When you're dealing with a property as huge as Iron Man... yeah, it really should be on the level of FJ or Spider-Man. Also, there are 4 or 5 different variants on the Spider-Man ride system used throughout the world (not by Uni). So that definitely was an option.
Or, you know, they could've put some innovation forward and come up with something cool.
And Iron Man is all about the latest and greatest. So why wouldn't that fit the storyline?
First of all, HKDL has major space constraints to worry about--we don't even know if anything else would've been feasible given the land. But let's say this is Roller Coaster Tycoon and there's no issues about money space, or general business tactics whatsoever. What do we have here?
-You need Iron Man to fly. What simulates flying that's NOT a Kuka arm? Soarin'? Seems boring. Come up with something new? Really, what would be a feasible and practical way to simulate the fast-paced flight of Iron Man? You could build a flying roller coaster a la Superman at Six Flags, but then everyone would complain about a big steel roller coaster in the way of everything. There's really no way to practically simulate flying, you've pretty much seen all they can do with Peter Pan and E.T.--the logistics of fast flight in a theme park ride are pretty tough. That leaves you with...a simulator.
-You need stuff to be happening around you. Iron Man doesn't just fly around, he fights bad guys. How do you bring that to guests? 10000 animatronics? It's impossible to make animatronics move in a way that would be satisfactory to a comic book ride. That pretty much leaves you with...yeah, 3-D.
I hear a lot of complaints but no realistic suggestions as to how it could've been any better. Also, the argument that an Iron Man ride should be high-tech is kind of bogus, because the whole idea of a theme park ride is to hide the mechanisms that actually make it, well, a theme park ride. So who cares how low-tech the system is, that's not what the ride will be advertising.
Really, I don't see a better alternative. Even if Disney could design a knock-off of Spiderman, what would the ride vehicle be? How does being on the ground the entire time do justice to Iron Man? It makes you a passive role in the storyline. And as to an FJ variant...I think 'magic bench' is the best they will ever do for a ride of that type.
It's funny that Disney gets criticized for not pushing forward...maybe it's because the second they release a concept, it gets beaten to death. I'd be hesitant to develop anything too!
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I disagree...it's basically a regular 3D film that is made with motion in mind...I'm guessing the budget for this is pretty small.
A small budget doesn't take away from the talent involved in making a 3-D film all from one continuously moving perspective with the perception of it being one continuous shot. I can't do that, I'm personally not talented enough. Can you?
We spend over a third of those rides in the air. And as for your "passive" argument about the Spider-Man ride system... how are you not just as passive in a simulator? At least in the SM system you're in the open air and moving in and out of sets. Why can't that SM simulator be "hovering" and "flying" around? Saying that a giant ST simulator is the only way to simulate flight is ridiculous. You can simulate flight a lot of different way. Or make a combination element. JUST putting it in a beefed up Star Speeder (which, true, we don't know for sure that's what they're doing) would be lazy. And just because one of US can't give you a precise detailed description of what else we could do, doesn't mean nothing else could be done. These people do this for a living, for cash money, and spend years on projects. They've got time to develop crazy stuff. It's up to the company to implement it. And right now it looks like the company said "Well, they don't have ST, let's just slap some IM on a simulator because it did gangbusters in China."
