Warner Bros. Movie World’s new Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster demanded
creative invention and innovative thinking far beyond the constraints
of traditional themed coaster design to live up to visitor and park
management’s high expectations.
After searching worldwide, ‘Hollywood on the Gold Coast’s’ senior
executive concluded that Australia’s premier theme park could not
readily source a dark ride solution for the park’s innovative coaster
concept.
Inspired by the feature film “Scooby-Doo” shot on Australia’s Gold
Coast at Warner Roadshow’s Movie World Studios, masters of the grand
illusion Laservision Macro-Media rose to the challenge. The world
renowned Australian laser attractions specialists were awarded this
important contract based on the company’s excellent track record and
reputation for delivering brilliant high impact attraction solutions.
“The fact that it had never been done before”, according to Simon
McCartney, Laservision’s Director of Attraction Development, “always
stimulates our interest and imagination, we thrive on this sort of
creative challenge”.
Accomplished at filling dark voids with dramatic illusion this
Laservision installation mandated a complete reversal of Laser display
rules. Whilst discreet laser effects have previously been employed to
embellish dark rides, ghost trains and haunted attractions. The
Scooby-Doo ride concept required that the Laservision effects embrace
and create the entire illusion, maintain it throughout the
experience and simultaneously perform for multiple audiences moving
through three-dimensional space at speed. Each element of the wild
mouse ride created a fleeting opportunity to thrill with different
aspects of the laser art.
Once on site Laservision encountered just how different their approach
would have to be. More used to thrilling a stationery audience at
Singapore’s Sentosa Island or Sydney’s Darling Harbour visitors, here
were continuously altering direction, velocity, elevation, and
trajectory. This unfamiliar circumstance presented Laservision’s
creative team with a novel set of design and programming parameters. To
preview each element the production team had to ride the coaster day
and night for almost three weeks. “Even though I have seen it on
hundreds of occasions it is still a rush for me”, added Lloyd Weir,
Laservision’s art director, “I think I’ve become a coaster junkie!”
Other than the Coaster itself, the dark ride building’s almost nine
hundred thousand cubic feet (25,350m3) interior contains nothing except
smoke and mirrors. The entire 3D environment is created when
illuminated with purpose built Laservision projection technology, a
grand illusion on an unparalleled scale.
To maintain the ride’s “spooky” theme Laservision’s Stella-Ray
projectors were selected for their intense emerald green light and
unparalleled colour contrast. “The effects can only be created with
laser’s coherent light properties”, explained McCartney, “traditional
incoherent lamps, however well focussed will illuminate the environment
thus destroying the illusion”.
The Stella-Rays are complemented by a Laservision Mini-Ray system
that creates discrete effects as the cars pass through an area
christened ‘The Ring of Fire’. Laservision’s design amazingly
integrates no less than seven strategically located scanning projector
heads fed via optical fiber distribution from two powerful (40Watt) YAG
Laser systems. The dazzling array is triggered by track sensors and
driven by Laservision’s own Sinodial-Series show control technology
utilising two Digital Data-Pumps and associated macro-media hardware,
linked via a fibre optic data communications network.
Approximately one hundred (100) laser beam bounce mirrors are mounted
within the building on different planes to enhance the illusion of
infinite interior space, plus mirrored floor sections adjacent to the
vertical illuminations accentuate the illusion of infinite depth still
further, more than doubling the riders perception of coaster height.
Described as “the scariest, spookiest, spine-tingling roller-coaster
ever created!” complete with “laser lighting and sound effects,
animatronics and a kaleidoscope of color, depth, height and trickery of
dimension”, the one thousand seven hundred and forty foot (530 metres)
MACK Wild Mouse eighteen (18) car indoor coaster is set within a
haunted medieval castle that is anything but traditional.
Visitors are urged to “Prepare for the supernatural…” as they enter the
creepy dimly lit pre-conditioning courtyard and move into the heart of
Spooky Castle “…watch out for ghouls, gargoyles and the odd talking
suit of armour”!
Four seater coaster cars carefully replicated from Scooby-Doo the film,
launch guests on a hair-raising journey through two distinctive
experience zones. The first develops the Spooky Castle theme into a
ghost train ride featuring the best in traditional movie inspired
theming and amusing animatronics. Just as guests begin to think that
their journey is nearing conclusion, they find
themselves drawn up over fifty-five feet (seventeen meters) into the
castle’s creepy tower. This unsettling experience heralds their
reversed entry into the rides second zone as they are then pushed into
a darkened void.
Disorientated in the dark our riders are now subject to the will and
influence of the ghouls Scooby warned of earlier as without warning the
car plunges backwards almost twenty-five feet (seven meters) into the
darkness. The breathtaking force of minus three gees (-3G) is instantly
inverted to plus three gees (+3G) as the car accelerates down the shoot
then climbs at over forty feet per second (44.58km/h) before grinding
to an abrupt halt! What next? …Be AFRAID…be kind of afraid!
Perched precariously on an elevated turntable the car is turned
one hundred and eighty degrees (180o) to face the fate awaiting its
anxious passengers. Transfixed by an apparently infinite tunnel of
emerald green laser light the riders now lurch forward, apprehensively,
into the shimmering abyss…
Passengers then experience the exhilaration of a full sized
Wild Mouse ride as never before. Traditional Wild Mouse installations
draw continuously on the perception of leaving the coaster rails on
tight corners. The Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster propels riders through a
Laservision created environment where either darkness or intense laser
light obscures both the coaster’s super structure and the physical
space it occupies. Riders are left hurtling through infinite voids,
passing ghost-like through shimmering walls, floors and ceilings of
light or speeding into infinite tunnels of green swirling mist.
Whilst the first zone’s spooky themeing primes the visitor’s senses and
perception, once speeding within the haunted castle’s dark interior its
abstract architecture of light supports an imaginary cast of ghouls and
ghosts manifested solely by the rider’s stimulated imagination.
The ride’s hairpin turns and quick twists navigate
Laservision’s iridescent fractle environment, dodging shards of laser
light the exhilarated rider’s are overwhelmed by an audiovisual
cacophony. Its bumps and breathtaking drops send screaming visitors
crashing through a notional dark ride environment of almost nine
hundred thousand cubic feet (895,200 ft3 or 25,350m3)
pierced by an ever changing web of penetrating green laser beams and
specially created Laservision effects that envelope and thrill every
rider.
Finally plunging over 7m on their adrenaline-pumping journey they
hurtle towards a grotesque creature and the ‘ring of fire’, here riders
are again engulfed by a threatening Laservision tunnel effect emanating
from the creature’s gaping jaws, then thrust down the creature’s throat
only to arrive at the disembarkation station and return to reality.
Laservision Macro-Media has achieved a brilliant new ride turning
lasers smoke and mirrors into a dynamic, fun filled experience for
children and adults alike. Reviews have placed the ride as ‘outscoring
the movie’ the Scooby-Doo Spooky Coaster is now Movie World’s number
one attraction!
Nominated for a “Special Applications” award in the prestigious
International Laser Display Association (ILDA) 2002 awards, Laservision
is optimistic that their latest attraction will gain similar accolades
to those awarded previously for their outstanding creativity and
technical flair.
The enormous success of the Spooky Coaster proves that there
remains credible and effective ways to thrill a 21st Century audience
with themed illusions created with smoke and mirrors!
Scooby-Doo and all related characters and elements are trademarks of Hanna-Barbara.
Stella-Ray, Data ~Pump and Sinodial ~ Series and all related elements are trademarks of Laservision Macro-Media
