There’s a “Nouvelle Révolution” at Montreal’s amusement park La Ronde this season – but is riding a roller coaster in smartphone-equipped ski goggles really the future of theme-park rides?
As soon as I pop on this virtual-reality gear, I’m no longer sitting next to my fiancée, Charlotte, in the sixth row of the Goliath – the red-blue-and-yellow roller coaster that was the tallest and fastest in Canada from 2006 to 2008 (until the Behemoth at Canada’s Wonderland, just north of Toronto, surpassed it).
No, now I’m in a fighter plane waiting for takeoff. If I look down, I see a silent co-pilot; if I look left toward Charlotte, she’s disappeared – all around, I only see the walls of a deep concrete bunker.
Then all at once, I’m rising vertically – like no plane I’ve ever been on – toward the roof, which opens to reveal a city, that is not Montreal, under attack by aliens. In order to avoid a nearby spaceship’s death rays, my plane suddenly plummets down toward a highway, pulling up from traffic only at the last minute.
For the next 60 seconds or so, I zoom between the legs of giant arachnid aliens and around skyscrapers, screaming at both the real, physical sensations of the roller coaster and the virtual-reality visuals synced with them. As Keanu famously put it: “Whoa.”
La Ronde is the first amusement park in Canada to combine VR with a roller coaster. It’s one of nine across North America in the Six Flags chain to roll out similar innovations this season.
A German company called VR Coaster created two programs for the Texas-based company’s parks: Six have a version of the sequence called “Nouvelle Révolution” (New Revolution) in Montreal, while three have a Superman-themed experience.
All are customized to individual rides, La Ronde’s head of communications Jules Hébert explained. In the case of the Goliath, VR Coaster was sent sketches and blueprints first; then, engineers came over and installed black boxes in the trains and sensors on the wheels, so that each headset could be synchronized with precisely what each rows of seats is experiencing.
That means that the Goliath’s infamous initial drop – 52 metres at 110 kilometres an hour – matches up perfectly with your fighter plane’s movements (or is perfectly exaggerated by it), no matter if you’re sitting near the back of the coaster car or the front.
While the lines for this at once disembodying and body-jostling thrill ride have been long since it opened on May 21, the flow is smooth: Each Goliath train has 28 seats reserved for the VR experience – but there are 150 headsets, so plenty of time for each Samsung device to be cleaned and recharged before going back into circulation. The Goliath was not my first VR experience: Earlier this year, I spent time looking around a refugee camp in Jordan through the eyes of a young Syrian named Sidra thanks to a UN-funded documentary. So, I didn’t have to adapt right away like Charlotte, who – unclear on exactly how VR worked – spent the first ride staring straight up, mainly seeing the virtual sky instead of the actual one.
Luckily, we didn’t have to wait in line for a do-over. After her second trip, Charlotte observed that the scariest part was was not what she could see – aliens attacking from a mothership in the distance – but what she couldn’t see. She was disconnected from what was actually happening to her in space – and that was (enjoyably) terrifying. Indeed, while the VR augments the Goliath experience in many ways, it does take away the thrill of anticipation. You can’t see that you are about to reach the top of a big drop, or that a big curve is coming up in front of you. Instead, you get a series of surprises, as your plane suddenly dips, or unexpectedly turns and crashes through the windows of an office building.
The pleasure is less like waiting for a birthday cake, more like getting a pie in the face.
Two small caveats: Though Hébert touted the VR’s “360-degree views,” keep in mind that strapped into a roller coaster whose movement you cannot control, you’re not going to be able to look behind you. Then, there’s the unnecessary video-game aspect – you can spray bullets in front of you by tapping the side of your goggles, but it only works during takeoff, leaving you helpless in the intergalactic battle.
There’s part of me that wants to be curmudgeonly about this New Revolution at the amusement park I visited as a kid when it was still owned by the City of Montreal. Do today’s teens really need to stare at screens even on thrill rides now? Can we no longer simply enjoy the sight of a friend or family member’s face screaming in terror in our peripheral vision? But the fact is that you can continue to enjoy the view of the length of Île Sainte-Hélène and admire the Jacques Cartier bridge as it whizzes in and out of sight from the front or back rows of the Goliath, which are reserved for the purists.
Meanwhile, the simple Quiet Revolution pleasures of La Pitoune, the French-Canadian themed log flume ride, or a steamé all-dressed are still a short walk away at La Ronde for nostalgic old-timers.