Are you ready to blast off in Epcot's new E-Ticket ride, Mission: SPACE? Well it's T-minus a few weeks and counting as Walt Disney World announced a soft opening date of August 15, 2003. (The official opening will be in October.) I got a sneak peek inside the highly anticipated attraction, and it looks very ambitious and exciting. Your crack About Theme Parks investigative reporter's mission: find out what the heck will happen inside the shrouded-in-secrecy ride. So, exactly what can riders expect? Beats me.
What I don't know
Disney granted tours of the Mission: SPACE building and revealed everything except the actual ride vehicles. I felt like I was trapped in a scene from "2001" and wanted to yell, "Open the pod bay doors, Hal!" But it was futile. The security clampdown on the proprietary ride system was as tight as one of NASA's real missions.The core of the attraction involves a simulated rocket ride to Mars. With promises of an "amazing, out-of-this-world experience" (that's about all Disney will officially reveal), we're left to conjecture.
What I think may happen
This will not be your Daddy's simulated rocket ride. (That would be Mission to Mars, a primitive attempt to recreate space travel at Disneyland and Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. Both are now decommissioned.) It's a safe bet that the four-person vehicles will use some kind of motion simulation technology. As with Star Tours, the cabins will probably move in sync with projected images to create the illusion of interplanetary flight.But, something else will be happening on the other side of those secreted doors. Disney describes Mission: SPACE as its most technically advanced attraction and "the first ride system ever created to take guests straight up in simulated flight." Imagineers also promise that the sensations will be the same as what astronauts experience.
To achieve that level of realism, rampant rumors say that Disney is incorporating centrifuges, the same spinning devices NASA uses to train astronauts, into the attraction. Instead of using industrial-grade centrifuges that are capable of delivering mega doses of positive G forces, modified versions will induce low levels of sustained positive Gs--or so the theory goes. According to the buzz, a group of the four-person vehicles, each capable of independent motion, will share a single centrifuge, and there will be a few centrifuges in the attraction.
But above 1G (what we normally feel from the earth's gravitational pull), riders will sense a force greater than normal gravity that will pin them to their seats. While that's certainly part of the experience when a spaceship first launches, riders will be anticipating--and Disney has all but pledged--a free-floating sensation of weightlessness. Laws of physics suggest it would be impossible to simulate less than 1G, or what roller coaster fans call airtime without physically leaving the ground. And the building is NOT designed to accommodate any vehicles leaving the ground. So, if you'll pardon the pun, what's up?
When I asked the Imagineer leading our tour how Mission: SPACE would achieve weightlessness, he said that the attraction would "trick you" but wouldn't elaborate. That could mean many things.
Here's my take (and remember, this is all speculation): If the ride delivers sustained positive G forces for an extended period of time, riders will gradually adjust and recalibrate their bodies to interpret the sensation as the earth's normal gravitational pull. If the centrifuge abruptly stops, riders will experience the return to 1G as momentary weightlessness. Check back later this year when the ride opens, and see if my theories hold up.
