Rob Coasters
Hyper Poster
Immersion is where a theme park builds a ride's world to make you forget that you're at a park. Theme parks, especially Merlin, have hugely tried to immerse its riders into multiple worlds - but while the rides often have impressive theming, they almost always fail to make the rider ask themselves "am I at a park, or am I really in this world?". However, in my experiences, there have been only three rides that had me reconsidering my current location.
Absolute peak success in worldbuilding transports you out of the theme park. This phenomenon is something that I unofiicially call "true immersion". Let me break my three experiences down.
April 2019: True Immersion #1 - Derren Brown's Ghost Train at Thorpe Park
No, I'm not joking. This silly VR attraction had me genuinely questioning where I was. I guess I was not used to VR at the time so perhaps this escalated this ride's immersion for me, but I did indeed have a few moments of my whereabouts being thrown into doubt. I don't remember the specifics of what was happening, but it was pretty cool. On future rerides of Derren, this did not happen, so unfortunately it was a one-off with this ride, and my rides on the newly refurbished version, Ghost Train, from 2023 onwards have not had me experience true immersion either.
June 2023: True Immersion #2 - Ratatouille at Walt Disney Studios Paris
Oftentimes people aren't too keen on this trackless dark ride, but me personally I loved it to bits. Perhaps it was because it was my first ever time experiencing a trackless dark ride, but this ride really clicked with me. I knew I liked it from the start, even with the screens, but what really threw me for a loop was the ride's fantastic sense of scale. At around the middle of the ride the whole thing started to seriously feel like a drug trip with how truly massive everything felt. As well as Derren, nobody else shared this feeling of true immersion with me and most don't even enjoy the ride that much, even less to the extent that I do, so I worry that this is a one-off.
January 2024: True Immersion #3 - FLY night ride at Phantasialand
So far the only roller coaster to give this feeling to me, and it'll be difficult to find a second. Over half a year after riding it eight times over the course of three days I still badly struggle to find the words to describe the ride, but a night ride changed everything. In the beginning it just honestly felt like "same ride, just dark outside mate" until some point during the second half where suddenly everything became a blur and I practically ascended. Coming into sheer confusion of where I was, I had "where the f**k am I" in my head and literally nothing else. Am I still here in Germany? Has literally anything else happened in life? What has led to this situation? It became thirty seconds where nothing mattered. Flew into the brakes, still utterly bewildered by that feeling and what I'd just gone through. What?
It's safe to say that my experience with FLY at night was the most immersed I had ever been in a theme park, but what about you? When did a ride make you question reality because it had successfully immersed you into its world?
Absolute peak success in worldbuilding transports you out of the theme park. This phenomenon is something that I unofiicially call "true immersion". Let me break my three experiences down.
April 2019: True Immersion #1 - Derren Brown's Ghost Train at Thorpe Park
No, I'm not joking. This silly VR attraction had me genuinely questioning where I was. I guess I was not used to VR at the time so perhaps this escalated this ride's immersion for me, but I did indeed have a few moments of my whereabouts being thrown into doubt. I don't remember the specifics of what was happening, but it was pretty cool. On future rerides of Derren, this did not happen, so unfortunately it was a one-off with this ride, and my rides on the newly refurbished version, Ghost Train, from 2023 onwards have not had me experience true immersion either.
June 2023: True Immersion #2 - Ratatouille at Walt Disney Studios Paris
Oftentimes people aren't too keen on this trackless dark ride, but me personally I loved it to bits. Perhaps it was because it was my first ever time experiencing a trackless dark ride, but this ride really clicked with me. I knew I liked it from the start, even with the screens, but what really threw me for a loop was the ride's fantastic sense of scale. At around the middle of the ride the whole thing started to seriously feel like a drug trip with how truly massive everything felt. As well as Derren, nobody else shared this feeling of true immersion with me and most don't even enjoy the ride that much, even less to the extent that I do, so I worry that this is a one-off.
January 2024: True Immersion #3 - FLY night ride at Phantasialand
So far the only roller coaster to give this feeling to me, and it'll be difficult to find a second. Over half a year after riding it eight times over the course of three days I still badly struggle to find the words to describe the ride, but a night ride changed everything. In the beginning it just honestly felt like "same ride, just dark outside mate" until some point during the second half where suddenly everything became a blur and I practically ascended. Coming into sheer confusion of where I was, I had "where the f**k am I" in my head and literally nothing else. Am I still here in Germany? Has literally anything else happened in life? What has led to this situation? It became thirty seconds where nothing mattered. Flew into the brakes, still utterly bewildered by that feeling and what I'd just gone through. What?
It's safe to say that my experience with FLY at night was the most immersed I had ever been in a theme park, but what about you? When did a ride make you question reality because it had successfully immersed you into its world?
