Enter (shriek!) Bizarro world: New Six Flags ride wants to tell you a story

[29yrswithaGApass]

Source: Star Ledger

 

Enter (shriek!) Bizarro world: New Six Flags ride wants to tell you a story

by S. James Snyder/For The Star-Ledger

Thursday May 28, 2009, 3:04 PM

 

 

Bizarro. Where: Six Flags Great Adventure & Wild Safari, 1 Six Flags Boulevard, Jackson. When: Rides operate 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Fridays; 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturdays; 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Sundays; 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays. How much: $49.99 adult park pass (online discounts available), $29.99 children shorter than 54 inches; free to children 2 and younger. Call (732) 928-1821 or visit sixflags.com/GreatAdventure.

 

Come for the speed, but stay for the story line. That's the thinking behind the latest addition to Six Flags Great Adventure & Wild Safari: Bizarro, a 450-foot, 61-mph superhero thrill ride.

 

"When riders come here, what they want is a variety of experiences," says Larry Chickola, Six Flags chief engineer and the designer behind such rides as Great Adventure's "Kingda Ka," the world's fastest coaster with speeds in excess of 120 mph. "They don't all want the biggest or the tallest or the fastest. Different riders are interested in different things. What they are all looking for is something different, and the key is to come up with entirely new experiences that sweep them off their feet."

 

In recent years, that new experience has come mostly in the form of new materials, faster speeds or more ambitious acrobatics. The focus has been on accelerating the adrenaline; on refining the rush. But with Bizarro -- a ride that was developed to make use of the existing trains and infrastructure of the Medusa roller coaster, which was retired last year -- the focus has gone primarily into plot, story, and multimedia.

 

"The first thing many will notice about the ride is the audio," Chickola says. "There's an elaborate soundtrack that accompanies the ride, which ends with a Bizarro hip-hop song that was written specifically for the roller coaster. It's quite the endeavor, to tell so much of the story through sound. There's a mobile mp3 unit that had to be specially developed, which travels on board the ride."

 

The Bizarro ride is based on a DC Comic character who is effectively the mirror image of Superman, operating in a world -- and possessing powers -- that are the opposite of the Superman universe. Whereas Superman lives on Earth, has heat vision and freeze breath, Bizarro hails from the planet Htrae, and uses both his freeze vision and heat breath.

 

It's a universe Chickola and a team of 25 designers worked for seven months to create, synchronizing the action of the ride with the plot-oriented soundtrack. The engineer says his favorite part of the ride comes at the bottom of the first drop, as riders are shot through Bizarro's freeze vision.

 

"You plunge through this portal, crossing over into the Bizarro world, and we've created this tight conduit with mist and lights," he says. "It almost looks like you're going to hit this wall, and instead you soar through this glowing fog at 61 mph. I call it the ride's wash cycle."

 

From there, the train loops above fire-belching cannons -- riders can actually feel the heat radiation for the 40-foot-tall cannons -- and zigzags between skyscrapers before finally crashing through the corner of a building. Early fans of the ride, which opened last week, are already pointing to the "Auger of Doom" as a highlight, as riders are hurtled through interlocking corkscrews that shoot them head-first at a misty, glowing, spike-shaped structure.

 

Bizarro would appear to be a smart business move. It repurposes an old track, cutting down on development costs, and the story-minded Bizarro adds to the diversity of the Great Adventure portfolio, perhaps reaching out to a new group of customers who may be looking for entertainment closer to home amid the recession.

 

With Bizarro in New Jersey and the new Terminator ride launching in California, Chickola says Six Flags is exploring ways of creating visceral experiences that engage riders in a whole new way.

 

"If you put a roller coaster in the middle of a field somewhere you'll get people to come and ride it," he says. "But if you can add a story into that, and allow riders to relive the story every time they ride it through characters and multimedia, you can get twice the bang for your efforts. You get the same thrills of a ride experience, but now there's a whole new story you can relate to and talk about."

[Railer]

I really like what Six Flags has been doing lately. I saw a video of Teminator's Que and Pre-Show and it really good. I like the level of Themeing, and that it is not "Kiddie Stuff" with that level of themeing. I can't wait until next Season to see what they come up with next.