by Eric Minton

www.gettheloop.com

703-567-0532
eric@gettheloop.com

 
©2002, Minton Enterprises LLC
All rights reserved

Tomb Raider: The Ride
Paramount's Kings Island
 Kings Island, Ohio

Brought to you by


www.technifex.com

Click on the logo for more information about Technifex's services
The devils are in the details
It started out as just another typical interview with a 12-year-old. “I thought it was awesome,” said Michael Holliday. What made it awesome? I asked. “Looking up and seeing people hanging from the ceilings.” Where, in the queue? “No, during the ride.”

What people?

Skeletons, actually, placed among the stalactites that make up one of the close-encounter with-death experiences during Tomb Raider: The Ride. I had been through it three times myself before this interview, and I had never noticed the skeletons. That is one of the beauties of this ride: the surprises, both visual and visceral, are never-ending.

The secret is in the details. “Highly themed” has become a hype-desensitized word, but in Tomb Raider it fits. Meandering through the queue, appointed as an archeologist’s excavation tunnel, you can look amid the wood support poles and crumbled rocks for pieces of statues, tablets and bas reliefs. From the queue, guests are siphoned off 77 at a time and allowed into the first antechamber. This stone room is guarded by rows of 6-foot (2-meter) stone monkeys in armor, some with spears, some with swords, some without even arms, the appendages broken off and shattered on the ground by some long-ago earthquake. The monkey sentry was bred from a few statues that served as props in the Tomb Raider movie. The ride designers used those props to build molds for making more guards.

 

 

Photos by Eric Minton

The show actually begins when a spell creates geometric light patters on the decorated stone door at the front of the room, causing it to roll aside in a rumbling soundtrack of moving rock. Smoke pours through this new opening and guests peer into the pre-show chamber, where more props from the movie found a second home, most notably the giant six-armed Brahma statue, known as the Warrior Goddess Durga. After the light goes out, an oval screen that has suddenly appeared in front of Durga shows scenes from the movie, setting the story line for the next chamber, the ride itself.

Guests are first presented to the warrior goddess, whose eyes start glowing menacingly. Then the spinning thrills start amid sets that use a combination of fiberoptics, fire effects and props to create the illusion of body-piercing stalactites and spewing lava (actually water). Meanwhile, the ride takes patrons through several disorienting maneuvers to make them think they are soaring through dimensions and finally hovering face-first over that lava pit.

“I think it was cool,” said Matt Dugan, age 12. What made it cool? “I like the way you hang upside down, and all the features.” Like what? “Like the way the mask changed.”

What mask?

— Eric Minton
Photo courtesy of Paramount's Kings Island