this one did, it’s perfect.”

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Thriller instinct

Disneyland

1313 S. Harbor Blvd., Anaheim; (714) 781-4565 or www.Disneyland.com

Hours: Vary throughout the year but are 8 a.m. to midnight in July

Tickets: Ages 10 and older, $56; ages 3-9, $45; 2 and younger, free

Disney’s California Adventure

1313 S. Harbor Blvd., Anaheim; (714) 781-4565 or www.Disneyland.com

Hours: Vary throughout the year but are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. in July

Tickets: Ages 10 and older, $56; ages 3-9, $45; 2 and younger, free

Knott’s Berry Farm

8039 Beach Blvd., Buena Park; (714) 220-5200 or www.knotts.com

Hours: Vary throughout the year but are Sun.-Fri. 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.Tickets: Ages 12 and older, $45; ages 3-11, $14.95. So Cal residents ages 12 and older, $31; print-at-home tickets available

Legoland

One Legoland Drive, Carlsbad; (760) 918-LEGO or www.legoland.com

Hours: Vary throughout the year but are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in July

Tickets: General admission, $46.95; seniors and kids ages 3 to 12, $38.95; 2 and younger, free; print-at-home tickets available

Six Flags Magic Mountain

26101 Magic Mountain Parkway, Valencia; (661) 255-4100 or www.sixflags.com

Hours: Hours vary throughout the year, but are Sun.-Fri., 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sat., 10 a.m. to midnight in July

Tickets: General admission, $47.99; seniors and children 48 inches and shorter, $29.99; 2 and younger, free; print-at-home tickets available

Universal Studios Hollywood

100 Universal City Plaza,

Universal City; (818) 508-9600

or www.universalstudioshollywood.com