Play While You Wait



Christopher Boyd, Beth Kassab and Scott Powers | Staff Writers
Orlando Sentinel | Bussiness Breifcase
June 18, 2007

The typically long wait lines at Soarin', one of Walt Disney World's most popular attractions, are providing Disney with a new opportunity.

As a "play test," Disney engineers and designers are installing interactive video technology, motion detectors and other devices at the Epcot attraction, so that visitors might be able to entertain themselves while they make their way through Soarin's queue, which one day last week had a wait exceeding two hours.

The resulting games will feature leading-edge technology that will allow people to play together while interacting with video shown on large screens hanging in the high-ceilinged "Grand Hall" area, said Joe Garlington, vice president and executive producer at Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney's attractions-design group. In one activity, people will race birds flying across a landscape.

The system should be up by mid-July. If it works, it could stay -- and perhaps inspire similar play areas for lines elsewhere.

"This seemed like a great place to do it," Garlington said.

Visitors undoubtedly would agree. Last week, a half-dozen members of the extended Doney-Gecewicz family from Massachusetts and New York found their 130-minute wait for Soarin' almost too much. Entertainment in the line would be welcome, said Tom Doney of Longmeadow, Mass.

"Spectacular ride," his brother-in-law, Joe Gecewicz of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., concluded after riding Soarin' -- though he added that he thought the line for it was still too long