Monday, June 18, 2012

Is This the Ride System for Pirates for Shanghai Disneyland?

Take a look at some images from the Patent for a new type of show vehicle! Created by Mark Sumner who was behind the ride systems for Soarin' Over California, Test Track, Grizzly River Run, Tower of Terror and the just opened Radiator Springs Racers! It appears to be a new type of boat for a Pirates of The Caribbean-style attraction! Best guess is that this will be for Shanghai which is rumored to be shaping up a very original ride system park! Shanghai looks to be getting a Tron coaster instead of a Space Mountain and with this Pirates attraction will make for two incredible sounding attractions that do not exist anywhere else in the world!
What makes this ride sytsem different from every other Pirates of The Caribbean attraction in every other Disney Park is that the boats are on two independent bogies (front and back) that are “operable to independently propel, with linear motors, the front and rear bogies at the same or differing first and second velocities by applying a magnetic force to reaction plates on the bogies. The track assembly includes a joined section and a divided section, which includes a primary track on which the front bogie travels and a secondary track, spaced apart from the primary track, on which the rear bogie travels. The boat may be rotated to any orientation in the divided track section.” Now, what exactly does this mean? Read below for more details!
Not only can the boats move forward and back, but the back of the boat will be on a second “track”, allowing for the back to speed up faster than the front, thus spinning the boat AROUND. Even better… the patent exposes another interesting use for this technology on the 4th page where it shows the boat turning sideways to rotate around a central “show scene” like the hands on a clock.

My guess is that the attraction will be more like the movies than the classic Pirates attraction we all know and love here at Disneyland! But why the need to spin around a show scene? Are the show scenes that detailed and complex? Are they to be spun around a battle scene or a wild storm like we saw in the third Pirates movie? Only time will tell, but the possibilities seem endless!

The finale may also involve an outdoor Splash Mountain style plunge, with the boats exiting out of the mouth of “Skull Rock” and plunging down through the wreckage of a doomed pirate ship impaled upon the rocky shoreline (standing in for the same visual effect as the Briar Patch on Splash Mountain.)

Sounds amazing doesn't it?


Source: http://www.google.com/patents?id=EM0AAgAAEBAJ&zoom=4&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

2 comments:

  1. Looks awesome! I just wonder if they will make a Chow Yun Fat animatronic. Or the sad pirate song from the third movie. Well I do like the original though..yo ho yo ho!

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  2. i just love that when you think that all the ride systems have been made that someone says what if we did this? that is what amazes me the most! how do you take what's familiar and totally make it feel new again! i hope to have the opportunity to go to shanghai and check out their disneyland!

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