AmusementPark
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A 'Halo' amusement park will tour the US this summer
Finally, it's time to see if Warthogs are really that difficult to drive in person. Halo: Outpost Discovery is a 300,000 square foot, traveling amusement park packed with experiences from Xbox's pivotal sci-fi series, and it's set to start touring the US this summer. The show will land in Orlando, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston and finally Anaheim between July and September.
Swings and suspension wire help make VR feel far more real
If you're obsessed with the rise and rise of virtual reality, the last few weeks have been busy. SXSW was followed by GDC, and both events made a huge deal on the potential of the new platform / media format, / technology. This time, we're hopping across the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo, where media company Recruit is hosting "The Future Amusement Park" -- which is a bit of a stretch. Recruit is the same organization that showcased some unusual tech for restaurants a few years back, and this time around it believes its VR demos and experiences exceed what we've seen before, coining the brave term; "Super VR". Unlike the virtual arcade we saw at Sundance, the theme here was more about adding physical stimulus outside the headset: wind, water and, well, wings. Become a penguin, (literally) swinging above the Tokyo skyline, and taking to a tiny soccer field with only one hand. Huh? Let's strap on some goggles and see.
Ubisoft is building a tiny indoor theme park in Malaysia
If you were excited about Nintendo's deal to put its characters in Universal theme parks, chew on this: the publisher behind games like Assassin's Creed, Just Dance and the Raving Rabbids games is building it's own amusement park. No kidding -- Ubisoft has partnered with RSG, a Malaysian park developer, to create a 100,000+ square foot indoor facility in Kuala Lumpur featuring Ubisoft-themed rides, attractions and shows.
Israeli donkeys get WiFi-equipped for historical theme park
It's WiFi for your ass -- the animal kind -- and it's only available in Israel. Yes, as unreal and inappropriate as that proposition may seem, an historical amusement park located in the Middle Eastern country will offer tourists the opportunity to tweet, email and upload photos on-the-fly from the back of a burro. Known as Kfar Kedem, or Village of Yore (sounds exciting!), the unique attraction attempts to reenact life from the Common Era's First and Second centuries, albeit with a healthy dose of wireless internet. So far, only five of the village's 30 available donkeys are currently outfitted with routers, but park manager Menachem Goldberg's toying with an expansion to the rest of his "fleet." Sure, a biblical ren faire might not be your number one vacation destination, but if you're in the area, there's no way you can pass up this low-tech ride back in time.
Disney World's Haunted Mansion gets interactive upgrade, digital spooks (video)
It may not be as scary as Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents, but the Florida theme park's Haunted Mansion just got a ghostly upgrade. The ride's grand finale, which previously positioned hitchhiking ghosts -- by way of half-silvered mirrors -- alongside unsuspecting visitors, is now reportedly using a series of digital mirrors and sensors to make things more interactive. As opposed to just popping up next to passengers, Disney's Ezra, Gus, and Phineas are now equipped to rip your head off, blow it up balloon-style, and send it flying. Sure it sounds scary, but this is Disney, the same company that didn't see the nightmare-inducing capabilities of a robotic Obama. For a peek at the new creepers, peep the video after break.
South Korea doubles up, now getting two robot theme parks
Thrill seekers and robot admirers alike can mark South Korea down as a must-see destination in the coming years, as it will soon be home to not one, but two robot theme parks. Yeah, we already knew that one of these fantasmical places were on the planning block, but just today the Commerce Ministry "announced a proposal to build two parks by 2013 for $1.6 billion." Reportedly, each park will mesh culture and entertainment with robot technology, and while one will be built in Incheon, the other will be erected some 242 miles south of Seoul in the port city of Masan. A feasibility study slated for next year is apparently the only piece of red tape still holding this project back, but if the bigwigs in South Korea shut the whole thing down, we'll gladly take 'em here on this side of the lake.[Image courtesy of SciFi]
Wurlybird indoor 'amusement park ride': better stock up on the sawdust
Let's face it: even though most amusement parks promise the grownups drunken fun while the kiddies puke their guts out on the rides, in reality you end up spending the entire vacation following your brats around the park and making sure they don't attack anymore of those litigious costumed characters. Well what if you could offer little Timmy and Janie an "amusement park"-style ride...right in their own home?!? Enter the Wurlybird Flyer from Wurlybird Ltd, a "kid-powered," merry-go-round-like contraption that securely holds two of your vicious monsters beloved little tykes and allows them to spin themselves into delirious fun, a religious awakening, or uncontrollable vomiting, whichever comes first. Launching this spring, the Wurlybird comes in either a self-assembled Junior version for kids 3 to 8, or as a fully-assembled Flyer version that bumps the maximum age up to 10. No word on pricing so far, but considering that the demo reel just screams cheesy British infomercial, we doubt that either of these models is going to break the bank.
