A few years ago now (oof, stings to realize that) I got into Defunctland, a YouTube documentary series that focuses specifically on now-closed theme park rides and attractions. It’s a delight in a variety of ways, and the production value has massively increased year over year. But the hook for me was its piece regarding the “ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter,” a short-lived theater ride that was unbelievably scary when I visited Disneyworld in early 2000. It got me thinking about the trip, as well as other trips to amusement parks I’d made.
I went to Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm for the first time at the age of 7, a trip planned and paid for by my paternal grandparents. And by my tween and teen years, my family had moved from lower-middle to solidly middle (or perhaps just the cusp of upper-middle) class, enabling us to make a number of holiday trips to theme parks. There were a few reasons for this, not the least of which was an excuse to leave Fairbanks, Alaska in the deepest part of winter. Furthermore, my dad is very partial to roller coasters, a fondness I hope to explore with him in the next few years (as he did with his dad). Meanwhile, between our family trips to Disney, Universal Studios, and other parks, I grew to be a connoisseur of motion simulator rides.
Star Tours was the standard, of course, an immediate favorite after it so astonished both my then-4 year old brother and myself that we “wanted to go home,” before immediately getting in line for a second trip. I recall Back to the Future: The Ride being a delight, and it even starred a pair of actors from the movies in both the pre-ride movie and the ride proper. And the Star Trek Experience was magnificent for a laundry list of reasons, which I will probably elaborate on at another time.
By age 19, having sampled these and other experiences based on hydraulically-assisted short films, I figured I had seen everything the genre had to offer. But in Chicago, Illinois, as our family wandered Navy Pier, I was presented with something entirely new; a relatively barren kiosk, with flashing electronic lights. “Satisfaction” by Benny Benassi (warning: semi-risque college dirtbag video) blared. And overhead, a lit sign made an incomprehensible offer.
“3D Ride”
This title is virtually sphinx-like, a call to action so bizarre yet compelling that today I remember it with great relish. But at the time, despite being a legal adult, I was still firmly a teenager and my natural reaction was to roll my eyes dismissively. Dad’s sense of ironic humor, meanwhile, immediately kicked in.
“Oh, we have to do this.”
It’s not like I wasn’t reacting to obvious red flags. The first, and arguably biggest, was the “post”-ride photo. These typically capture a moment of excitement from a ride — think tilting over the edge of the final slide on Splash Mountain — and are sold to riders afterward as a memoir of their experience. 3D Ride, by contrast, opted to take these photos immediately after ticket purchase, before riders had even boarded. In retrospect, I think it was this wrinkle that probably caught dad’s attention at the start, but in any case, we bought our tickets, got our photo taken, and joined a waiting group.
We encountered our next red flag in the ride briefing. Like all motion simulators, 3D Ride had to establish the basic rules for the experience — keep your 3D glasses on, don’t wave your arms around, et cetera et cetera. It had an animatronic robot tasked with the purpose, but as its pre-recorded dialogue began playing, the mascot remained stationary, slumped over in a position suggesting strangulation as it began flashing its lights and letting us know how to stay safe while aboard.
The meat of 3D Ride (which a bit of googling has revealed to be titled, in full, “Time Escape Navy Pier”) was a three-screen 3D theater experience. These screens weren’t exactly in proper operation during our visit, though. The center screen was operating properly, so at least we could get a clear idea of what was going on. The left, meanwhile, was only working with one of its two projectors, rendering the screen very pointedly 2D rather than 3D. Meanwhile, the screen on the right was badly out of focus, rendering it illegible (and, I found, an easy source of nausea despite the very stationary theater). The resulting trip through Chicago’s history was, as you might imagine, distractingly flawed, while its final “escape” portion — the only part, I’ll note, to feature any motion — was cartoonishly brief.
It’s easy to imagine that, as a kid of the right age, 3D Ride might have been tremendously disappointing. But Dad’s sense was 100% spot-on — with me being age 19, my brother age 16, and, I suspect, both parents needing a moment of levity, stopping to visit Navy Pier’s premiere motion simulation experience was perfect. Previous, higher-quality rides were more fun, of course, but that spur-of-the-moment ticket was funny, a shared experience that gave us something to laugh at. It also helped us establish a shared sense of humor, ground rules that let us laugh together at the silly, absurd, and especially the ridiculous.
Most of the motion simulator rides I experienced throughout my youth are quite defunct today (aside from Star Tours, though it’s been so altered as to be unrecognizable). I lament the loss of all of them to some extent or another (particularly the Star Trek Experience, which again, I will elaborate on another time). But if nothing else, 3D Ride helped set the stage for my present relationship with my folks, a positive one full of levity, and for that I think I respect it more than any of its contemporaries.