Soon roller-coaster enthusiasts will be soaring through the air on fighter jets and shooting alien targets at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Six Flags Entertainment Corp., owner of the Valencia amusement park, announced last month that it will debut a fully immersive 360-degree virtual reality roller coaster to the masses this year – and experts project the rides will save the park operator money while also boosting visitor traffic. But there might be something familiar about this latest attraction. Instead of spending millions building rides from the ground up, Six Flags is revamping existing, somewhat aging coasters to create completely new experiences for visitors. “Transforming an existing roller coaster into a VR experience likely comes at a mere fraction of the cost of building a new coaster,” Ian Corydon, senior analyst with investment brokerage B. Riley & Co. in Los Angeles said in his March 28 report on Six Flags. “With a little software development expense, this year’s VR fighter jet experience could be changed into completely new VR experiences in subsequent years.” Six Flags Magic Mountain’s Revolution roller coaster has been around since 1976 and began a massive restoration in September amid complaints from riders and even a Change.org petition calling for a facelift and the removal of uncomfortable over-the-shoulder restraints. The renovated coaster, now named the New Revolution, will reopen this year with lap bars, a fresh color scheme – and virtual reality technology. Surge of VR Each New Revolution rider will wear a pair of Samsung Electronics Co. virtual reality goggles strapped securely to the head and chin. When looking through the googles, riders see a futuristic battle where they are fighting off an alien invasion. Attached to the front of the googles will be a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, which will display a realistic 360-degree virtual reality picture, as if riders are inside a video game. The gear will be synchronized with the coaster so every turn, loop and twist corresponds with visual elements in the goggles, both to create a believable experience and to prevent disorientation and motion sickness. “This remarkable technology is a definite game-changer for theme park rides and represents everything our brand stands for,” John Duffey, Six Flags chief executive said in a statement. “With the addition of these virtual reality coasters, Six Flags will be introducing more than double the number of new coasters and rides than we did in 2015, and more than any year in the last decade.” Of the company’s nine new VR coasters, six will debut with the alien space adventure at parks in Texas, Georgia, Missouri, New York and Montreal. The remaining three theme parks will feature a Superman virtual reality experience in Texas, Massachusetts and Maryland. Judith Rubin, director of communications at the Themed Entertainment Association in Burbank, said the surge of virtual reality technology at theme parks has been a long time coming, and that the intersection of quality technology and affordability is what made it possible. “In the 1990s, there was an explosion of virtual reality, but it didn’t live up to the promise. Now it’s being integrated into real-world experiences and theme parks are only one of the places you’re seeing that,” Rubin said. “This is the year of virtual reality.” A growing number of consumers have caught the VR bug as companies such as Samsung Electronics America, a subsidiary of South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co., begins marketing to the masses. Samsung’s new Gear VR headset, the same headsets that will be used on the VR rides at Six Flags, is bringing virtual reality experiences into consumers’ homes. The headset is built to work with a variety of Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones and allows consumers to play games in virtual reality, watch television shows made specifically for the medium and even view virtual porn. “Basically, a VR experience does three things rapidly – it tracks your movement, a graphic shift renders a scene to match what your eyes would see from that position and then it immediately displays that picture for your eyes,” said Ian Hamilton, editor of industry publication UploadVR in San Francisco. Samsung collaborated with Oculus VR, a VR tech firm in Irvine, to create its headgear. Oculus was founded by Palmer Luckey in 2012 and has since launched multiple generations of its Oculus Rift gear, which allows consumers to play games, watch shows and have other interactions in virtual reality using a PC, a Galaxy smartphone or even a PlayStation. The two first partnered together in 2014 when they developed and released the first Gear VR goggles to virtual reality enthusiasts. Now, the goggles are available at mass retailers including Target Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Best Buy and Fry’s Electronics Inc. for $99 and up. “Oculus and Samsung are trying to make it a no-brainer to get the VR headset,” Hamilton said. “When they debuted the S7, they had a huge promotion and offered the headset free when you got the phone. There were potentially hundreds of thousands of people who could have redeemed a headset when buying a Samsung phone – that’s a lot of people being introduced to VR.” Six Flags is one of several theme parks around the world that is bringing virtual reality tech to its coasters. Last year, Europa-Park in Rust, Germany, launched its first VR coaster, the Alpenexpress Coastility; Canada’s Wonderland amusement park in Ontario will add VR headsets to its Thunder Run Coaster for an extra fee this year; and Thorpe Park Resort in the United Kingdom is combining virtual reality, CGI footage and live action to create a thrill ride that will debut on May 6. “While virtual reality has been part of the attractions industry for some time, new this year is the combination of virtual reality with riding a roller coaster,” said Colleen Mangone, communications director at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions in Alexandria, Va. “We expect this trend to continue well into the future.” Phone connection The partnership between Samsung and Six Flags is a marketing ploy that both industry leaders are pushing to benefit their respective sales. While Six Flags stands to gain increased foot traffic as the new rides roll out, Samsung’s gear will be on the heads of millions of consumers – many of who will be users of Apple Inc.’s iPhone – who could develop a taste for Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone. “I’ve never seen anything tested on the scale that Six Flags is about to test. They told me that millions of people are going to test this VR tech this year; I don’t know if VR has been put on this many heads before,” UploadVR’s Hamilton said. “This VR at Magic Mountain is obviously a marketing tool, but I don’t know if it’s going to convince people to jump from the iPhone. I would love to see the surveys of people’s reactions coming off the ride.” Six Flags reported $1.26 billion in revenue in 2015, and its 18 theme parks brought in 28.9 million visitors overall. In an effort to ramp up sales and visitor traffic, Six Flags’ current goal is to introduce a new ride or attraction at each park annually. The theme park operator is also expanding internationally and last month announced license agreements for two Six Flags-branded parks in Vietnam, in addition to a park that opened in China in January. Sue Carpenter, communications director at Six Flags Magic Mountain, declined to disclose how much the theme park operator invested in the new VR gear. However, B. Riley analyst Corydon said the newly enhanced rides should leverage the company’s capital and marketing dollars by bringing in more foot traffic. The VR gear offers an opportunity for different experiences seasonally, such as a Fright Fest for Halloween or a Christmas-themed VR experience. “One of Six Flags’ key initiatives under current management has been to tightly control capital expenditures at 9 percent of revenue, but at the same time to put something new in every park every year,” his report states. “(With the new roller coaster), the company could create VR experiences including seasonal limited-time offers, leveraging the company’s capital marketing dollars. Furthermore, the VR will bring new guests to the park.”
Riders’ Virtual Future
