theme parks
Latest
Disney's decommissioned '20,000 Leagues' ride gets a second life in VR
A volunteer team has recreated Disney's old '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' ride in VR.
Sony reinventing PlayStation Home to be more like an MMO
PlayStation Home was a hugely anticipated feature for console fans, one that ultimately garnered mixed reviews and apathetic affection. Due to the reception, Sony has decided to reinvent the game lobby-slash-virtual-world to incorporate the best of themeparks, MMOs, and social networks. When it relaunches this fall, PlayStation Home will look radically different, resembling a sleek mall with plenty to do and faster functionality for those who want to get right to their games. But between playing commercial titles, gamers are encouraged to hang out for a while, which is where MMO elements come into play. The new Home has a number of districts, as an amusement park would, and in them players can pick up quests, go on treasure hunts, and explore these video game-themed zones to find hidden mysteries. Sony also promises that it will incorporate persistent, ongoing stories, similar to those you'd find in MMOs, such as an alien invasion that affects all of the areas. Sony is hoping that the 23 million Home users will embrace this new experience and form stronger social connections through it.
Disney imagineering long lines out of theme parks with military-grade monitoring systems
They've got a monorail system, IRL Muppets, and a house from the future, so we're not surprised that Disneyland is kicking its line-monitoring system into technological overdrive. Beneath Cinderella's iconic castle, a NORAD-style operation dedicated to eradicating downtime for visitors to the Magic Kingdom has sprung up, with a whole team tracking wait times, average number of rides ridden, and a whole bevy of other visitor-happiness metrics all over the park. From there, they can do things like re-route foot traffic to less-populated areas of the park with a mini-parade, adjust personnel at different attractions, or dispatch Jack Sparrow himself to liven up a Pirates line-waiter's afternoon. Chief Creative Executive Imagineer Bruce E. Vaughan dreams of "a day where there is memory built into these characters - they will know that they've seen you four or five times before and that your name is Bobby." Sounds delightfully frightening to us. But hey, it's all in the name of increasing visitor happiness, which we're sure goes hand in hand with visitor brokeness by the time they leave the park.
Robot Land theme park finally breaking ground in South Korea
Or, at least we hope it is. If you'll recall, we heard way back in August of 2007 that South Korea was set to begin construction on a robot-themed park. Here we are in 2009, and we're basically getting the same story all over again. Reportedly, the nation's Ministry of Knowledge Economy is expecting to get going on Robot Land this year, as the government has set aside $559 million for construction in Incheon. We're also told that actual plans for that second park have yet to materialize, making us wonder even more if this whole thing isn't slipping to vaporware status. At any rate, the parks would sure be good for the local economy (assuming anyone has the money to go), but we're at the point of recommending that you not hold your breath on seeing this up by the promised open date of year-end 2013.
