Forget those folding maps. Visitors to Walt Disney Co.’s new California Adventure could be using handheld electronic gadgets to find their way around and learn more about rides and attractions.
Barry Braverman, senior vice president and executive producer of Walt Disney Imagineering, is hoping to create a kind of virtual tour for interested visitors using personal digital assistants. The devices could allow visitors to key in on the things that strike their fancy, he said. The notion still is conceptual, but Braverman said he believes there are enough behind-the-scenes stories at California Adventure to entice visitors, even after a ride is over.
“The park is rich in content,” he said. “But a visit doesn’t last long (in time).”
Braverman’s plan is to put the park’s stories into an electronic format for handheld devices that guests could purchase or rent to “deepen their understanding” of the story lines found in the park.
At California Adventure, every detail is geared toward making guests feel like new arrivals to the Golden State, from the postcard look of the entry to the old-time boardwalk look of Paradise Pier. More than half a dozen boardwalks were studied to design Paradise Pier alone.
Those are the kinds of stories Braverman thinks Disney fans and other visitors may want to find out more about via handheld devices. Another might be how Soarin’ Over California,a virtual reality hang gliding ride,might not have happened without the help of an old erector set.
Mark Sumner, a technical director of ride engineering for Walt Disney Imagineering, was one of a group of designers given the task of figuring out how to lift 87 people at a time into the ride’s 80-foot Imax dome. And though Sumner and architect Coulter Winn had worked on other lift rides in Florida, the placement of an audience into what was a type of flight simulator was daunting.
“(Soarin’) was the least defined of the attractions at California Adventure going into the project,” Sumner said in an interview.
After trying several ideas using escalators and elevators that were deemed too cumbersome, Sumner spent a holiday weekend at home sketching designs for the ride. He finally hit on an idea he thought would work,and dug out his old erector set to build a model.
That model,along with virtual reality tests and the Disneyland “Star Tours” simulator,resulted in the Soarin’ Over California, which is one of the premier attractions at the new park.
“It was a combination of high tech and low tech,” Sumner said.
That’s the kind of story line that aviation aficionados might appreciate on Braverman’s virtual tour.
This wouldn’t be your run-of-the-mill museum tour, though. He wouldn’t want tourists to have to be glued to an audio tape during visits, Braverman said.
“It has to be user-friendly,” he said. “We don’t want to take away from the communal feel (of the park).”
Nor would it be a guided tour like “Walk in Walt’s Footsteps” or “Welcome to Disneyland,” walking tours of Disneyland that are available to Disney Club members.
Braverman said he believes the virtual tour has “great potential.” He speculated that handheld devices could provide communications for visitors, who could do everything from find each other more easily in the park to access details of a particular ride or show. Another option might be to let guests take digital photos during their visit and pick them up when they leave.
“(The device) could even look like a toy,” he said.
The Internet, too, is likely to come into play, Braverman said, perhaps with sites that offer vacationers a chance to research the park at home before they visit,or continue their visit after they get back home. n
