2010

Harry Potter Forbidden Journey Ride

Imagine that you want to engineer the ultimate amusement park ride. You want it to have thrilling motion effects like a roller coaster. You want it to have theatrical effects and sets like a typical indoor ride such as Disney’s Haunted Mansion. But then you want to blend those indoor sets into a 3D video experience, for example to give people the thrill of virtual flying. And then to add to the 3D effect, you want to project the video image onto the inside of a dome so that it stretches around and fills the peripheral vision.

It sounds like a tall order, but this kind of fully integrated ride technology does exist thanks to some incredible engineering. Perhaps the best example of it is the Harry Potter ride called Forbidden Journey at the Universal Theme Park, which opened in 2010 in Orlando, FL.

As riders board, they are seated in four-person cars, with all four in a row facing the same direction. If riders could see beneath the floor, they would realize that the seating is highly unusual. It is mounted on a huge robot arm with a maximum reach of 25 feet (7.62 meters) or so. That whole robot arm, one for each car, rolls down a track.

As each robot arm with passengers goes down the track, one of two things happens. Either the arm is passing through a theatrical set, or it is passing in front of a dome screen. The domes are immense and are mounted on a carousel holding six of them.

As the car centers itself inside a dome, the car and dome can track together to provide a video experience lasting for many seconds. While the video is playing in the dome, the robot arm can tilt, dive, and rumble to simulate the experience of motion that correlates with the moving image. When the robot arm is in a theatrical section, the arm can move the car in any direction to focus the riders’ attention.

This is a great example of engineers bringing incredible technology to millions of people to create an exciting, immersive experience.

SEE ALSO Under Friction Roller Coaster (1919), Robot (1921), 3D Glasses (1952).

Expo visitors ride a “robocoaster” in Hanover, Germany.