Get Ready for Transformers: The Amusement Park Attraction!
Written by Robert Sanchez
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Giant Fucking Robots from Cybertron are coming to an amusement park near you! A couple of days ago, I received a tip that made me as giddy as a school girl. I was told that Paramount Studios and Hasbro are in talks to bring Autobots and Decepticons to a lucky amusement park.
We have confirmed with a studio source that our tip is indeed accurate. Our original tipster tells us that while it is still very early in the planning stages, Paramount is eyeing the opening of the attraction between Transformers 2 and 3.
What kind of attraction/ride would it be? First lets be very clear that it’s still in the very early stages of planning and Paramount has just started talking with various Los Angeles based engineering firms that specialize with these types of attractions.
As of right now it is NOT, and I repeat NOT, a simulator ride in the vein of Star Tours but instead the early concepts are of a "Dark Ride."
I know what most of you are thinking, "Robert, what the ##### is a Dark Ride?"
This is were Wikipedia helps : "A dark ride or darkride is an indoor amusement ride where riders in guided vehicles travel through specially-lit scenes that characteristically contain animation, sounds, music, and other special effects."
Okay, so for those of you have made it to the very cool Indiana Jones Adventure over at Disneyland you know what a Dark Ride is, its not a rollercoaster but more of an adventure that you find yourself in the middle of something going horribly wrong within the first minute of the ride and then trying to save your butts for the next 2 to 3 minutes until you finally make it out okay just in the nick of time.
So, what can we expect from The Transformers Adventure? It really depends on what Paramount decides to do with the ride, will it be built for one of the previously Paramount owned theme parks or will it go to highest bidder and possibly find a home at Disneyland, Knott's or any of the Six Flag's parks here in the states?
Aha! That is the billion dollar question, something that fans might want to be aware of is that in the past few years some of the biggest rides and attractions are actually headed to the Middle East in countries such as Dubai.
So hopefully Paramount finds a partner stateside that will pony up the dough so that the U.S. based fans will have a chance to experience the ride.
Regarding what concepts are on the drawing board, I heard a lot of cool early concepts involving life size transforming Autobots and Decepticons and early comparisons to the Indiana Jones Adventure in Disneyland.
One of the concepts involves an amphibious vehicle that guests will board and quickly find themselves in the middle of a battle between the warring giant robotic space aliens.
Which robots will it feature? Don’t know for sure but according to our tipsters, the designers were told that some of the robots could not be used because they will not be surviving the second film and third film.
So how long would it take to get this attraction built? That also depends on how much money Paramount/Hasbro decide to pour into this idea, but we have been told that once the studio green lights the project, from drawing board to completion is about 2-3 years.
Transformers 2 is scheduled to start shooting this summer with an expected release for 2009, if construction of the ride starts that summer it would coincide with release of the third film around 2011-2012.
Stay tuned as this story develops!
Quelle: IESB.net
