By Jonathan Kimak
June 17th was the day of days at Disneyland’s California Adventure theme park. They officially opened Toy Story Mania, the newest and most technologically advanced ride in all of Disney.
The ride consists of you getting into a little two-seater vehicle, donning 3-D glasses and playing virtual carnival games with Toy Story characters. The games also have a 4-D element in that some things that you do, like popping balloons with darts, can result in you getting air blown in your face or water shot at you (if you hit a virtual water balloon). The vehicle keeps track of your score, but of course just like real carnival games, you don’t actually win anything.
It takes 150 computers to run all the aspects of the ride, including 56 computers running Windows XP to control the 56 game screens on the ride. So at least Disney is smart enough to not use Vista. Ride time is about 6 minutes and the wait time for a new ride during the peak of summer is around sometime next wednesday if you get in line today.
[ Toy Story Mania ] VIA [ Mechatronics Zone ]
Best ride ever!! I actually work for Disney and rode the one at Disney World (yes there is one there too!) about a month ago. It’s unbelievably impressive. I wasn’t expecting anything like it. You pull the string on the gun and when you release, whatever it is your shoot flies out of the gun and hits the target on the screen! (at least it seems like it flies out of the gun!!!!) Highly recommended!!