Creator Of The World’s Most High-Tech Theme Park Ride Reveals Its Secrets

Marine life parks tend to have the most obvious line-up of attractions of any type of theme park. Even the most elaborate of them are only usually home to aquariums and enclosures for sea birds and reptiles. Often, the closest you get to an attraction is a film about conservation. Not in the Middle East.

Last week the doors swung open to the newest SeaWorld park which sits in the glitzy emirate of Abu Dhabi. It is entering a market which is already packed with outlandish attractions. Within just an hour’s drive of SeaWorld Abu Dhabi you can find one of the world’s biggest indoor snow resorts, complete with full-size Swiss chalets; a mall with an indoor waterfall; the world’s biggest fountain; and a public son et lumière spectacular which is free to view every night and features flamethrowers, lasers and swaying spotlights synchronized to inspiring scenes beamed onto a 36-storey hotel. SeaWorld Abu Dhabi had to pull out all the stops to make waves against this kind of competition. It has done it in the most unexpected of ways.

At almost two million square feet, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi is comfortably the world’s largest indoor theme park. It isn’t this big so that it can brag. Being under cover shields guests from the searing heat in Abu Dhabi which regularly soars past 100 degrees in summer. In turn, this enables the eight areas of the park to be decorated with intricately-detailed scenery as they aren’t open to the elements. It enables the exteriors of the attractions in the park to have a similar standard of theming to that which you usually find on the interior of a Disney ride.

The attention to detail starts before you even set foot in the park itself as the indoor area surrounding the ticket counters is designed to look like a traditional Middle Eastern town from days gone by. A beached wooden sailing ship stands in the middle of palm trees, piles of crates and artificially-rusted oil barrels. The ticket counters themselves are set inside a cream-coloured fort featuring arched battlements, oil lanterns hanging from the walls and ornate stone urns standing outside.

Camel hoof prints are carved into the sandy floor and the palm trees even look faded from decades of being blasted by sandstorms. Mountain vistas visible in the distance on banners covering the walls invite guests to head towards them. As we have reported, the main hub of the park makes even more of a splash as the walls of the circular room are lined with the world’s largest LED screen. The pin-sharp 8K display shows dizzying scenes of schools of fish, waves and water currents rushing around the room.

From the hub, guests can access the different areas of the park which are largely themed to bodies of water around the world. The Tropical Ocean looks like a Caribbean hideaway with huts which are built from bamboo and have thatched roofs. Colorful plants fill the rockwork which lines the walls and waterfalls rush down beside them. Traditional baskets woven from multi-colored beads stand by bamboo fences and trees hang over the stone paths. Bark appears to be peeling off some of the branches whilst others seem to be sprouting new shoots. It makes the trees look so real that it’s hard to resist tapping them and it’s only then that you discover they are actually artificial.

In the middle of it all is a vast pool which is seamlessly set into the ground and laps onto a sandy beach where pink flamingos gather as they do in the West Indies. A buoy bobs on the water in the distance and dolphins can sometimes be seen leaping through the air.

It’s a different story when you head through a stone doorway into the polar ocean area next door. The atmosphere is considerably chillier and the path seems to have been cut through a mini mountain range of snow-capped rocks. It soars so high that when you zoom in on photos you can see snowmobiles on the peaks and wooden walkways leading up to them. Pine trees are dotted around the landscape stretching right down to ground level where ice floes seem to float on the water just outside touching distance. They form part of an ingeniously-camouflaged tank for otters, sea lions and walruses.

The water winds past rustic huts which look like they have come straight out of Frozen but are far from Mickey Mouse. Icicles hang from the eaves, their walls are lined with wooden decking and window boxes full of colorful flowers are attached to them. The guest pathways are equally ornate as they pass by a full-size ice-breaker ship with cargo hanging in nets above. It gives guests the impression they are walking through an old-fashioned port in Canada and adding to the realism, there are multiple routes to take. Few of them are signposted so there’s a wonderful sense of discovery from seeing where they lead to.

One path eventually takes you several storeys up into the mountain range where you can look down on the land below. Following the decking on the pier in another direction takes you into the ship where you can even get into the intricately-detailed control room for a photo-opp at the wheel. However, the biggest surprise comes when you head up a stony stairway cut into a cave complete with stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

It takes you into a high-tech base where LED screens hang on the walls of a dark holding room. They show a conversation between a computer guidance system, called Jules, and a cute robot character (named VERNE, of course) which invites guests on a journey around the world in a spherical probe to check in on endangered sea life. Then comes the big reveal.

The doors of the holding room swing open and give on to a cathedral-like domed hangar which soars 13.6 meters upwards. It stands in stark contrast to the claustrophobic confines of the holding room next door and is the last thing you expect to find, especially as the cavernous building is completely hidden from the view of guests walking round the area it is located in.

Called the Hypersphere 360, the dome has an alien appearance as it is covered in hexagons which are so vivid that they seem to be painted on. It’s only when you peer right up close that it becomes clear they are digital images. The dome-shaped surface is actually one big screen but it’s tough to tell as the level of contrast and sharpness is uniform throughout the sweeping surface.

Domed screens, such as those in planetariums, are usually powered by projectors so they are brightest in the areas directly opposite them and look increasingly washed out towards the extremities. The consistency of the fidelity of the Hypersphere’s screen is a telltale sign that it’s actually an LED but bafflingly there don’t seem to be any seams between the panels. That’s because it is actually made from a giant LED mesh and even has an LED floor underneath the dome. It soon comes into its own.

The rim of the dome is lined with 80 seats which have over-the-shoulder harnesses, speakers above them and scent atomisers pointing at them on the other side of the narrow aisle which runs around the circumference of the room. When all the guests are strapped in something unexpected happens as the LED floor drops down revealing the lower half of the LED dome. It leaves the seats dangling around the inside rim of the sphere but that’s just the start.

The ring of seats then begins to rotate slowly around the rim of the spherical room and even tilts up and down on an axis in time with the aquatic imagery on the screens. The scenes show the sphere bobbing up and down on water currents and, cleverly, the seats reach the peak of the tilt when it is meant to be on the crest of the wave. The seats then rotate downwards as the scenes show the probe heading down the water currents which tricks your mind into thinking that you’re on a roller coaster heading straight ahead even though you’re actually rotating around the room. It’s a surreal sensation which isn’t for anyone with vertigo as the 13.6 meter drop down to the bottom of the dome is far from artificial.

Despite the over-the-shoulder harnesses, the ride doesn’t go upside down and the images aren’t in 3D which minimizes the risk of riders with weak stomachs feeling sick. There are no unexpected surprises in the ride and no sudden movements for parents to worry about. The story is slightly incomprehensible but that’s part of the charm. You don’t go on a ride like this for the story or the characters but for the spectacle. It delivers on this and then some.

Immersive is a word which is over-used in the theme park industry but rarely does a ride literally immerse visitors in the scenes like this. The stunning spherical screen surrounds the riders and gives them the impression they are swimming through undersea scenery alongside schools of fish. The scent of the sea is even pumped in to add to the effect.

The only criticism is that although the ceiling is domed, the base of the sphere is flat as it is formed from the floor of the room which drops down at the start. Occasionally fish appear to swim down the sides of the screen towards the base of the sphere and when they hit it the image of them is distorted slightly as it moves from the curved wall to the flat floor. It breaks the illusion a little bit but it is a small price to pay for what is undeniably a wonder of the SeaWorld. It has been a long time in the making.

The Dome Ride Theater technology behind the attraction was first announced in 2014 at the AAE Beijing trade show. Many manufacturers exhibit blue sky projects at trade shows in a bid to get buyers and if they fail to do so they never get off the drawing board. The Dome Ride Theater seemed set to be one of them, especially as it was originally due to open at Lewa Adventure park in China but never got off the ground.

It was the brainchild of Markus Beyr, chief executive of Austrian AV systems integrator Attraktion! He says that the biggest challenge was to “develop the seamless 17 meter diameter LED dome. Develop a fire protection and safety system for the sphere.” Perhaps surprisingly, ensuring that the images are synchronized with the rotation is relatively straightforward as Beyr says it is handled by time code.

He adds that behind the scenes is a “4 millimeter customized LED sphere with more than 75 million pixels engineered by Attraktion! a ride system by Intamin, 360 degree audio: 45 channels, a spatial audio server, Martin Audio Speakers, QSC Core, a Q-SYS system and Brainsalt Video Server.” Maintaining it is far from a walk in the park and Beyr says that “as a typical system integrator we offer 24/7 service and also maintenance agreements.” As word gets round about the attraction that’s exactly what will be needed.