Shellemonster

Hey everyone, I'm in the general area around Walibi Belgium for a little over a month and I was wondering if there will be any off-season events at the park? I'm a little out of my element with these foreign parks. It's a bit of a shame that I'm missing a this location, and I'll definitely be driving by and taking a picture of Turbine to share. Thanks!

I absolutely love where this is going, but it of course is in an early form so I'm very happy that you are asking for our input. Number 1 for me is the ability to interact and experience your creation realistically. My ideal situation would be to play this from the role of a designer/manager where you could "go undercover" and ride the rides, wander the park, run the operations booth, etc. Since you said this will have mini-games, one of those games could be running operations which would appeal to the harcore and the casual market if presented right. Beyond that, dark rides would be very important to me. That could be as simple as a steel building generator where you define a floor plan from above and a height, then it produces a building to place our rides inside. Even better would be the ability to define that building profile then define inner walls, wall heights, and roof heights. Perhaps this could be presented on a grid for easy construction, colors on the grid could represent a different height. I found this picture to give a general idea of what I mean... Also the track forming looks effective and fun, perhaps some sort of tool to smooth the shapes out, and a dynamic G-force display. I'm worried if you mess with the track too much then it could create extreme kinks where the G's will spike. Alternatively you could make a minimum bend radius (toggleable option) that corresponds to real coasters capability. For example, Bollinger & Mabillard sit down would have a much lower curvature than Maurer Sohne X-Car which is capable of super tight turns. Last but certainly not least is some sort of hook to make both the casual and hardcore gamer come back, be it increasing your park's rating, number of guests, etc. Maintenance is not as interesting as improving your park to work towards some reward. I would like perhaps unlockable levels to work on, not limiting the rides available. A bit of a ramble, but hopefully that helps. Also, if you could define your target market that would be helpful. edit: make custom objects easy to import by accepting a standard file type, like IGES or STEP or similar with a limit on number of vertexes so the system doesnt crash if you accidently import a complicated object.

^Speaking of Adventure Island, that's why you can't do the hike through the canyons up to the Canyon River Rapids anymore. That was such a cool thing to just get off a slide and go up through the exit pool up through a twisting canyon pouring water down on you. There was so much water and concrete it was somewhat easy to slip and hurt yourself I guess. Sad to see this place go, looks like it would have been fun.

That picture of the expansion shows that it's built on level with the rest of the park, high enough for utilidors, but I believe the expansion was going to be without those underground pathways. It sure looks like a road is being built right under dumbo and curving around the front edge of Ariel's ride. Is that an optical illusion or perhaps for some water element?

It's SPACE WEATHER!

So, the Alveys and Westcoaster were in on the package holder event today. They were tweeting on #potterwatch along with others giving out some pretty good ride spoilers such as, Haha, just had to get some fresh air on this board where everything is much happier than OthUr sites. If any of the site mods actually did get to go and were't f-in with people, let us know how it went!

I've been out of this for a while, but something has been nagging me. Below is a list of contractors for the HP project that was posted by Teebin at Orlando United. Ride System -- Empire Dynamic Structures Limited. That's a dead give away that Universal is employing a Robocoaster track and system for the Forbidden Journey. Empire Dynamic Structures Limited website They seem to be the robocoaster supplier for this continent. As noted in this link, the company is also called RoboCoaster Ltd. I doubt anything employed by Universal for the forbidden journey will be a true rollercoaster track, but they can make powered cars run along a flat track. Just thought this was interesting, sorry if I just missed it already. A&E Services -- Post, Buckley, Shuh & Jernigan, Inc Audio -- Technomedia Solutions, LLC Automata -- Austin 2 Paris, Inc Building -- Met-Con, Inc Building Shell -- BUCON, Inc Conveyor System -- Magic Carpet Curtain Divider Installation -- InterAmerica Stage, Inc Demolition -- Central Environmental Services, Inc Directional signs -- Sign Producers, Inc Exterior and Interior Theming -- The Nassal Company Facade Mock-up -- The Nassal Company Lighting/Lighting Design -- Point of Light Media -- CafeFX Miscellaneous Services -- Smart Ride, Inc Projection/Projection video -- Electrosonic Systems Prop Fabrication -- Cinnabar Florida, Inc Prop Installation -- Austin 2 Paris, Inc Props -- Gentle Giant Studios Ride System -- Empire Dynamic Structures Limited Ride Show Supervisor System -- ITEC Entertainment Corporation Seat Module Assembly -- Roush Industries, Inc Show Equipment -- Advanced Animations Show Equipment -- Advanced Entertainment Technology, Inc Show Equipment Package No. 01 -- Setpoint Show Set Design -- Lexington Acquisition Special Effects -- Backstage Technologies, Inc Special Effects -- Entech Creative Industries Corp. Themed Concrete -- UCC Group, Inc

X should have been saying, "I heard you like cruise ships, so we gave you a cruise ship so you could cruise on your cruise ship! Hah!"

Thanks for keeping the important pictures coming. I guess no one from this site is visiting IOA at the moment. Halloween Horror Nights started though, so perhaps we will get some good updates.

From that document, Located in Hogwarts castle, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey™ is a thrilling new state-of-the-art attraction that will bring the magic, characters and stories of Harry Potter to life in ways never before experienced. The queue through Hogwarts castle is an attraction in itself. Waiting in line should be fun for this ride.

So, um, that's ... neat. The shops will be cool for sure, but they are easily justified in the planning because they produce revenue. I guess my broke ass just gets to watch parents buy stuff for their kids. I think they held back information about shows, because there is nothing mentioned so far that would indicate they aren't doing any rumored show-like entertainment. I suppose Magi-Quest would fall under that category? One can hope. Not to sound like a downer... the concept art is great, the fly arounds are cool, and the whole thing has me very excited. There. Edit: oh the lovely word filter that keeps my mouth clean

That is exciting stuff, ryno. We'll get the official word tomorrow when they hold the press conference. Does anyone know the details of where the conference can be watched live? Is a website broadcasting it or will Universal provide some way to watch?

Hey. First time post on this thread. Im about 2 hours from orlando, and a big potter fan as well. In your response to the "soar over Hogwarts" statement you made: I luckily enough ran into the VP of Universal Engineering (long story how that happened, lol, it was like a million to one chance) about 6 months ago. He said regarding the dark ride in the castle that it would combine the floor movements of the spider-man ride and the flying feeling you get from the "Soarin' " ride at Disney. And he also said that spider-man would have nothing on this ride. He said the ride would be like taking a trip though the entire world of harry potter. So, i don't think there will be an actual outside ride at TWWOHP, but i think it will be moreso the sensation/visual aspect you will get when riding the HP ride. Anyways, thought i'd share that. I suppose I wasn't clear enough, but I thought that the ride in the box will involve some sort of an approximation of flying over Hogwarts in video or model form. What you said makes perfect sense though, I'm sure the flying sections will be on Soarin' style curved screens, in fact, we already have pictures of them... I bet the transitions between screens will happen like Spiderman where your vehicle gets whipped around from screen to screen, maybe even flipped between screens. Awesome. It's great that you got to meet the VP of engineering, that must have been an awesome experience. Thanks for sharing.

Something interesting I noticed the other day... Universal doesn't want the ad reposted so of course I will honor their wishes. In said ad, part of it mentioned that you will soar over Hogwarts. This was said along with things like shoot aliens in MIB, swing on rooftops with Spidey, etc. In other words, the key focus of each major rides. I can't wait to soar over Hogwarts, and I don't care if it's in a car or on a broom.

How about those hidden tracks? Has anyone gotten a cool suprise track? (hold HRRR button ~5sec and enter a number 1-999)

Great pictures guys! I couldn't figure out what tower that was from the concept art, but I'm sure it will all come together soon enough.

It's very likely that Dragon Challenge is only part of the real name. Universal already has rights to use "Harry Potter" and other related names and now they have the rights to this name which gives them legal protection over anything close to those two names. In other words, it could be named "Harry Potter and the Dragon Challenge" or "Triwizard Tournament: Dragon Challenge" while still protecting the name and not giving it all away in a public manner. Personally, Harry Potter and the Dragon Challenge sounds pretty good to me.

This is the park thread, so first I'll give my BBW opinion then a good story. I will personally miss the ride very much, but I feel even more for all the kids who will grow up with fond memories of this ride and come to find it was removed. I would love to see a custom B&M terrain flyer take it's place as long as it features a face down river drop and turn. It think it could be done, there is enough room to make a large diameter turn along the Rhine and make the forces bearable. Alas! We won't know for a while. I'm just glad they aren't removing Nessy. I have even better memories of that ride. Four or so years ago I got to ride Loch Ness for the first time and it was incredible. My mother and I got into the station at the end of the night in a pouring rain storm. Cracking lightning bolts were threateningly close, and there were only two other people in the loading area. We figured they wouldn't load us because it was obviously unsafe with all the electricity in the air. But they did. It was the most incredible ride I've ever had on a roller coaster. We rode up the hill with lightning cracking and thunder booming. It felt so fast and so amazing in the darkness, and the final tunnel helices took us out of the rain to dry for a minute. After we unloaded we wanted to buy the picture very badly, but they told us "Sorry, we shut the cameras down to protect them from lightning." WTF?

That was a cool TV special. Sorry that we're messing up your hype schedule, Universal... So, I'd like to bring this up again to see if anyone has an opinion about it. Do those look like linear induction plates? It's been unofficially confirmed that the black track on the left is the car track, and the plates come out of that. Plus they go around the 3D screens. Thoughts? Cool Beans.

Sometimes I just stop getting updates from threads. That happened here, and I didn't think anything was going on. Guess I'm wrong. If anyone wants me to, I'll repost the pictures, I'm not sure why they went down because they worked after I had them up for a while. Anyhoo, great picture update at Orlando United. Scroll to the bottom to see the pictures. Universal also released a poster for the new attraction which has a great view of how they plan to build the castle. You can pretty much see where the pieces from Nassal are going to fit on it.

At least when you rebuild it, the structure will most likely be better than the first version. Not that the first was lacking, but the second time can be just as satisfying.

Sorry to double post, but I'd like to spark a little more life into this forum. Keep this picture in mind when looking at the picture following it. All following pictures courtesy screamscape.com's "spy" Oh and guess what, it looks like Harry Potter's great Big Box Ride is powerd by linear induction motors, crazy! Crazy awesomlely expensive.

Well if no one died then %$#@ it.

Awesome looking place, people always seem to be friendlier when you are at a smaller park by my experiences. I request that Robb does an awesome job with the TPR gran prix update because I profess to be a racing, karting enthusiast at the current time! Not that I have any doubts about the Alvey's update making skill, but perhaps a track overview would be in order?

Just got a survey from Universal asking me to rate a bunch of HP related stuff. Nothing new really, although they had me rate my interest in the "interactivity" of the land right up there along with exclusive HP merchandise as well the fact that it is indeed a theme park within a theme park, amongst other things. Actually, it's slightly unnerving to me why they chose to play up "theme park within a theme park" because of the many implications that could bring, mainly upcharge, but I'm also happy they wanted to know how I valued interactivity.