Coaster101: While attending SITE OSU last month, we connected with students in themed entertainment from all over the country and learned about the incredible projects they’re working on. Maybe the most ambitious project we heard about was The Old Mill. Led by Roly Garcia, the students of Carnegie Mellon University are building a working dark ride (yes, you read that right) inspired by the beloved former attraction at nearby Kennywood park.
6 comments:
What a cool concept. I am definitely going to go and check this out during Carnival and make sure I get to experience this ride. I wish I had more awareness of these types of clubs or groups that are apart of the Carnegie Mellon University student environment, because maybe I could attempt to be apart of more than just the CMU Drama Stratosphere. Themed entertainment is just as much theater as it is mechanical engineering, architecture, computer science, and much more. This is the type of interdisciplinary experience I wish to be apart of during my college career. It’s interesting that the ride will be human powered - I wonder if they looked to obtain people with acting experience for those rolls. This really just sounds like the best interdisciplinary project and if they plan on doing is more than just this upcoming Carnival, I will definitely try and figure out how I could be involved.
I heard that someone created a dark ride for playground a few years ago. I wonder if this is becoming a theme at Carnegie Mellon, and if it is, I am not disappointed by any means. I think dark rides are a really effective way to create a theatrical-type experience space. I love these architecture students’ theme they chose too! An old mill theme seems Disney-esque, and I’m excited to see how they carry it out. I think their use of Arduino and Raspberry Pi is also really cool, especially since many departments at CMU provide courses in learning these skills. It makes this dark ride seem more accessible to me as a student. I wonder when and where this dark ride will be showcased on campus, because it does not seem to say in the article. It would be an awesome attraction for Spring Carnival, but I am not sure what the creators are aiming for.
What an amazing idea! I didn’t even know that Carnegie Mellon had a Theme Park Engineering Group. I haven’t been to Kennywood yet, but it sounds like fun. I think I need to go to fully appreciate the work that the Theme Park Engineering Group has put into the Old Mill dark ride. When carnival comes around, I can’t wait to see what the group has put together. Booth to me sounds a lot like Imaginarium. I’m hoping we can find some inspiration on how to create our Imaginarium through booth. The Theme Park Engineering Group seems like a good resource to potentially get help from. I’d love to know more about their design process and how they came up with the ideas and where they pulled background knowledge from. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to building, so this project seems like a huge feat that I can’t wait to experience!
What an amazing idea! I didn’t even know that Carnegie Mellon had a Theme Park Engineering Group. I haven’t been to Kennywood yet, but it sounds like fun. I think I need to go to fully appreciate the work that the Theme Park Engineering Group has put into the Old Mill dark ride. When carnival comes around, I can’t wait to see what the group has put together. Booth to me sounds a lot like Imaginarium. I’m hoping we can find some inspiration on how to create our Imaginarium through booth. The Theme Park Engineering Group seems like a good resource to potentially get help from. I’d love to know more about their design process and how they came up with the ideas and where they pulled background knowledge from. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to building, so this project seems like a huge feat that I can’t wait to experience!
This is amazing. However they should have done more research on Old Mill itself, the Old Mill was A Old Mill, there were dozens, it was a type or style of ride not one specific attraction. It was the first dark ride and were water based attractions, the original log flume, and were driven through the ride by the water power created by a actual water wheel on the side of a mill. This was slowly adapted until the trough system was invented and perfected most notably at Knotts Berry Farm with their Timber Mountain Log Ride. The one they are building here is a true dark ride, akin to Snow White’s Scary Adventure or the few haunted themed ones left in the country. What I am most impressed by is the level of storytelling a bunch of engineers have developed so far. The story is very impressive and I would love if there were dark rides all over the country that told are specific stories and captured those local legends in a 4D experience.
This is by far one of the coolest things I have heard about happening for Carnival, except maybe fried Oreos of course. Carnival is great because it gives us, the students, an amazing break during an especially rough time within our semester and our school year. Usually it is useful because it not only provides a break but also adds something fun to do right on campus, rather than taking a trek somewhere to enjoy a similar level of fun. Of course, it also adds some time for us to catch up on work if need be. This ride sounds amazing. Unlike the other rides that are cool and look fun, they don’t add a whole lot of thrill which is what I look for in an amusement ride. This seems like it will offer just that and at the least it will give us a cool experience. It is experiences like these that are the reason why I am at CMU, so I am very excited to see this when Carnival comes around.
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