Funworld August 2011

‘Star Tours— The Adventures Continue’
When George Lucas was working on his first Star Wars prequel in the late 1990s, he envisioned the now-indelible podracing scene as tailor-made for a new version of “Star Tours,” the simulator attraction that debuted at Disneyland in 1986 (and was followed in 1989 at Disney’s Hollywood Studios—both are updated this summer). Walt Disney Imagineers loved the idea of a refurb, going so far as to storyboard the entire thing a decade or so ago. But as Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald recalls the story, everyone knew there were two more movies to come, so Imagineering decided to wait until “all the Star Wars movies were in front of us” and then decide what new adventure to take guests on in a galaxy far, far away.

While waiting for the remaining films (the last prequel hit theaters in 2005), digital film technology advanced rapidly, allowing Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) to create a ride unlike anything it had done before. “Star Tours—The Adventures Continue” opened June 3 in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland. Yes, it’s still a motion simulator where guests sit and watch a video as their vehicle moves in sync with the onscreen images—but the similarities to the old ride stop just about there.

The Slot Machine Model
Instead of a single video presentation, the new “Star Tours” film is divided into four sections, and each of those sections has different content variations: It goes 2-3-3-3, for a total of 54 different possible experiences. Fitzgerald, executive vice president and senior creative executive at WDI, thinks of it as a slot machine: “Every time you get on board, the handle goes and the wheels spin.” Guests never know what combination of scenes they will get, no matter how many times they ride it.

Here’s one example of a ride sequence: Guests come face to face with Darth Vader in the opening scene, escape his clutches only to find themselves in the middle of a podrace, then receive an urgent message from Princess Leia (you are her only hope!), before wrapping up with a trip through the Death Star. Other combinations might include a visit to the ice planet Hoth (from “The Empire Strikes Back”), a speeder-bike chase through the Wookie planet Kashyyyk (say hi to Chewbacca!), or a run through the bustling metropolis of Coruscant (and you thought traffic in L.A. is bad).

“You can ride this again and again and again,” Fitzgerald says. “Even if you’ve seen all the individual pieces, you’ll never know what combination you’ll get.”

All of this is possible, he says, only because of advances in digital filmmaking. Since there is no longer an actual film playing on the ride, computers can seamlessly stitch these various elements together so it feels like whichever version you’re on is one coherent narrative. Natural transitions— jumping to light speed, for instance—blend each sequence together, allowing a few seconds of delicious which-one-will- I-get anticipation between scenes even for those who’ve ridden many times.

Fitzgerald doesn’t know how often WDI will employ this “branching” technique in the future, but Disney’s designers will certainly consider it if the material is right. He said Star Wars’ panoply of characters, locales, and adventures made the device perfect for this setting (WDI worked with Lucas film Ltd. and Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic on the project).

A New Type of 3-D
As if that weren’t enough, Disney also added a new type of 3-D projection system to the attraction. Fitzgerald says the traditional polarized 3-D glasses wouldn’t work here, as there would be too much “ghosting” of images due to the simulator’s frantic movements. So instead designers used the Dolby 3-D system that, according to Dolby’s website, “projects rapidly alternating full-color images for the left eye and right eye that use slightly offset primary-color frequencies.” Instead of the red/blue 3-D glasses, Dolby’s 3-D lenses are clear and filter the color spectrum to provide the three-dimensional image. The result is a crisp visual that never fluctuates no matter how the viewer’s head moves. Fitzgerald says WDI’s goal was to make guests feel like they are really looking through the windshield of their star speeder—it’s more about depth of field than having objects pop off the screen.

Story Overhaul
The “Star Tours” story underwent a significant overhaul, as well. While the basic conceit remains the same—guests are boarding a spaceship to travel the galaxy—in the new version a guest onboard the speeder is identified in real time as a Rebel “spy.” Thus the evil Empire chases the ship across the galaxy trying to capture the fugitive, leading to all manner of exciting encounters with the Star Wars universe.

More than 1,000 Imagineers worked on “Star Tours” in one way or another, and their collective knowledge and wit manifest in the plethora of winks, nods, and other little jokes contained within the ride. Rex, the droid that captained the original “Star Tours,” can now be seen in the queue (C-3PO is the new onboard host, with original voice work by actor Anthony Daniels). The vehicle’s number is 1401, which refers to WDI’s street address in California.

“We try to put lots of little hidden references in the show, and there are tons of them [in ‘Star Tours’],” Fitzgerald says.

‘The Little Mermaid— Ariel’s Undersea Adventure’
The Disney dark ride tradition is sacrosanct, so when adding an attraction to that canon it helps to have similarly revered source material.

It’s been more than two decades since “The Little Mermaid” revived Disney’s animated motion picture business, and now Ariel and her underwater friends finally have a ride to call their own. “The Little Mermaid—Ariel’s Undersea Adventure” opened June 3 in the Paradise Pier section of Disney California Adventure, the latest step in that park’s multiyear billion-dollar refurbishment and expansion.

“‘Mermaid’ is the most perennial of the more recent classic [Disney] films. She’s the one that started the new renaissance,” says Larry Nikolai, principal concept and show designer for Walt Disney Imagineering. “She’s remained fresh for 22 years. People can’t get enough of her. This was the next step, to finally do that attraction we’d been dreaming about for all these years.”

The ride incorporates all of the key characters and—just as important—songs from the 1989 Academy Award-winning film. Guests travel in “clamshell” Omnimover vehicles that go “under the sea” using special lighting techniques and then travel from one of the film’s iconic scenes to the next. The showstopper is the “Under the Sea” room, which takes up about a third of the ride building’s space and incorporates 128 audio-animatronic figures of various sizes and complexity.

There are nearly 200 animatronics in all packed into the five and- a-half-minute experience, and Imagineers broke some new ground to create figures as lifelike as possible:

• Ariel’s hair undulates as if it is actually underwater; Imagineers treated it like a character all its own.
  
  
• The evil witch Ursula, meanwhile, is the largest figure in the attraction at 12 feet wide, 7.5 feet tall, and displays a new “squash and stretch” technique; her torso bounces as she sings, changing her body’s shape just as it appeared in the film. “There’s a liveliness there when she’s singing that we haven’t been able to achieve before,” Nikolai says.
  
  
• Ariel’s famous friend Sebastian the crab is featured throughout the ride, at a relatively accurate scale (meaning, he’s pretty small). Imagineers wanted his eyes to move to make him come alive, so they spent a year figuring out how to install “a teeny little projector” into a head that’s only the size of a golf ball, says Lisa Girolami, director and senior show producer at WDI.
  
  
• The real breakthrough since the last time Disney created a dark ride of this scale is skin technology. There is a lot of exposed skin on the “Mermaid” characters, and Imagineers wanted them to look smooth and lifelike. So Nickolai says they used the new Abraham Lincoln figure that now resides on Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A. as a foundation that allows Ariel to change facial expressions and lip sync to her songs. “We couldn’t have done that a few years ago,” Nikolai says.

“Ariel’s Undersea Adventure” takes up residence in the former “Golden Dreams” attraction building overlooking the park’s Paradise Bay. Its façade is meant to evoke a scenic railway station from old California and features a statue of King Triton and relief carvings of Ariel’s six mermaid sisters. Inside at the loading platform is an 86-foot-long hand-painted mural showcasing more “Mermaid” characters.

This new dark ride is the latest step in Disney California Adventure’s massive refurbishment and expansion program, which was announced in 2007. The overhaul will conclude in 2012 with, among other enhancements, the opening of Cars Land. This entirely new area of the park will include three attractions along with dining and retail locations themed to the Disney/Pixar film franchise. What’s more, a similar version of “Ariel’s Undersea Adventure” is scheduled to open late next year at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando, as part of that park’s Fantasyland expansion project.

Contact Senior Editor Jeremy Schoolfield at jschoolfield@IAAPA.org.