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Hyper_ride Triotech

Hyper Ride: taking the attractions world by storm

We find out more about what makes Triotech‘s latest dark ride unique

Triotech_Ernest_Yale
Ernest Yale

Triotech, an award-winning creator of media-based attractions, is proud to unveil its latest product, Hyper Ride. This dark ride has already won awards, and guests will be able to experience it for themselves this season at two locations, one in France and one in Canada.

Hyper Ride is a new type of anchor attraction, bringing a destination park level experience to smaller venues. It is designed to encourage people to come back again and again, and is suitable for a wide range of venues, from local amusement parks and larger FECs to shopping centres and LBE operations.

The first location is already open to guests at La Tête dans les Nuages in a shopping centre outside Paris. Meanwhile, the second is currently being installed in Clifton Hill near Niagara Falls, ready for summer 2022.

To find out more about what makes Hyper Ride unique, blooloop spoke to Ernest Yale, president, CEO, and founder of Triotech.

Hyper Ride: Triotech’s biggest project yet

While the last two years have been a challenge for all, for Triotech the pandemic was a catalyst, a chance for its team to put their heads down and create something completely new.

“We didn’t know what would happen,” says Yale, on the outbreak of COVID in 2020. “Triotech has always been growing and suddenly we were faced with this slowdown. A lot of our customers postponed their orders, obviously because they had to shut down their site. We had to decide what we could do to keep our employees, our engineers, working.”

The result was Hyper Ride, which Yale says is one of the biggest products that Triotech has ever developed.

“During that time, we had a lot of the teams working on Hyper Ride: the animation studio, engineering, design, sales, and marketing.  I then went to two of our partners and we were able to negotiate good deals for the two first units. One is in a shopping mall in Paris and the other one is at Niagara Falls in Canada.”

The two locations are quite different, which is an ideal opportunity for Triotech to showcase the product’s flexibility:

“One of them is bigger, with seven screens. The other has five screens and fits in a small space in an FEC located in a shopping mall. We also built those first products with two different sets of content. So that kept us busy for a good part of 2020!”

Weathering the storm

Triotech Hyper Ride

Despite the impact of the pandemic, Triotech is in a good place currently, says Yale:

“The US is our biggest market. In fact, Florida almost never closed and a lot of people from the US travelled to Florida. Disney was sold out because people from the US couldn’t travel internationally. So, our American customers had one of their best summers ever in 2021 and orders have really picked up again for us.

“Now, we’re installing these two Hyper Rides. The one in Paris is already installed and we’re now upgrading it. I think it’s going to be a great attraction. In Niagara Falls, we had some delays because of local COVID restrictions, but the team is now installing the new Hyper Ride there.

“It’s been challenging, but a company like Triotech, we’re big enough to weather the storm. We have around 200 employees, including our CL Corp division in Europe and our team in Asia. And we’re continuing to grow. Right now, we have several open positions.

“We’re in a position where we can become one of the leaders of the industry because some of the other companies have been struggling. We are looking at acquisitions and people are calling us, wanting to work with us.”

Presenting Hyper Ride

Hyper Ride is a result of the Triotech team building on its experience and expertise in the attractions space.

“We’ve built 35 to 40 dark rides in the past five or six years. And every dark ride that we’ve built, we’ve learned how to make it better,” explains Yale.

“We’ve become experts in how to integrate things like special effects and interactive components. Hyper Ride is essentially the best of everything we have done so far, everything we’ve learned. All this knowledge is integrated into a product that is compact and scalable, so we can offer it to small to mid-size locations too.”

Hyper Ride is essentially the best of everything we have done so far, everything we’ve learned.

“Hyper Ride technology is targeted for large FECs and location-based attractions, as well as small to mid-size amusement parks. We’re also looking at adapting it for smaller venues.”

The motion of the cart is the most innovative part of Hyper Ride. The vehicle places Triotech motion seats on a moving platform to create “motion on motion”.

“This creates a much stronger acceleration, it almost feels like a coaster,” says Yale. “Essentially, what we’re trying to do is, instead of doing custom dark ride projects, we’re building a product where customers can reuse the dark ride format and change the content every few years, or even run different content at the same time.”

New content encourages repeat visits

This frequent refreshing of content has been Triotech’s not-so-secret to its success in recent years:

“We have been selling our platforms and our simulators for 15, 20 years now but we are always upgrading the content. For instance, Typhoon started with three different types of content and now has over 20. Our interactive theatre has more than ten different types of content available.”

Triotech hyper ride motion platform

“I want this to be a dark ride that becomes a standard in the industry, and we want to establish a community of operators. This will in turn be an incentive for content providers to develop more content. Initially, we will develop all the content ourselves. But, like with Storm, we’re also going to use third parties as well to develop content in the future. So, that whole system is going to feed itself and it’s going to be better for operators.

“The key here is that if operators make money and if they have returning customers, it is going to make this system very popular. We now have these two locations that people can see for themselves this summer. I am very confident that we will sign dozens of deals in the next two years with this platform.”

Carnival Chaos

The installation at Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, Ontario, will serve as a flagship, highlighting what the ride can bring for operators. It will be called Carnival Chaos.

“Carnival Chaos is what we call a single gate,” says Yale. “The location is less than one kilometre from Niagara Falls, which is the number one tourist attraction in Canada. People come here from all over the world.”

Hyper_ride Triotech

“There is a whole tourist industry around Niagara Falls. There are a lot of hotels, there are casinos, there is a waterpark, and there are location-based attractions. The Harry Oakes Company has been one of our customers for a long time. They have been operating Triotech attractions in Clifton Hill for more than a decade, including Typhoon, Storm, and a 20 seat XD Theatre, running content every year.

“There is also an XD Dark Ride, Zombie Attack. People see the falls and then they’re looking for things to do in the evening. This is open until 2 am. In the tourist season, the operator can sell a few thousand tickets per day for Zombie Attack.

“Carnival Chaos is going to be the newest and hopefully best attraction. It’s inside a building which had a full arcade with a very low ceiling and we’re now building a Hyper Ride there.”

Showcasing Hyper Ride

One key element of this particular Hyper Ride installation is that the vehicle comes outside.

“You’ll see people screaming and you’ll see the loading area. So, people are walking in the street, and they wonder what it is, they want to try it,” says Yale.

“That has always been a challenge for dark rides – how do you sell tickets versus a coaster? With a coaster, people see the big drop, but dark rides are, by definition, dark. They’re inside. They’re hidden. That means it’s harder for operators to sell a ticket because people are not necessarily sure what the attraction is.”

Triotech Hyper Ride CliftonHill
Photo credit: IDS Integrative Design Strategies Inc.

“Carnival Chaos is a four- or five-minute-long experience. Plus, there are souvenirs they can buy, and the operator is going to probably sell this as a combo with their other attractions. This Hyper Ride can be a way to convince customers to buy the combo tickets for all the other attractions.

“The experience itself is completely new. It’s based on our previous carnival title for our interactive theatre, but it’s a reinvention, it’s completely redone. I imagine that, in a few years, they will then rebrand this attraction, change the IP. They can renew this attraction so that when visitors return to Niagara Falls, it’s going to look like something completely new.”

Flexibility & repeatability

In addition to the international tourists, many of the people who come to Niagara Falls are from Canada:

“They come regularly, they come for the casino or for the waterpark. They could come every year, and in the winter, a lot of them come for the weekend. These are returning customers, so you can’t show them the same attraction for 15 years.”

Triotech LeisurUp MAPIC 2021

For Carnival Chaos, the operator had a specific building to fill:

“The ceilings were relatively low, and we were easily able to adapt the track to his building. Hyper Ride has a few layout options for different sizes. The one in Paris is much smaller, but now we’re looking at doing an even smaller one, with one or two vehicles. Hopefully, we can bring that to IAAPA in Orlando this year.

“It’s a scalable product. It’s flexible, both size-wise and IP-wise, if you have a good space and you want an anchor attraction.”

In terms of industry trends, Yale says that today’s guests are seeking more immersive, more interactive experiences, rather than passive attractions with no incentive to repeat.

“When it comes to immersiveness, new technologies such as 4K projections, special effects and real-time video game tech are really improving this. But the key is allowing guests to interact with the attraction, whether it is by shooting targets, or even with hand gestures like the Storm.”

Triotech Storm VR Simulator

“Making attractions interactive, as well as showing players their pictures and scores, make the guest want to do it multiple times. They feel part of the story.

“The other thing is to try to move people around and make it a dynamic attraction. Like the Star Wars ride at Disney, for example. While you’re waiting, there are all these Star Wars animatronics, and then you go to the training room where you interact with actors. It’s moving you into an imaginary world where you are part of an IP that everybody knows. Then you get on board the Millennium Falcon and you get to pilot the ship or shoot at the bad guys.

“Essentially, we are also doing this but on a much smaller budget. If you think about our Fear The Walking Dead attraction, it’s a walking attraction with a lot of theming. You move from a training station into a simulator, and then you walk and there’s immersion and interactivity and then you get into the final experience where you move around, and you can shoot at bad guys.”

Interactive experiences

“These walkthroughs are 15-to-20-minute experiences which are not just sitting in a theatre and not doing anything,” continues Yale. “You move around, you go on a journey.

“Our walkthrough attractions are much more dynamic, and they don’t look like a classical park attraction. But at the same time, because it’s modular, we’re able to install it in locations like shopping malls.”

Triotech_Walkthrough

“This concept is flexible, dynamic, and customizable. The way we see it, the trend is to bring guests into the attraction and allow them to interact with the attraction. This means that they are generating new memories with their friends. Kids and young adults are exposed to all these high budget Playstation and Xbox games, which are fantastic. But we as an industry need to give them an experience that is comparable.

“Offering something that people cannot experience at home is important because we’ve been stuck at home for so long during the pandemic.”

See also: Engaging a new generation of fans: the return of Knott’s Bear-y Tales

Hyper Ride and more: what’s next for Triotech?

Triotech logo

Triotech has several projects ready to launch. Some of these were delayed because of COVID and are now about to roll out to eager post-pandemic audiences.

“As well as Hyper Ride, we also have several other new products that we’ve developed on a smaller scale, completely new products that we’re launching at IAAPA Expo in Orlando,” says Yale.

“These follow the Triotech DNA, which is essentially a platform with a library of content that operators can run for 10 to 15 years. We’re going to have probably four or five products on display at IAAPA this year. That will be a record for us.

“In addition, we’re looking at acquisitions and partnerships in the industry. I think there’s going to be a lot of consolidation in the industry because of what happened with COVID. So, we’re in talks with potential future partners.”

A bright future

Triotech also has several projects underway in Asia:

“For instance, we have a project at a new park in Vietnam that is essentially complete and is ready to open. We are going to be working with some major brands in Asia.

“Plus, we have a project coming out of our CL Corp division in France. We made that investment in 2019, just before COVID, and we found that their technology is very complementary to Triotech. And of course, the geography is complementary. Because they’re in Europe and we’re in Canada, they can work with local parks.

“That’s the idea of growing by acquisition. If it’s done the right way for the right reasons, it’s going to help us to get positioned as a player that people want to do business with.”

Yale is looking forward to a bright future for Triotech, and despite the company’s continued growth, he remains committed to its core vision:

“We believe in bringing people out of their homes to enjoy experiences with their friends, with their families. We want people to come out and have fun. That’s our DNA, that’s what makes us smile and that’s what we’re bringing to the world.”

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charlotte coates

Charlotte Coates

Charlotte Coates is blooloop's editor. She is from Brighton, UK and previously worked as a librarian. She has a strong interest in arts, culture and information and graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in English Literature. Charlotte can usually be found either with her head in a book or planning her next travel adventure.

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