Screens in Rides: Are they really that necessary?

Before I get started, I thought it best that I mention: I'm a huge fan of theme parks. I take them very seriously. Not many people think that they can be an art form, but believe me, they can be. Hopefully, I will be able to prove this in my posts.

Now, as this is my first post for this blog, I figured I would tie it in to the most recent attraction opening from a major theme park: Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon at Universal Studios Orlando.

Personally, I would have rather had a Conan ride.

There's plenty to be said about this ride already (Best said here by park-humor website Parkeology), but with this ride opening, a question should be asked: do modern theme park rides rely too much on screens?

In recent years, the number of rides and attractions using screens and films as a central part of the action has dramatically increased. Originally, screens were exclusively used by motion simulators and 3D & 4D movies (at least, before you cold experience 3D movies in literally any movie theater). The first major 3D theme park movie, to my knowledge, was The Sensorium, built for the ill-fated, short-lived Six Flags Power Plant in Baltimore, Maryland.

If you want to learn what this was, and why it failed, then browse the articles here at Theme Park University.

While Power Plant was only open for four years, The Sensorium still ended up being really popular. And while that film has fallen into relative obscurity, the first major motion simulator for a theme park hasn't.

I only went on the original once, and I still absolutely adored it.

Star Tours officially opened in 1987, and changed the theme park industry forever. Now, motion simulators are incredibly common, and at least one can be found at most major theme parks. Universal especially has adopted this technology. In the two Orlando parks, 9 rides have heavy usage of screens, either moving between them or sitting in front of them. And their upcoming ride, Fast & Furious: Supercharged, is also supposed to rely heavily on screens. And that's without mentioning the Terminator and Shrek shows, which are 3D/4D films.

So, why are screens in rides so popular now? I think I know the answer.

Three words: They. Are. Cheap.

Classic theme park rides, such as The Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Jungle Cruise use many set pieces, props, and audio-animatronics as part of their storytelling. Rides like those are still built today, but they can be quite expensive and take a long time to build. Companies like Sim-Ex Iwerks have a literal catalog of simulator films to download and put into a motion simulator. They're easier to make, cheap to build, cheap to maintain, and can be constructed in a short time.

But with that, people lose sight of what labors of love the classic rides are.

All the effort put in, all the little details, these rides just leave more of an impact. Disney still understands that there's a balance between screens and sets with animatronics. The new Pirates of the Caribbean - Battle for the Sunken Treasure at Shanghai Disneyland uses both to great effect, as shown here. There's a reason that it won a Thea award 5 months after it opened.

There is a balance. One can only hope that other parks realize this too.