A DarkRide into the Future—and the Past- by John Elderkin Belgium Six Flags’ remarkable dark ride, The Challenge of Tutankhamon, begins with a bit of good old-fashioned storytelling. Fictional archaeologist Dr. Xavier Gaudet’s diary tells the classic tale of a mysterious Egyptian tomb that is protected by an ancient curse. Gaudet, and Tutankhamon riders, are offered a chance to follow a 3,000-year-old map in order to save ancient treasures from ruin. Riders immediately recognize Dr. Gaudet’s predicament; the temptation of untold riches and discoveries versus supernatural power is a classic theme. And an adventure through a haunted attraction is of course a longtime staple of amusement parks. But those features of The Challenge of Tutankhamon are merely the starting point of a new kind of dark ride that offers a state-of-the-art technological breakthrough. The ride actually works on several psychological levels. Riders engage with the familiar tomb-exploring narrative, they compete with each other (and against their own scores), and they interact with Tut’s technology—the ride’s path and challenge level actually vary depending upon the actions of its riders. This combination of entertainment, competition, and reward is a powerful combination, and The Challenge of Tutankhamon turns out to be as futuristic as its theme is timeless. Six Flags Belgium, which is located in Wavre, just outside Brussels, opened The Challenge of Tutankhamon to much fanfare in 2003. Designed by the Sally Corporation and using an innovative people-mover system manufactured by ETF Ride Systems, Tut is only the second dark ride of its kind in the world, and it represents the culmination of years of planning and development. Executives like Howard Kelley, president of Sally Corporation, and ETF President Ruud Koppens are in the vanguard of designers who recognize that the tried-and-true rides of the past can be adapted in ways that fundamentally alter the passenger’s experience, and their innovations are changing the very nature of thrill rides. Riders first notice they are on a different kind of ride as soon as they step into their six-passenger cars. As they are whisked into the darkness of the tomb, it becomes apparent that the six-person cars have minds of their own—there is no track guiding the cars, and therefore no way for riders to predict what will happen, or how. A sharp turn to the right and passengers go for their weapons as giant cobras emerge from the darkness of the Corridor of the Doomed. “The trackless system is remarkable because it allows the cars to twist and turn; they can split up and merge,” says Koppens. “We call the cars MultiMovers, and they do things no tracked system could possibly do. In fact, it’s actually simpler than a track system, which requires complex mechanics. What we use is a simple wire in the floor that the vehicle has no direct contact with. The MultiMover vehicles have two track sensors, one in the front and one in the back of the vehicle, which detect the track through an inductive electrical field. The drives of the vehicle are regulated to follow the wire, depending how far the censors get from it.” Without a track, the ride can be varied by speed, degree of difficulty, level of challenge, and length. This is Tutankhamon’s real breakthrough—the new technology allows for interactivity. Different levels of competitive ability result in different experiences and inspire repeat visits in the hopes of improved scores and differing experiences, creating something like a “live computer game,” Koppens says. “When we designed this ride, we kept reminding ourselves that it’s the game that is most important,” says Kelley. “Nowadays competitive rides must take into account teenagers who’ve grown up on video games. They’re very adept with response and reaction, and they have a sense of how to really compete in a virtual setting. That plays a major role in how the ride is structured and understood. Of course, the ride is non-virtual, but conceptually it has to work for that audience.” “What we were thinking was: Can we make a live computer game?” says Koppens. “Interestingly, there has not been a lot of evolution in dark rides in the past 10 years. People have tried to innovate; for example, Universal had two vehicles running parallel to each other, but that didn’t change the nature of the ride.” “It’s a complicated process,” adds Kelley. “We had to consider another important issue—the target market. If the teenager, the master game player, was strictly the target market, you’d have a very narrow market. And these rides are too big and too expensive to only appeal to teens. So we had to make certain we would develop a ride that can appeal to young children and all the way up to grandparents.” Inside the Corridor of the Doomed, the only way past the threatening cobras is by using the pistol-like Ankhinator supplied to each passenger. As wails and cries boom from the end of the hall, riders shoot at green laser targets while their cars swirl chaotically. Another sharp turn and an animatronic archaeologist appears, warning riders away before being zapped and turned into a skeleton. The cars pivot to the right and enter the skeleton-filled Chamber of Seth, the ancient Lord of Chaos and Darkness. Targets emerge from all angles as a looming statue of Seth pronounces his curse upon the riders. Their only recourse? Fight back furiously, with Ankhinators blazing. Which leads us to another level of the ride designer’s cleverness. As riders interact with the game aspect of Tut, the technology allows for scoring levels to be adjusted to meet the abilities of the passengers. The ride operator can manipulate the skill level of each car, thereby allowing nonexperts a chance to succeed. “We have a modem that keeps track of all individual scores, so that passengers monitor their scores and the other riders’ scores in real time. The lasers give information to a computer, which sends scores immediately to the players,” explains Olivier Mazot, a Six Flags European Division corporate engineer who is known for his high scores on Tutankhamon. The variability of the ride’s length and path through the tomb isn’t simply a novel feature; it is a crucial element of the ride’s success. “If we could only set the skill level at one point, we’d be in trouble,” says Kelley. “Teens would get bored quickly with an easy game. But if we set the skill level to suit only teens, there’d be a lot people who’d never have the opportunity to see the additional scenes.” With repeat rides, passengers of all skill levels can develop new strategies that allow them to improve. And with improvement come variations in the ride experience—higher scores mean a longer and more challenging trip through Tut’s tomb. This is a real breakthrough—the ride’s interactivity creates variations on the experience. In effect, the interactivity creates more interactivity. “On other rides, there is only one experience for all the riders,” says Mazot. “And with some games, there are only winners and losers. So this ride is very different, something new.” “The ride works on three levels,” says Six Flags Director of Public Relations Vanessa Amor. “You can compete against yourself, against the others in your car, and, perhaps most fun of all, against riders in other cars. We’ve found that it’s a great team-building exercise, and even the departments at Six Flags compete to see who can go the farthest and score the highest.” Six Flags visitors have reacted by paying The Challenge of Tutankhamon the highest possible compliment—they line up to ride it again and again. “In Belgium, during the ride’s grand opening, we had a number of teenagers trying to set a record for consecutive rides on Tut,” says Kelley. “I heard that some of them rode it 100 times.” Koppens notes that the dual purposes of the ride, competition and entertainment, keep Tut fresh for repeat visitors. “If you look to the shooting, you miss the scenery, and if you look to the scenery, you miss the shooting. So it’s very difficult to imagine someone ever knowing everything about the ride,” he says. Knowing that the ride’s success hinges in part on repeat visitors created incredible design challenges for the designers at Sally. Not only must the game element of the ride be challenging, but the details of the décor must hold up under repeated scrutiny. “It’s an issue we wrestle with,” Kelley admits. “We incorporate incredible amounts of effect detail. But sometimes you have to ask yourself, if a rider is only going through a room for 11 seconds, and there’s music, special effects, fire, and targets flashing, how much detail will they really see? It’s a tough question. But we’d like to think that if a visitor could actually walk through, they would be able to absorb the quality of details.” The Challenge of Tutankhamon uses multilingual soundtracks, features 130 interactive targets, and has a capacity of 900 riders per hour. Housed in a 17,000-square-foot facility, it is the second interactive dark ride that Sally and ETF have collaborated on. The first, The Labyrinth of the Minotaur, opened in Spain’s Terra Mitica park in 2000. “We continue to add improvements and new elements. For example, the live fire eruption in Tut is a new special effect,” says Kelley. ETF continues to innovate with its trackless vehicles. It makes the MultiMover used on The Challenge of Tutankhamon, and the smaller four-seater MysticMover, which can do tricks like make a 90-degree turn on the spot. And because it requires such small working radii, it can be implemented in buildings that otherwise wouldn’t have the space for such rides. ETF is also working with a Dutch design company on a ride that will feature 96 possible endings. “People are catching on to this idea of ride interactivity,” Koppens says. “They understand that this is the ride of the future.”