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IAAPA 2016

Feb 25, 2014
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Since the yearly IAAPA Expo opened up the trade show floor yesterday, it's a good time to discuss what's being shown off this year.

Yesterday had the usual "parks with upcoming coasters revealing their new coaster/ride vehicles, trains, lead cars." reveals. (InvadR at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, Jet Ski Rescue coaster at SeaWorld Texas, Merlin's Mayhem at Dutch Wonderland to name a few.)

Meanwhile TrioTech announced their version of the flying theater, one opening at Pier 39 in San Francisco next year in the Summer, somewhere in China in 2018 and more cities will be announced soon. They also announced their Ghostbusters 5D ride in Heide Park, and a Fear the Walking Dead walk through attraction that'll be opening Spring 2017 in Vegas's Fremont Street.

Other then that, at a initial glance it seems every major manufacturer is doing a flying theater, and everyone and their mother is doing some sort of VR attraction. (Coke VR! VR 9D!)

Also, while it was already mentioned in the HHN thread Sally Corp has a Five Night's at Freddy's darkride concept. An' it also looks like they have a Casper darkride as well.

Finally, one of the new things Dynamic Attractions is showing off looks to be some sort of rotating theater. (I think it's called the Dynamic Motion Theater.) It's a circular theater that can have the screen slide/open to reveal large set pieces behind it. It also looks like that concept has also won them a Brass Ring award for "Best New Product".

That's mainly what's been shown off so far, today there might be more announcements. Either way I see a good chunk of media who's mentioning they'll be hearing more from Dynamic Attractions today.
 
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Now that another IAAPA Expo has wrapped up, a couple notes and thoughts.

When it comes to the new stuff shown off, the thing that definitely got the biggest buzz was the Five Night's at Freddy's darkride concept from Sally. Personally I'm all for it, and honestly I'd rather see this get built then the TWD ride concept.

The other new attraction concept that got a good amount of buzz was Dynamic Attractions Dynamic Motion Theater, this looks like a fun concept with a moving/spinning theater with a screen that slides to reveal big set pieces/live special effects etc. I could honestly see something like this being used in Universal's 3rd gate.

Other then that, another intruiging new concept was the compact launch coaster proposed by Mack. This looks great for smaller/midsize parks, and it seems to be their equivilant to Premier Ride's Sky Rocket 2 models. Though Mack has a nice advantage in offering forwards/backwards facing trains, a train of spinning cars, and both on the same track thanks to a turntable station option.

General announcement-wise, the main one was definitely TrioTech talking about their Flyer attraction, the Ghostbusters 5-D ride and the Fear the Walking Dead walkthrough. It does seem like the company is taking several steps up, though I hope the quality of their attractions rise as well since so far they haven't impressed me with either Wonder Mountain Guardian or Voyage to the Iron Reef.

Finally, it was hard to miss all the VR stuff at IAAPA. An' I noticed a good amount of people discussing that quite frankly it was too much. While there are applications where VR can work, such as showing off a proof of concept/preview video, or some smaller use for a game...it doesn't have the best track record as a final product for a park attraction, let alone being used in any major theme park. Now family entertainment centers, I can see VR working. But it seems a lot of these companies are aiming for theme park applications and that's just not working.
 
Things cycle - VR was at a hype peak when they built DisneyQuest. Just before that 3D was all the rage in attractions.

Now 3D is waning again and lookie... VR rises again.

The inherent problem of having designers with little history and massive egos is that they have to learn from their own mistakes rather than intuit from the mistakes of others.
 
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