Gulliver's Travels
A darkride based on the classic tale of the same name, we are glad to be renovating this attraction.
Initially made for an mall display in 1984 by Heimotion, later repurposed in to a ride.
Pre-Restoration
Pre-restoration nothing animatronic wise on this attraction worked, all of the little characters are automaton / loopbots in which all of the motors were burnt out and all of the mechanics were wallowed out or broken making them static props, Gulliver himself is a pneumatic head which was never set up to work.
This attraction has not had much maintenance since its initial creation in 1984.
Mechanical Restoration
Our mechanical restoration focus was on the motorized characters, these possibly haven't been touched in 40 years and so this was a tough challenge.
We had to dismantle every character and rebuild or replace the old burnt out motors. Along with this we had to repair and fabricate many new mechanical parts as a lot of the originals were wallowed out or snapped.
Lighting Upgrades
The ride originally had no dynamic lighting, just standard room lights to illuminate the ride.
This made it very dull to ride though and so we knew we had to add dynamic lighting to the ride!
We used LED lighting as it is the most energy efficient and has low heat production and so is less of a fire risk.
Thunder Effect
Too add to the story telling of the Gulliver's Travel ride and to match the audio and story more, we added thunder effects to the ride.
We created clouds which flash and lighting shapes in the walls which strike down for an effective lightning effect.
Behind the Scenes
Cloud wire frame before we applied the covering fabric, this hides the lighting set up and speaker used in the ride, this wire frame stops the overlayring fabric from warping inside and touching the electronics, reducing the risk of fire.
The thunder effect, was achieved with 3 lights in the wall which illuminate a delicately cut lightning bolt strike, this is invisible until the strike happens, an example can be seen in the video above.
To Be Continued.
We will come back to this ride at a later time.
Our further plans are to restore the pneumatic system (Gulliver's head) and adjust the control system.