As part of the team that created the Thea Award winning Bazyliszek at Legendia in Poland, Jora Vision will be there to celebrate when the interactive dark ride is officially recognised by the TEA at the Thea Awards Gala in April.
The attraction, which will be awarded “Outstanding Achievement – Limited Budget”, is the fifth project co-created by Jora Vision to win a Thea.
Launched at the Polish amusement park in May, Bazyliszek is a creative collaboration between Alterface, Jora Vision and ETF Ride systems. Jora Vision was responsible for creative design, project management and production of the attraction’s theming. Its work can be seen in the queuing areas, loading station and all ride scenes.
Amongst other things, the Thea Awards committee noted that Bazyliszek “introduces interactive, dark-ride storytelling to an emerging theme park market (Poland) and builds on a unique and local cultural context. It is well-executed, elegant, engaging, colourful, fun and fresh.”
Doing dark rides right
“Not many regional parks dare to invest in an interactive dark ride due to the complexity of creating such an attraction,” says Jan Maarten de Raad, Jora Vision CEO. “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.”
Jora Vision’s project development director, Robin van der Want says that attention to detail is everything. “We still see some parks [that] expect to build from a couple of point-of-view illustrations. However, successful experiences are built from numerous detailed drawings, also including information on operations, guest safety, capacity, fire regulations, visitors flow, sight-lines etc. We are happy that Legendia was able to lock down a proper percentage of the total investment for design. With the recognition of a Thea award, and the high guest appreciation, it is an example why this is worthwhile.”
More to come from Jora Vision
Over the past two years, Jora Vision has been involved in several dark ride and attraction projects around the world. One of these is another collaboration with Alterface and ETF. Popcorn Revenge will be the first Erratic (non-linear) interactive dark ride experience created by the team. It will open next season (2019) at Walibi Belgium.
“Popcorn Revenge will be a dark ride with a lot of humour and an unique theming style” says Simeon van Tellingen, Jora Vision creative director. “Visitors will enter an old cinema where the popcorns have come to live. They are even invading the movies!”
Planned for the new Mexican theme park Amikoo in 2020 is Los Piratas de Bacalar. This 5,000-square-metre indoor experience will feature a 50-minute walk-through attraction, including an immersive tunnel from Simworx. There will also be a fully-themed buffet restaurant and shop, all based on the rich piracy history of the Riviera Maya.
Van der Want says he is excited to see more and more parks showing an interest in Jora Vision’s expertise when it comes to dark rides and experiences. “These attractions give parks the opportunity to tell their own story and can be experienced by the entire family together”.
