I thought that Oceaneering had been involved with most every small vehicle trackless ride in the industry since Hunny Hunt (wouldn't be surprised if they were collaborators with WDI on it, but info is hard to nail down with trackless tech from a quick search). To what extent I wouldn't venture a guess depending on the attraction, but I'm open to being wrong on that since info on that seems to be scarce because most of the trackless rides are in Disney, and WDI takes the public credit for everything. If someone feels like digging through Fun World there might be mentions in there for Mystic Manor, Rat, etc.
@Ravenclaw78 is exactly right, just referring to the ride system/vehicles (not visually).
Hmmm...you might be right on Brogent. I thought Dynamic was the main manufacturer from what I had gathered and that I was only familiar with Brogent's rotating design. The point still stands, I don't believe it's a uniquely WDI system, compared to something like Soarin or the omnimovers where those were entirely new and someone was brought in to help make it a reality. As for Seven Dwarves, nah, that was an iteration on the Arrow suspended system from the 80s just done a lot better with the track under instead of overhead. That it hadn't been done before isn't surprising, because I don't expect to see that again outside of blatant knockoffs since it isn't that special of a thing (the original suspended models aren't just maintenance nightmares, they're also not that popular in general) without a thematic reason for it like with Seven Dwarves.
Like I said, I'd concede trackless for the most part initially, but I believe it's much more "off the shelf" now at this point and WDI is only involved in the new "tricks" that aren't related to the core ride system. Again, since trackless seems harder to nail down, I could be wrong, but that's my understanding of the ride system landscape (not differentiating between wire-based like Tower or sensor/location-based).
I don't post anymore, but I felt like I had to correct a few misconceptions about ride manufacturers.
People throw around the name Dynamic Attractions a lot, but what exactly is "Dynamic Attractions?" Let's go back to the late 90's, a steel fabricator in British Colombia (Canada) named AGRA Coast Limited (who specialised in high end optical equipment like telescopes along with large ski jump structures among others) was asked by Disney to fix Test Track design and fabrication flaws. It worked and WDI appreciated them so much that they were given the contract of fabricating the steel erector sets for Soarin' Over California based on WDI's Mark Sumner (who is named on the patent for the ride system) design. From there, they've done work for Disney, such as supervising DL Space Mountain reconstruction, redone monorails and other work. In 2001, a british firm called AMEC purchased AGRA Coast Limited and renamed it AMEC Dynamic Structures.
AMEC Dynamic Structures created dark rides using the german KUKA robotic arms. Universal and Disney fought for the completed design from , with Universal winning out and originally wanted to use it for a Van Helsing ride at Islands of Adventure. After the movie with Hugh Jackman flopped and Universal got the Harry Potter rights, the ride system was used for Forbidden Journey. Since then, Universal's exclusivity has run out and in 2018, Warner Bros World in Abu Dhabi opened Batman's Knight Flight, a dark ride using the Kuka arms. Another company is now making Kuka arm dark rides: Premier Rides, with the first one opening soon hopefully at Sunac Land (ex Wanda Park) Guangzhou. That's in addition to the chinese made copies, the first one I saw was at Joyland in China, but I could not ride due to a strict 170 lbs weight limit.
So where does the current Dynamic Attractions come in? In 2007, AMEC Dynamic Structures was purchased by a competitor, Empire Industries. Empire is a fellow telescope builder and the companies businesses were merged, with an industry legend named Peter Schnabels coming in to lead to a dedicated amusement division, Dynamic Attractions. Peter Schnabels is a legend as he helped create the american company of Intamin (maker of Grizzly River Run, Indiana Jones et le Temple du Peril, California Screamin's, Pirates of the Caribbean and Small World in Paris, a Space Mountain, etc.), founded Premier Rides and other accomplishments. Later on, Peter Schnabels left to form a new company, CAVU, also based in Canada.
Next among the line of top Disney attraction suppliers, Sansei Technologies. Sansei-Yusoki as it was known then built the largest roller coasters in Japan in the 60's and 70's and helped build many attractions at Tokyo Disneyland. WDI used them to build the Disneyland, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Paris Buzz Lightyear as well as the two Little Mermaid omnimovers. They were also used to build versions of other rides in Asia, like Raging Spirits (Intamin was not involved there contrary to what you see online), Shanghai Disneyland Roaring Rapids is also from Sansei, not Intamin. They're used for some very unique ride systems and to help support their american Disney contracts, purchased S&S Power over 10 years ago. Sansei also purchased Vekoma, but Vekoma is still treated as a stand-alone company.
Oceaneering has been thrown around a bit here. What exactly did they do and how did they start in the amusement business? The original Jaws ride at Universal Studios Florida didn't work, with the shark robots not exactly running reliably. Oceaneering core business is underwater equipment for offshore platform, drilling and robots to service that equipment. To that end, they got Jaws to work a lot better and like with AGRA/Dynamic Structures, Universal Creative kept their name in mind and had them build the Spiderman ride system. Oceaneering then built their own version of that spinning tracked dark ride car, named the Revolution, which was sold to a few non Universal clients around the world. The Evolution trackless dark ride was first used by SeaWorld Florida for the Antarctica dark ride and was used by Disney for Tokyo Disneyland new Beauty and the Beast dark ride, but modified for 10 passengers for higher capacity. The EVO-6 tracked dark ride is a more affordable and smaller vehicle with the capacity to do 3 DOF, first used on the Six Flags Justice League rides.
What are DOF? When thinking of a motion simulator, each Degree of Freedom (DOF) is a movement that the ride vehicle can be made to do. The most advanced motion simulators, like Star Tours (Rediffusion Simulation Limited motion simulators) are capable of 6 DOF, while simpler ones like Soarin' can only do 2 or 4. The Disney Enhanced Motion Vehicle (EMV) is capable of 6 and with the longer travel of the cylinders, can do more than Oceaneering Spiderman or Evolution vehicles.
Brogent Technologies was mentioned here. Their i-Ride premiered in 2010 and it went back to some ideas that WDI had abandoned for Soarin'. Disney didn't want to have loading on multiple levels due to staffing requirements and came up with the large moving erector set as a replacement. Brogent uses it as a selling point, since on days with lower attendance, you can close one or two levels and run less vehicles, lowering running costs, maintenance and staffing. The i-Ride is capable of 6DOF, so you can have a very active and action oriented film. The m-Ride, first seen on Legoland's Master of Flight can do 4DOF, but has the interesting idea of spinning the car around when needed and at the start and end of the cycle.
Flight of Passage is not from Brogent, but from what I can piece together, is something WDI assembled together from multiple vendors. The way the ride work is also brillantly simple: the platform on which your seats is on is mounted on rails. The rails move back and forth only while the seats tilt left and right. Not too exciting, right? The fun begins when you realize the rails are on an assembly that can drop and raise. When the ride begins with that dramatic plunge, its a matter of the cars sliding down the rails while they drop down. Dynamic Attractions again came up with a variant for Non Disney clients, but I haven't seen one appear anywhere yet. Rise of the Resistance is another example where Disney assembled many vendors and acted as the orchestra leader to bring it all together.
Disney and Universal still like to think outside the box when it comes to vendors and fabricators. Like, did you know that Roush Industries (who make aftermarket car parts and runs one of the largest Nascar team) made the new Matterhorn Bobsleds cars? They were also involved with Ratatouille. Mystic Manor had a company called ROTO industries involved, something I saw at IAAPA one year when their booth had a photo of Mystic Manor as one of their previous work, something Disney frowns heavily on.
Roush Industries Entertainment page.
