In typical executive bullet-point fashion, Ouimet distilled his Amusement Dark vision into three S’s: strategy, storytelling and social interaction.
The strategy portion envisions a fleet of dark rides with a highly interactive interface and a digital infrastructure allowing for constant upgrades. Think Toy Story Midway Mania video game screens with Buzz Lightyear Astro-Blasters ray guns.
The storytelling aspect focuses on traditional topics such as pirates, dinosaurs, dragons and cowboys and Indians that don’t require expensive IPs from major media companies.
And the social component seeks to include gaming elements that encourage competition between family and friends while driving repeat visits.[...]
Avoiding the one-size-fits-all approach also allows Cedar Fair to capitalize on constantly improving technology. Iron Reef at Knott's will feature backlighted imagery and 10-times brighter cameras that were not available when Guardian was built at Canada's Wonderland.[...]
While animatronics have not played prominent roles in Guardian or Iron Reef, Ouimet expects to work on future Amusement Dark projects with San Bernardino-based Garner Holt Productions, which created life-like figures for recent refurbishments of the 1969 Timber Mountain Log Ride and the 1960 Calico Mine Ride at Knott’s.
With no Amusement Dark projects currently in the pipeline, it’s unlikely we'll see any new dark rides added at any Cedar Fair parks in 2016 — but that hasn’t stopped Ouimet from planning for 2017 and beyond.
"We have blank spaces and empty boxes at every park," Ouimet said.
Read the rest at LATimes
Knott's News: Fingers crossed that they're working on a Bear-y Tales comeback with Garner Holt.
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