October 15, 2009: Sum of all Thrills

[Werner Weiss]

Usually, the Yesterland website is about Disney park elements that are gone. Not this time.

Read about a brand new exhibit at INNOVENTIONS East at Epcot. Its grand opening was Wednesday, October 14, 2009.

Link to Sum of all Thrills

Please discuss it here.

[Mr. Bungle]

Wow, that looks great! Seems in the vein of "Cyber Space Mountain" at DisneyQuest. It is too bad there's only four arms, but it's better than just one or two, right? When I first heard the announcement, I wondered if it was going to be just one arm.

[tasman]

One thing that confuses me:

I thought Universal had the exclusive rights to any new theme park Kuka arm attraction until about 2015?

[Werner Weiss]

One thing that confuses me:

I thought Universal had the exclusive rights to any new theme park Kuka arm attraction until about 2015?

Apparently not.

Either the story about Universal's rights is one of those stories that is repeated over and over on the Internet until people think it's true. Or it's possible that Universal may only have rights related to a Kuka arm that moves along a track (instead of a Kuka arm with its base firmly on the floor).

[Katella Gate]

Truly a terrific development in ride technology. I get creepy-crawlies of excitement just looking at it. Thanks for the update.

[kindagoofy]

This looks like more fun since the arm gives the rider more degrees of motion than the 'clothes dryer' you tumble in at Quest's Cyber Space Mountain. Great review. Thanks for the info.

[Mr. Bungle]

"Clothes Dryer"- haha!

[GrumpyFan]

Looks quite interesting. If it proves to be popular, I wonder if they'll consider expanding it and adding more arms. 190 guests per hour is quite small for anything at Epcot. With such a small throughput, this has the potential for generating quite a few complaints.

[BassBone]

Boy am I glad I'm going to Epcot during the off-season. I might actually get to ride this.

[BigBobxxx]

I took note of "The seating and restraints on this attraction may prohibit guests of certain body shapes or sizes from riding" warning.

Thanks to your review, I am forewarned that I will probably have size-issues with this attraction. If anyone does, I'm usually "it" (400-lbs. 6-footer... BIGBobxxx... I could have chosen BigBobxxxxx, but five x's start to look ridiculous).

I will make a point to try the test seat, and will report back on how it goes.

The only Disney ride I ever had a problem with was Expedition Everest during the early few weeks (before they adjusted out the overly-cautious lap-bar issues). I can ride EE fine now, but squeezing my knees between the sides of the lap-bar is not comfortable. But, hey, I can take it for the three minutes or so

FYI, I can ride Rock 'n' Roller Coaster with no problems.
I can ride Astro Orbiter, but getting out of the vehicle is an ordeal (so I only did it once). Plus, I was terrified the entire ride (really)!

[jvsett]

Boy - how things change from Communicore... does the new "attraction" also have a talking beaver that sounds like Gopher from Winnie-the-Pooh?

[Athlonacon]

Legoland has something like this and it is FUN! You can choose from 5 different levels (with 1 being a slow-moving kiddie ride to 5 being an all-out, hang-on-to-your-restraint cookie-tosser). I chose 4 because it was my first time on one of those things and I should've done 5, these things are just absolutely a blast. It takes all the fun you get from a rollercoaster, distills it down into the basic movements, then gives it to you in a VERY condensed and rapid manner. It's like taking 4 minutes of rollercoaster fun and distilling it into 30 seconds of fun without the "waiting" time of a coaster.

These things are AWESOME! Never done it with a video screen in front of me before though, the one at Legoland is just over an open pond and you can see everything... part of the fun was feeling like it was going to toss you into the crowd or throw you into the pond. I hope the video screen remains faithful to the terror of being tossed out of the doggone thing.

[ChessurInWonderland]

This reminds me of the legoland dragon ride, but I think this is funner because there are more choices and video! Looks cool!

[RenMan]

I'm glad they put a Stop button on it. My worst fear would be choosing a gentle bobsled ride and some sort of malfunction (human error or machine) resulting in getting the 5g rocket ride protein spill ride instead.

Sounds awesome. I love the fact that the user can dial up their own experience.