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Since 1994 the Action Theater at California’s Great America has hosted everybody from James Bond to Stan Lee to Sponge Bob. All the while the technology kept falling farther and farther behind. By last year things had deteriorated to the point where the ride hydraulics were as loud as the show audio. So the immediate question upon the announcement of the installation of Mass Effect: New Earth was whether any of that would finally change. It did, and the result is like going from a 12″ 1958 black and white TV to a 5′ plasma screen.

I stopped into the park two days after the debut, and after a quick stop at Gold Striker, still wonderful, approached the building. The outside is primarily signs and banners, many clearly designed to hide the second theater which now sits empty.

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The queue has been spruced up a bit, too. Some stone monuments give a little insight into what is happening, which is a spaceflight to Terra Nova for a vacation at an alien version of Las Vegas (the preshow mentions a zero G massage that I’m booking immediately upon arrival). And instead of a weeks long journey to get there, we will utilize Mass Relay Getaways to jump across the galaxy during a short trip. The preshow screens also mentioned something about a little skirmish happening on Terra Nova, but I’m confident that we will be unaffected.

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After three trips by your humble narrator, I never saw the pre-show end just as the doors were opening, and it doesn’t seem that difficult to me to line these up. Things looked quite different inside, though. The new seats were much more comfortable, as well as aesthetically pleasing. The screen was displaying the “closed view-screen” of our spacecraft. Our Captain, a human as opposed to a robot, introduced himself as Conrad Verner (although he looked different on every flight), and name dropped some dude by the name of Shepard.

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Perhaps at this point it should be mentioned that Mass Effect is a video game series. While I may have rescued my fair share of humanoids before ducking through the Stargate in 1982, this stuff is new territory to me. But I can confess to sometimes indulging in private acts of Google behind closed doors, and found that Captain Shepard is the main character in the Mass Effect Series, and apparently this Verner fellow has some sort of man crush on him. But, really, one can easily pick up the gist of what’s going on here even with total ignorance of the source material.

The ride itself is reminiscent of Star Tours, with a dash of Tough To Be A Bug tossed into the mix. The clarity of the visuals is remarkable, and there are a few in theater special effects (wear shorts) to enhance the experience. I did find the audio to be a bit muddy; the dialog was difficult to understand in the second half of the show. But on my return visit a week later that was not an issue. Not sure if they have remixed things, or if it was due to my personal location in the very center of the theater. We do, of course, ultimately hit that point in the story called (all together now) “And then something went wrong!”.

Mass Effect: New Earth is a big step forward for Great America, and a great improvement over all former occupants of the Action Theater. The park claims it is “largest and highest resolution 3D LED screen in the world”, but just the story line is a step up. My first visit was a school day, and few were present. However, there was a bit of a crowd when I returned on Memorial Day weekend, and most seemed to have a positive reaction to the new offering. Hopefully interest will be high enough for more attractions such as this (I understand there’s another theater in the very same building), or maybe even a dark ride. I did feel Mass Effect fell a bit short in one area of the story. Describing this will require a bit of spoiler talk, so avoid the next paragraph if you want to keep the full mystery.

OK, so there is an element of the story that eluded me until my third trip. Early in the journey, the craft’s windshield gets cracked. It is mentioned in the dialog, which wasn’t always decipherable to me in my first visit, so that may be why I didn’t pick up on it until my return. Like a Hidden Mickey though, once you see it, you can never not see it, but it wasn’t immediately obvious; that’s what I’m on about. And I’d also missed the fact that later in the voyage, the entire screen is shattered. Now that does explain the sudden wind and a different scent, but in a 3D film one would expect to see shards flying by, yet they dropped the ball. However, if the early audio issues are indeed addressed, then the overly subtle view screen breakage is the only weakness in the adventure. Like the Jungle Cruise, a live person will affect the quality of experience, but everyone seems on their game in these early days of the attraction.

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The post show consists of a big hallway some may call a waste of space. Now don’t get me wrong, those are some mighty fine cardboard stand up figures, but come on, a video game attraction, a space formerly occupied by an arcade…is it really up to me to point out the bleeding obvious?

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Great America has always had an overt patriotic quality, really the name should tip you off, and there was some extra bunting for Memorial Day weekend, plus some military vehicles on display. Hey, who needs a Princess when little Suzy can pose for a pic with an armored personnel carrier.

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My return visit also included sunshine instead of grey, so we’ll conclude with some looks around the park on a beautiful spring morning, and be back again next time for another Day by The Bay.

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Marc Ricketts
Marc Ricketts is a writer/photographer who has not yet outgrown roller coasters, and provides news and information about San Francisco Bay Area destinations. Mark's columns can frequently be found on MiceChat in our Weekend Updates.