Paris' Walt Disney Studios Park - Part 4,

Paris' Walt Disney Studios Park - Part 4
Page 2 of 7

Guests entering the doors to Soundstage Seven find themselves in a small pre-show area with overhead scale models of the shuttle and space station from the movie. Framed images are littered around the room of concept, design and pre-production drawings. A small stage can be found in front of two projection screens. A cast member appears on the stage wearing the vivid orange overalls typical of the cast member costumes for the attraction. The cast member begins to tell the captivated audience the origins of special effects in Europe and the screens show clips and montages of famous special effect sequences. Then, two guests are invited on to the stage where the cast member demonstrates the process known as “grey screen” as the guests’ images are superimposed over numerous sequences. After the demonstration, the scene reveals Michael Clark Duncan who played Bear, one of the miners from Harry Stamper’s crew in the movie. Duncan explains how the special effects for certain key sequences in the blockbuster were constructed before inviting guests to step onto the special effects soundstage to experience the act form first hand. The doors open and guests file out of the pre-show into the corridors that led to the Space Station.

The show room is designed to resemble the interior of the space station from Armaggedon. A partially elevated gantry encircles the room on which guests stand. Plasma screens double for the windows to the space station and computer panels update regularly to show the ship’s “status”. From one window, guests can see the rest of the space station in the distance. However, all is not well and fragments from the other sections are breaking away from the superstructure after the impact of a meteor shower. The broken components are heading straight for the guests in the control room. For the next few minutes, the room begins to deteriorate as pipes burst, explosions detonate in the walls and the panels begin to explode into flames. The floor shakes and smoke billows into the room.

19781 bytes
The strobe lights flicker behind the Armaggedon fascia.
Click here for a much larger version of this picture
(1024 X 768, 94,629 bytes)

The effects are a combination of Alien Encounter from the Magic Kingdom and StormRider from Tokyo DisneySea. The attraction is not currently working to specification as the effects are being tweaked and were not operating at 100% as far as the Imagineers are concerned. The actual storyline is tough to grasp as the audio broadcast cannot be heard clearly. In addition, unless you are in view of the main plasma as the pieces hurtle towards the control room, you will have even less comprehension of the story. However, the theater itself is intimate and does stimulate the feeling of claustrophobia in some guests. The in-theater effects are excellent and I am confident that once the attraction is running at capacity it will be extremely popular and a “must-see” for Resort guests.