Think that you have already experienced the true form of the Kraken, think again with the new Virtual Reality experience!
Image Courtesy of Sea World.
On June 15th, Sea World treated the media to a day in the parks to experience the newly refreshed Kraken Unleashed! Kraken Unleashed is a first-of-its-kind virtual reality roller coaster in the United States, with fully integrated headsets. Kraken Unleashed has by far the best virtual reality experience that we’ve experienced anywhere in the United States. The visuals are very stunning and made it feel like we weren’t even on a Roller Coaster – even with the VR being entirely optional!
The new Kraken seats with VR Gear
Once you get there, you will go through the newly refreshed queue up to the loading platform that will enable you to go into a completely immersive experience that takes riders on an exploratory journey under the sea. “The new Sea Base has been built, which is the new queue line, here on the Isle of Greece” said Brian Morrow, Vice President of Theme Park Experience and Design, “Once you put the immersion goggles on, you’re actually on the inside of a submarine, you take a beautiful journey through Greece’s underwater ocean scapes and then some weird Geological stuff happens and opens a crack in the bottom of the ocean.”
“The new Sea Base has been built, which is the new queue line, here on the Isle of Greece,” said Brian Morrow, Vice President of Theme Park Experience and Design, “Once you put the immersion goggles on, you’re actually on the inside of a submarine. You take a beautiful journey through Greece’s underwater ocean scapes and then some weird Geological stuff happens and opens a crack in the bottom of the ocean floor and the other subs start falling into it and we get sucked in. Where we fall is in a crack of time, back in time to this prehistoric ocean. Full of Giant Sea Creatures, enormous crabs, and of course the Kraken. We eventually make our journey to Atlantis, and we understand exactly why Atlantis is here at Sea World Orlando because it’s risen up out of the ocean and landed here in the park.”
The trade off for the decrease in capacity due to the VR is Sea World’s new Spot Saver Virtual Queue. As Brian Morrow told us, “The trade-off in the theme park business is high mass capacity with a little personalization or high personalization with low capacity.” He went on to state that with three coasters now being in the park, that it was a “good time to experiment with one to try something new and see how it goes and to see what the guests think of the new experiences.” The trade-off of increased dispatch times have a lower capacity is Spot Saver which will be free for guests who are within the park, to save their spot in line. Kraken Unleashed will operate with a standard standby line however when the wait builds to 20 minutes, the standby queue will be cut off and Spot Saver will become available. Once they run out of saved spots for Kraken Unleased, you will be allowed to join a standby queue shortly before park closing.
Want to see more From the Kraken Unleashed improvements? Check out our full gallery from the event below!
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