Boardwalk Times at 7: 7 Themed Attractions Based on Science Fiction and Fantasy TV Shows
Small screen — Big Experiences!
April 2nd marks the 7th anniversary of Boardwalk Times and, to celebrate that, we’ll be doing a few Top 7 lists! Today is my list of 7 themed attractions based on science fiction and fantasy television shows.
The American theme park started its history as a reflection of popular films of its time and, today, very little has changed.
Theme parks are, for the most part, about movies. The trend might be shifting, however, as the immersive quality of television programming has grown and properties like Star Wars or Marvel begin to lean more on their small-screen siblings to keep the franchise’s plates spinning.
The age of the television-based theme park attraction remains in its infancy, but we can track the success and failures of the experiment in this list of 7 themed attractions based on popular television properties.
For this list, let’s go chronologically by attraction:
The Six Million Dollar Man (1973) in The Universal Studio Tour (1964)
Ok, so this one is a little backwards.
It is hard to explain how popular and culturally ever-present The Six Million Dollar Man TV show and its spin-off The Bionic Woman (1976) were in the mid-’70s and how much the two-part The Secret of Bigfoot storyline — starring Andre the Giant as the titular cryptid — set school playgrounds abuzz.
While it wasn’t uncommon for these series to utilize the Universal Studios back-lot for filming, for this particular story the rotating ice cave — originally inspired by the Clint Eastwood feature The Eiger Sanction (1975) — was not a movie set but a pre-existing themed attraction that was turned into a filmed set-piece after writer/producer Kenneth Johnson realized that he could use it.
Given the prominent place that the series was holding in the zeitgeist at that moment in 1976 and how significant the special effect was to the narrative, Universal quickly changed the tram narration for the rotating ice tunnel section to present it as a journey into the world of The Six Million Dollar Man which is how many people remember the effect today.
The World of Sid and Marty Krofft (1976)
While the popularity of the two “Bionic” shows may seem odd these days, they don’t hold a candle to the weirdness that is the Krofft pantheon. H.R. Pufinstuff (1969), The Bugaloos (1970), Lidsville (1971), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973) and so many others were eccentric and occasionally unnerving, kids fantasy shows whose weirdness we can still marvel at today.
In 1976, hoping to capitalize on the, by then, the long-term success of the Krofft’s television programs as well as the experience they’d gained working as designers at Six Flags Over Georgia, the brothers opened a five-story, interior, amusement park in downtown Atlanta. Replete with circus acts, bizarre talking scenery, a ride through a giant pinball machine, and a trip to the land of Pufnstuff and Witchiepoo, the park was like no other before or since.
Sadly, due to issues of prevalent crime in downtown Atlanta and the park’s unfortunate proximity to Six Flags, it closed in under a year. The building is now CNN headquarters.
Battlestar Galactica (1978) in the Battle of Galactica (1979), part of The Universal Studio Tour
The flexibility of The Universal Studio Tram Tour has allowed the parks to make quick substitutions of elements to reflect popular properties of the day without massive structural changes. Not so, however, for the elaborate and, for the time, extremely expensive Battle of Galactica set piece.
With the visitors’ GlamorTrams having been guided by a Cylon Warrior into the interior of a spaceship about to launch, the audience suddenly found themselves about to be taken prisoner, by orders of the Cylon Imperious Leader, and used as a food source for the insect-like Ovions.
This being too gruesome of a fate even for a Hollywood audience, a Colonial Warrior — the only live actor in the scene — burst into the room to launch a one-man assault against the Cylons — with the alien robots splitting in half, vertically, when hit — and freed the tram guests.
Notable for many reasons, the Battle of Galactica involved the first use of sophisticated animatronics outside of a Disney park, as well as the first use of laser effects — due to the intensity of the high-powered lasers, the safety protocols were elaborate — in a themed attraction.
The attraction lasted until 1992 when the building was demolished and the space was used for Back to the Future: The Ride (1993).
The Twilight Zone (1959) in The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (1994)
Perhaps no attraction based on a pre-existing intellectual property has ever been more surprising.
Rod Serling’s classic series was a property that had never been mentioned in the same breath as the name “Disney” ever. By anybody. In the world. I feel pretty secure in saying this. And, sure, we’ve all seen freefall drop rides, but even THAT is a misdirection in this amazing attraction.
To have an attraction based on a show famous for its twists then include a twist in the literal mechanics of the damn thing — to have it exit the one-dimensional path in which you expect the vehicle to be traveling — up and down — while the attraction talks about a “fourth dimension” is sheer inspiration.
The intelligent melding of a thrill ride with television’s greatest science fiction series almost makes this the best attraction on this list.
Almost…
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995) in Star Trek: The Experience (1998)
This experience — a set of environments, displays, and attractions at the Las Vegas Hilton — should not have worked.
Nothing about Vegas makes any sense as far as the mythology or philosophy of Star Trek goes. They should be at odds. And yet, something brilliant happened here.
From the reconstruction of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Promenade and Quark’s Bar to The History of the Future Museum to the two feature attractions, Klingon Encounter and Borg Invasion 4-D; the Experience put the guest in what felt like an entirely isolated and surprisingly well fleshed-out universe. Not until Universal’s Harry Potter and Disney’s Star Wars lands had anything like this ever held together with such surety.
Even with Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind (2023) trying to lift the gimmick (only partially successfully), no more stunning moment of attraction immersion has ever existed in an American-themed experience than the transporter effect in Klingon Encounter.
Ask someone who experienced it what it was like and watch as their eyes go joyous and distant trying to relive the memory.
Doctor Who (1963) in Doctor Who — Time Fracture (2021)
Doctor Who is the longest-running science fiction show of all time. It is, perhaps, so well suited to the small screen that it has struggled to move into any larger formats. A few not all that well-regarded movies from the ’60s exist and a couple of stage plays happened, but, for the most part, Doctor Who has stayed true to its television roots.
This is why it was an interesting development when, around 2020, an announcement was made by Big Finish Audio — long-time producers of the Time Lord’s audio-only dramas — about an expansive multimedia adventure that would incorporate audio plays, books, comics, a YouTube series and, intriguingly, and interactive experience located in central London called Time Fracture.
Time Fracture was a mix between themed environment, interactive theatre, and escape room — an elaborate, effects-heavy, adventure that put the audience through multiple adventures (think, the Galactic Starcruiser on a MUCH smaller scale) with multiple Doctors and an array of their favorite villains.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID pandemic, much of the overarching multimedia story, Time Lord Victorious, got muddled with difficult production schedules causing release dates to become seriously out of whack. It became extraordinarily difficult to follow and Time Fracture had to exist without the narrative support structure it had expected. It closed after slightly more than a year of performances.
Star Wars: Ahsoka (2023) in Star Tours — The Adventures Continue (2011)
Finally, let’s look to the future.
In a few weeks, the classic simulator ride Star Tours will finally acknowledge the rich legacy of the Star Wars extended universe television series by adding a stop for the Starspeeder 1000 on the planet Seatos from the hit Disney+ TV series, Star Wars: Ahsoka.
Not only will Ahsoka be taking her place in the attraction, but so will Din Djarin and Grogu from The Mandalorian (2019) and Cassian Andor from Andor (2022) in “urgent transmissions.”
This embrace of the franchise’s, often excellent, small-screen work bodes well for a broadening of the scope of what is “important” enough for a major theme park attraction. It leaves us with one major question, though…
If The Acolyte is a hit, where the heck in the parks are we gonna put The High Republic timeline?
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it!
Here are a few other of our anniversary Top 7 lists:
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Kelly McCubbin is a columnist for Boardwalk Times