The longest ride in Europe, looking like an interactive Jungle Cruise with tigers, snakes, lost temples, and opening in less than three months from now? That's the great news of the day, coming from the excellent Port Aventura theme park in Spain and D&M has all details and artworks about this new ride called "Angkor : Lost Kingdom Adventure"!
Angkor : Lost Kingdom Adventure will be of course inspired by the famous ancient city of Angkor Wat, built between the ninth and fifteenth centuries and located in the jungles of Cambodia, near Siem Reap. I, personally, had the luck to have been many times at the real Angkor Wat, a real not-to-missed- wonder if you travel in South-East Asia. The jungle is so stick with the temples - see my own pictures below of the real Angkor site - that Angkor is one of the few places in the world where i thought that even with a $500M budget WDI Imagineers would never been able to reproduce it!
Angkor Wat is also one of the largest religious structure in the world is considered and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1992.
Back to this new Port Aventura attraction now, and the ride will focus on enjoyment for the whole family and all ages, ideal for those who want to have a fun time and soaking. MACK is the ride manufacturer and the attraction will be an "interactive boat ride" also known as "Splash Battle" in which visitors will embark on a raft equipped with water guns to shoot several interactive targets during the ride such as snakes emerging from the water, tigers, monkeys, stone elephants, and more. Guests will also be able during the ride to shoot at other boats and park visitors who will watch from outside the attraction.
"Angkor : Lost Kingdom Adventure" occupy an area of 10,500 square meters, enough to create its own mini-land within the China land itself. The attraction will be more than 300 meters long and the ride will last 10 minutes which will make it the longest ride (in time) in Europe, with a maximum capacity of 726 people per hour spread over a total of 14 boats up to 8 people per boat. The estimated cost of the attraction is 10 million euros.
Now, even with a 300 meters length, if the ride last 10 minutes it obviously will not be a fast raft ride and, considering that riders apparently might not be sit according to the attraction poster on the top, "Angkor: Lost Kingdom Adventure" seems to be a slow interactive raft family ride, which sounds fine to me.
And the good news is that "Angkor: Lost Kingdom Adventure" is scheduled to open with the start of the season on April 11, in two and a half months, just one day before DLP 22nd Anniversary! Port Aventura strategy is to open a new ride each year, a very good strategy indeed! - and a new one will come next year, in 2015, for Port Aventura 20th Anniversary!
Edited: One last interesting point as i've just been told that the renderings above were done for the most by illustrator/ concept artist Claudio Mazzoli, a former Disney/Landmark artist.
Below, three new promotional visuals for the ride.
They also released a short teaser - not showing a lot - that is embedded below.
Pictures: copyright Port Aventura
Amazing how much 10 million can buy if WDI is not involved... (seriuosly, if you gave WDI 10 million, they´d probably ask you where you want the new bathroom to be located).
ReplyDeleteI was going to say the same thing Jones!
ReplyDeleteThis ride look very nice, long and elaborate! With that money I don't even know if WDI could build a spinning Dumbo in Tokyo.
If I'm not wrong, spinning Flying Carpets at TDS costed about three times it. Anyway, Mazzoli is sadly well known because his beautiful artworks usually end on a truly poor result.
ReplyDeleteWe will see soon what the ride looks like in reality, MACK river rapid rides are from the 80's, so cost must be down...........
ReplyDeleteWIth a 14 million (US) budget, I really think the theme wont live up to the concepts - I hope I'm wrong however. -- I love the style of this attraction, hope it the best.