Dynamic Attractions has partnered Chinese space technology company Altair on a proposal to build a space-themed amusement park in Hangzhou, which will include three cutting-edge mixed reality attractions.
The CA$600m (US$444m, €400m, £357m) project, dubbed Space Park, signals a new role for Dynamic Attractions, who will be a strategic partner from the outset. The two companies signed an MOU in China in September to cement the alliance.
Altair came up with the idea for a space-themed destination in the high-tech city of Hangzhou a couple of years before, and formed an agreement for Dynamic Attractions to master plan the park, develop and supply the attractions and provide operational expertise. As well as funding the project, Altair will bring its experience with Chinese business and government. Altair is currently in the process of securing a 20-hectare site for development.
“We see a lot of good parks, a lot of not so good parks and a lot of terrible parks being developed,” said Guy Nelson, CEO of Empire Industries, which owns Dynamic Attractions. “We’ve got expertise in the business and we’ve worked with the best parks in the world. We understand what works and have developed fairly broad knowledge beyond doing ride systems. I wanted to use this as an opportunity to leverage our way into a broader role with additional services that generate further revenue than selling attractions and ride systems.”
“It’s strategically exciting to embed ourselves at the front end of the process and pencil in our attractions as the key driver of the whole park,” he told
Attractions Management.
Space Park will be a high-tech location, featuring movie and theatre-based motion rides and possibly a planetarium-style experience. There will be an emphasis on advanced technologies such as virtual reality and mixed reality.
“We don’t want to just slap Oculus goggles on people, we want to really push the envelope,” Nelson said. “We are planning three attractions in the augmented reality space that we feel will transport people in both scale and volume – always a challenge in theme parks – to another world. The content will lend itself quite nicely to a mixed reality, augmented reality type of situation.”
As well as three AR attractions, there will be three of the company’s iconic motion-based attractions. The project, which will highlight space technology and exploration, has also found allies in China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and the China Space Museum in Beijing.
