With the opening of its new Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit drawing nearer, Universal Orlando has decided to peel back the curtain a little further on the high-tech roller coaster.
The resort has released a wave of new details about the features of Rockit, which was initially supposed to open this spring but has been pushed back into the summer. Among them:
-- The ride vehicle, called an X-CAR, will feature stadium-style bucket seats ensuring all riders have unobstructed views. And it won't have an over-head/pull-down restraint system; instead riders will be secured only by a newly designed lap bar, which Universal says "allows for unprecedented freedom of movement."
-- Guests will choose their ride soundtrack from touchpad screens built into the lap bar. Universal says the screens are "military-grade durable and waterproof."
-- Each seat will have 165-watt stereo speakers that pump out 90 decibels, in a sound system similar to the kind installed on wakeboard boats.
-- Fourteen video cameras will be mounted throughout Rockit, six on each vehicle and eight along the track, which will operate for up to 14 hours a day. The same kinds of cameras are used on high-speed trains.
-- Laser-triggered timing devices have been installed to ensure that each rider's music and video are in sync and the resulting video package will be wirelessly downloaded from the X-CAR to a viewing kiosk in 25 seconds. Guests can buy the "an edited take-home version of their experience."
-- Universal says Rockit will be the only coaster in the world with daytime LED color-changing lights, which will be programmed to change color and rotate between steady, strobe, twinkle, race or pulse patterns. The result will be an "ever-changing light show" to spectators on the ground.
-- Rockit will also feature the country's only moving coaster load platform -- essentially a people-mover-style conveyor belt that speeds up the loading process and allows vehicles to leave the station every 23 seconds.
-- Each vehicle's cameras and computers are recharged each time they pass through the load station, similar to how an electric subway is powered.
"This is where high-speed coaster meets outdoor mega-concert meets user-generated content -- all shot on production-quality video," Mark Woodbury, president of Universal Creative, said in a press release. "No one has ever created such a sophisticated ride experience. And no one has ever used technology the way we have to pull it all together."
