Destination Space
There’s a new ride at Epcot (which, incidentally, means Expermental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. I didn’t notice any “community” at Epcot, it seems to just be a theme park. I know Disney does have an expermental community, where you can live in perfection, but it’s not at Epcot.) called Destination Space that’s really cool. Basically, it’s a space ship simulator. Four people get into a little box thing, with fake controls and readouts and buttons in front of you. The box is attached to a centerfuge, to simulate G-forces. This guy (some actor, I don’t remember his name) says that you’re training to be an astronaut, and this is a simulation of a trip to Mars. Each of the four of you have a title (Commander, Navigator, Engineer, something else), and have two jobs to do. These jobs consist of hitting one of two buttons at a specific time, ie when they tell you to. I don’t know what happens if you don’t hit them, because everyone in our car did. At any rate, you tilt up into launch position, and launch, and are pressed back into your seat by Gs. You get to space, have a instant of freefall, and hit the second stage button, and are flattened again. After the sling around the moon (I had to hit the button for that), you go into suspended animation (which allows them to skip freefall for the 3 months necessary to reach mars), and come out in a meteor shower, dodge meteors, and land, overshooting the landing strip and almost falling down a cliff. Okay, it’s a hokey plot, but it was a great ride. It has all the right accelerations at all the right places, and did a very convincing job of simulating the entire space trip, even the (admittedly brief) freefall, which probably wasn’t really freefall. All in all, a good ride.
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