Nemo & Friends SeaRider
| Nemo & Friends SeaRider | |
|---|---|
| Park | Tokyo DisneySea |
| Land / area | Port Discovery |
| Type | Motion simulator |
| Opened | May 12, 2017 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | 90 cm (35 in) |
| Status | Operating |
Nemo & Friends SeaRider is a motion simulator ride in Port Discovery at Tokyo DisneySea in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. Based on Pixar's Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, it puts guests aboard a fish-shaped submarine that is shrunk to the size of a real fish, so they can swim the Great Barrier Reef alongside Nemo, Dory and Marlin. The attraction opened on May 12, 2017, replacing the opening-day simulator StormRider in the same building and on the same ride system.[1][2]
SeaRider did more than swap one film for another. Its arrival rethemed the centre of Port Discovery: the building that had housed a weather-control station became the Marine Life Institute, and the port's story shifted from controlling the weather to studying and protecting marine life.[2]
History
The building began life as StormRider, an opening-day attraction of September 4, 2001, in which guests flew into a storm in a futuristic aircraft for the Center for Weather Control. StormRider closed in May 2016 after nearly fifteen years of operation.[1] Rather than replace its large simulator hardware, Walt Disney Imagineering reused the ride system and theatre, giving the building a new blue colour scheme, an exterior mural of sea life and a new identity as the Marine Life Institute — the organisation that also anchors Finding Dory.[2][1]
Nemo & Friends SeaRider opened on May 12, 2017.[1] The project was developed with Pixar, and its technical party piece was a film assembled in real time: each voyage is composed from more than 576 different video clips, so the sequence of scenes varies from ride to ride in the manner of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue.[3] That work was recognised by the Themed Entertainment Association, which gave the attraction a Thea Award in 2019.[3]
Experience
Inside the Marine Life Institute, scientists explain the breakthrough that makes the ride possible: a substance called Chidiminium, which conducts electricity and can shrink the materials made from it. The Institute has built a submarine from it — the SeaRider, shaped like a fish, with big eyes and a smile — and fitted it with "artificial fish intelligence," allowing it to think like a fish and swim without a pilot, accepted by real sea life as one of their own.[1][3] In the pre-show, guests watch a SeaRider shrink in its tank; then they board the full-size version, in a theatre seating 122 guests, and feel it shrink around them.[1]
The simulator cabin then dives. Now fish-sized, guests arrive on the Great Barrier Reef and are swept into the world of the films, meeting Nemo, Dory, Marlin and a long cast of characters from both movies, with the cabin pitching, bobbing and surging in time with the swim.[3] Because the film is assembled from interchangeable segments, the middle of the voyage changes between rides: guests might join a game of hide-and-seek with Dory, or fall in with Mr. Ray and his class on a field trip, among other combinations.[1]
After a farewell from the reef's residents, the SeaRider is carried home and restored to its original size, and guests disembark back at the Institute. The full experience lasts about 14 minutes, and riders must be at least 90 cm (35 in) tall.[1]