PIXAR ANIMATORS HELP CREATE COMPUTERIZED THEME RIDE
Pixar animators working with the Disney Imagineering team have together created an elaborate amusement park ride, Toy Story Midway Mania, that is opening today (Tuesday) at Disney’s California Adventure Park adjoining Disneyland. More than 150 computers are employed to synchronize the various parts of the ride, which gives visitors the illusion that they have been shrunk to the size of toys in a child’s room and can interact with them. (They can fire a virtual pie at Woody, and the character will react when struck, by scraping off the virtual pie filling.) Today’s (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times quoted one park visitor who attended a preview of the ride as saying that it was “absolutely mind-blowing. … It’s not an experience that I typically have [at an amusement park, where] things are typically passive.”
