 Over the weekend Andrew headed out to California's Great America to check out the new Mass Effect New Earth attraction. This has definitely been one of the "afterthought" attractions for 2016 but after reading Andrew's review it looks like it may be one of the surprise hits of 2016. Be sure to check it out!! Written by Andrew Cunningham Minor Spoilers Ahead  As a short preface, I think it’s worth mentioning that I am not familiar with Mass Effect, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect when going into the attraction. I can’t really tell you the name of any of the characters, and I probably missed a lot of nods to the franchise throughout the ride. With that being said I was a huge fan of the attraction and ended up doing it three times. Here is breakdown of what to expect.   The Queue: The queue was entirely outside and pretty basic. There were a few signs setting up the story of MRG: Mass Relay Getaways, a company that was taking us from Great America to a luxurious vacation planet. It felt very “Star Tours” in terms of plot setup.   The Preshow: After waiting through the queue, you are given your glasses and sent to a corral area that corresponds with a door. There are two robots in the preshow area, but they don’t move. The TVs continue to set up the MRG storyline, telling you about how you are going on a safe vacation through the galaxy. However, towards the end of the video, in a classic “something might go wrong” moment, the MRG commercial is interrupted by a character warning of an attack coming. He quickly loses his signal and we watch the conclusion of the MRG commercial before the doors open and bring us into the theater.    The Attraction: You walk into the theater, which is themed to look very sleek and futuristic. Our live-action pilot is standing at the front of the theater and begins chatting with the audience as everyone finds their seats. The seats themselves are very comfortable and have some great motion effects.  Once everyone is seated, our pilot asks us to put on their safety goggle so that our vision is protected from solar flares. We then take off from Great America, dodge a minor meteor field, and arrive at our vacation planet, Terra Nova. Just as our pilot begins to tell us about the great timeshare opportunities on Terra Nova, some alien villains begin to attack the planet, and then things begin to escalate from there.   The attraction includes very crisp HD 3d technology, water sprays, smoke effects, odors, motion, and a live action pilot who interacts pretty seamlessly with the 3d environments. Overall they really went above and beyond to create something that, aside from the queue, felt on par with an attraction like Star Tours or Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem. I was so impressed that I ended up riding three times during my day. Hats off to Great America for getting such a great themed attraction, I really hope to see more of these pop up at other Cedar Fair parks. Just a few other random park pictures as it was an absolutely beautiful day at the park.  Great coaster and an ugly stadium  Gold Striker  Yep, still there. ;) Thanks to Andrew for the great pictures and review. We're definitely excited about this attraction and it looks like it may be one of the surprise hits of the 2016 season. Related Updates:  Today we have a LONG overdue update from Knott's Berry Farm where a lot of work has been going on in preparation for the 75th Anniversary of Ghost Town and of course the major refurb of Ghostrider. There's also lots more going on around the area including the reopening of the Chicken Dinner Restaurant which looks AMAZING. Written by Gregg Condon It was a beautiful spring day at the park. Sadly two of the major coasters were closed during our visit.  Let's start off with a look at the Wagon Camp and all the work going on.  Lots of work going on for the Wild West Stuntshow.     Ghostrider looks closer and closer to being done and the trains should be on-site by now.     A peek in the station, no sign of trains.  Some kind of platform has been added beneath the turnaround.  Still working on stuff    Pan For Gold is back at the front of the park where it belongs and it looks great!!!   Should be much more popular in a more visible location.    A look at the previous location.   Last week the Chicken Dinner Restaurant reopened and it looks amazing!!!    Lots of outside seating towards the back, will be a nice spot to spend some summer evenings.     A peek inside   We've seen a lot of complaints about the restaurant looking too "modern" or non-original, we didn't get that impression at all. It looks amazing in person.   One of the more popular locations is going to be the bar of course.    Lots of work still going on for the 75th Anniversary of Ghost Town  Work going on for the living peek-in's   The Barn is getting set to host live animals  The new stage is springing up rather quickly    The show area for the new stage is supposedly going to be bigger which will be nice  No word on how Pony Express is going to impact the shows  Lots of random things going on at the park as well. Some work in the games area near The Log Ride   Xcelerator was closed, the purple train was on the break run so not sure if it was just down for the day or is in refurb.
Jaguar is also getting some TLC as the supports have been repainted to their original color.   From the lift hill of Sierra Sidewinder it looked like the 2nd train for Jaguar was receiving a pretty extensive refurb, but of course we can't take pictures from the ride.  New Guest Relations area is open near Ghostrider.
The area where Riptide was has now been redone to a nice park. It looks really nice but hopefully a new ride will return to this area for 2017.  Alright, that's going to wrap it up for this update. We had lots of stuff to cover so we apologize for it being a bit too long. We do hope you enjoyed it though. Once we get word of testing going on with Ghostrider we will for sure be doing another update. Related Updates: |
Categories
All
Archives
July 2024
|
RSS Feed