Built our own Soarin Ride
- Thread starter dreamersempire
- Start date
kittythepoohbear
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2005
I bow down to your greatness! 
That was fantastic!
That was fantastic!
Dan Murphy
We are family.
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2000
dreamersempire, I have seen a lot of neat stuff over the past 9 years here on the DIS, these are pretty near the top. You definitely qualify as a neat Disney nut, what wonderful pieces of work and appreciation for things you and your family obviously appreciate so well. Soarin', Illuminations, Mexico!!!!! Very, very cool. I have this thread subscribed to, and have you on my buddy list, hope to see more in the future. What a neat family!! 
And welcome to the DIS, hope we see you often, dreamer.
And welcome to the DIS, hope we see you often, dreamer.
moredisneyplease
Working towards more DVC!
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2008
OH MY GOSH! I'm sure non Disney folks might think this is a bit goofy but I think its the coolest thing ever!! And I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one that got tears over this. Thank you for posting! 
ibelieveinmagic
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2005
WOW!!!!! Can I comeover???
disney-super-mom
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2004
That was pretty incredible! I loved it! 
Clear out your guest room 'cause, OH YEAH.....I'M THERE!
Clear out your guest room 'cause, OH YEAH.....I'M THERE!
sarcasticblonde
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 21, 2007
I watched your Soarin' video and I thought it was very neat. I do have a question for you though. Did you create your own "Soarin'" film to watch during the ride? Or did you somehow find the actual one online? I ask because some of the scenes seem "familiar" and others I don't remember at all from the WDW ride. I thought maybe the ride is different at DCA? Just curious.
DisneyWorldWisher
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2006
Very nice work! Favorited!
I believe it is a unique film, non of the scenes are the same but they are of similar settings
I believe it is a unique film, non of the scenes are the same but they are of similar settings
dreamersempire
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2008
This is pretty fun for me. Last night I posted this kind of late and went to bed and just checked to see if anyone checked out the videos. I figured the way posts move through this busy forum here it could drop off without being noticed. But thankfully it wasn't!
I want to thank-you all for this really encouraging response, it means "the world" to us. When you decide to put in a TON of time and quite a bit of $$ you get a lot of puzzled responses from people who, well lets say don't have the same appreciation of WDW as we do
We'll try to answer some of your questions but the one right off the bat, the last thread was correct, we used all new film and it was intended to somewhat match the original. Our favorite is going over the waterfall and the riders seem to agree.
We were going to do the scents but didn't find a great way to do them. We did have two fans mounted up high inside the swinging bench and they came on and off at perfect times. My brothers son Eric is a techno genius and really made all that work. You really don't get a good enough shot of how we moved the bench back and forth at the right times, and it took lots of practice before we nailed down how to do that.
So I'll just say for now it took us 3 months to work it all out, the cost for everything including Illuminations and Mexico and all the Soain stuff was probably near $2000 but some of that came in long term investments like the "light-o-rama" units that were used during Illuminations, but my brother has been doing that for 3 years.
Thanks again
I want to thank-you all for this really encouraging response, it means "the world" to us. When you decide to put in a TON of time and quite a bit of $$ you get a lot of puzzled responses from people who, well lets say don't have the same appreciation of WDW as we do
We'll try to answer some of your questions but the one right off the bat, the last thread was correct, we used all new film and it was intended to somewhat match the original. Our favorite is going over the waterfall and the riders seem to agree.
We were going to do the scents but didn't find a great way to do them. We did have two fans mounted up high inside the swinging bench and they came on and off at perfect times. My brothers son Eric is a techno genius and really made all that work. You really don't get a good enough shot of how we moved the bench back and forth at the right times, and it took lots of practice before we nailed down how to do that.
So I'll just say for now it took us 3 months to work it all out, the cost for everything including Illuminations and Mexico and all the Soain stuff was probably near $2000 but some of that came in long term investments like the "light-o-rama" units that were used during Illuminations, but my brother has been doing that for 3 years.
Thanks again
Dan Murphy
We are family.
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2000
Did you video edit film clips found on the Net, or what? Really, dreamer, a fabulous piece of work there.
epcotbob
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2008
Thank you for all of the great replies!
My brother (dreamersempire) and I are true Disney Fanatics, especially Epcot, so we had alot of fun creating a mini-version at home.
To reply to some of the questions:
We began gathering video clips off of a bunch of DVDs, essentially anytime we saw a "flyover" shot that fit the Soarin theme. Alot of the clips came from DVDs called "Over California" and "Over Arizona", we also used some from the Planet Earth series (the waterfall).
We will add some behind-the-scenes videos later showing more detail on the set-up. But in short, for Soarin we used a 13 feet wide by 10 foot tall screen and used rear-projection to allow us to get the chair right up next to the screen. We would have loved to use the actual Soarin video, but had to make our own to get the picture quality we needed.
The hallway was constructed using black poly (we were on a budget!), with blue string lights from Menards. We used a 13 inch TV attached to a TV mount for the queue video.
For the lights we used 48 channels of Lightrama christmas light controllers and strung a bunch of lights around trees, poles, gardens, etc. as well as the "leaping lights".
For the Fireworks we used a homemade 32 channel controller connected to a computer to synchronize the ignition. We wrapped the fuses with nichrome wire with the controller sending 12 volts to the ingitors in sync with the music.
Fireworks are a little tricky to get the timing right, but essentially we would trigger the fuses about 1 second before we actually wanted them to ignite to account for the delay....it worked pretty well.
We switched between 2 cameras for the fireworks show to try and capture everything.
My brother (dreamersempire) and I are true Disney Fanatics, especially Epcot, so we had alot of fun creating a mini-version at home.
To reply to some of the questions:
We began gathering video clips off of a bunch of DVDs, essentially anytime we saw a "flyover" shot that fit the Soarin theme. Alot of the clips came from DVDs called "Over California" and "Over Arizona", we also used some from the Planet Earth series (the waterfall).
We will add some behind-the-scenes videos later showing more detail on the set-up. But in short, for Soarin we used a 13 feet wide by 10 foot tall screen and used rear-projection to allow us to get the chair right up next to the screen. We would have loved to use the actual Soarin video, but had to make our own to get the picture quality we needed.
The hallway was constructed using black poly (we were on a budget!), with blue string lights from Menards. We used a 13 inch TV attached to a TV mount for the queue video.
For the lights we used 48 channels of Lightrama christmas light controllers and strung a bunch of lights around trees, poles, gardens, etc. as well as the "leaping lights".
For the Fireworks we used a homemade 32 channel controller connected to a computer to synchronize the ignition. We wrapped the fuses with nichrome wire with the controller sending 12 volts to the ingitors in sync with the music.
Fireworks are a little tricky to get the timing right, but essentially we would trigger the fuses about 1 second before we actually wanted them to ignite to account for the delay....it worked pretty well.
We switched between 2 cameras for the fireworks show to try and capture everything.
dreamersempire
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2008
We have said that anyone in the Minneapolis area has a fast pass on us! Truly I couldn't think of anything more fun than having real Disney enthusiasts come out for it. I'm pretty sure Bob could pull off Illuminations again in a pinch
i3utterfli82
Disneyliscious
- Joined
- Aug 13, 2006
This really made me smile! Awesome job!
- Joined
- Aug 23, 1999
We have said that anyone in the Minneapolis area has a fast pass on us! Truly I couldn't think of anything more fun than having real Disney enthusiasts come out for it. I'm pretty sure Bob could pull off Illuminations again in a pinch
Me! Me!
I'm in the Twin Cities metro area (north metro).
When I just knew you were in MN, I was going to suggest you contact Channel 5 for the On the Road program. I think your video you shot was better than some of the stories they show on there. (Although, I'm not sure you want to show them the fireworks that actually go off the ground
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