Dark ride win represents Jora Vision’s fifth Thea Award project
This weekend, the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA) awarded the recipients of the Thea awards, referred to as the Oscars for the entertainment industry, during the Thea awards ceremony in Disneyland Anaheim. The dark ride experience in Legendia theme park, named Bazyliszek, was awarded with a Thea award in the category “Outstanding Achievement - Limited Budget”. The dark ride has been a creative collaboration between the teams of Alterface, Jora Vision and ETF Ride systems. Alterface has overseen the total ride experience as main contractor for the attraction, applying their latest interactive technology including video mapping, gameplay, show control and shooting devices. Jora Vision has worked on the concept development, design of the track lay-out, vehicle design, show set design, engineering and execution of all the highly themed queues and scenes. ETF Ride Systems provided the trackless ride vehicles. Being the 5th Thea award for a project (co)created by Jora Vision, the company establishes itself as one of the creative market leaders in creating experiences, dark rides and attractions.
A compelling modern and fun experience
The “Thea awards jury” wrote: “The attraction uses a full range of tools to deliver this story and experience: targets are in the media on screens that are integrated in show sets, as well as on moving show action elements, and into black lighted sets. The media extends the show sets, and elegantly continues the story and the village, and bring the characters to life in a fun, energetic way. Despite its limited means, the attraction is a complete story with a full queue, preshow, video presentation, dedicated load, interactive ride across multiple scenes where theming bridges well across gaps, and even includes scores shown in a guild book at the end. Using a Polish myth as a basis for its story is a great match for its audience. Delivering an attraction that is well integrated in its cultural context, but that manages to deliver a compelling modern and fun experience is not only remarkable, it is also a great alternative to major IP offerings. Bazyliszek is an outstanding model of an attraction that speaks to its regional audience. It is well-executed, elegant, engaging, colorful, fun and fresh.”
Investing in Design is essential
“Legendia is setting a great example as a regional park, to invest in a custom-designed high-quality dark ride experience.” explains Jan Maarten de Raad, CEO at Jora Vision. “Not many regional parks dare to take the step to invest in a dark ride due to the complexity of creating such an attraction; it requires a thorough design process and project management to ensure a proper integration of theming, ride system, building, media, lighting and special effects. Disciplines which not all parks have in-house and/or maybe think too lightly of. ”
Robin van der Want, Project Development Director at Jora Vision adds: “Even today with a thriving market, some parks or leisure groups do not value the necessity of investing in a full concept and schematic design. However, successful experiences are build from design packages containing numerous detailed drawings also including information on operations, guest safety, capacity, fire regulations, visitors flow, sight-lines etc. Taking shortcuts on design will slingshot back at you in the production phase by miss interpretations, budget overrun and a mediocre ride experience as a result.”
“We are happy that Legendia was able to lock down a proper percentage of the total investment for design. With the recognition by the TEA of a Thea award, and the high guest appreciation, it is another example why investing in design is worth-while.”
Dark Ride Specialist
The past couple of years, Jora Vision has been involved in Dark Ride projects all around the world. “We are excited to see more and more parks are showing interest in our services of design, project management and manufacturing of dark rides and experiences” concludes Robin van der Want. “These experiences give parks the opportunity to tell their own unique story and offer an attraction that can be experienced by the entire family together”.