Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast
| Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast | |
|---|---|
| Park | Disneyland Park (Paris) |
| Land / area | Discoveryland |
| Type | Interactive shooting dark ride (Omnimover) |
| Opened | April 8, 2006 |
| Designer | Walt Disney Imagineering |
| Height req. | None |
| Status | Operating |
Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast is an interactive shooting dark ride in Discoveryland at Disneyland Park (Paris) at Disneyland Paris. Guests ride in two-person space cruisers, firing hand-held laser cannons at targets while helping Buzz Lightyear stop the Evil Emperor Zurg from stealing the batteries that power the Little Green Men's ships. It opened on April 8, 2006, and is the Paris member of the family of Buzz Lightyear shooting rides found at Disney parks around the world.[1]
History
The attraction stands at the entrance to Discoveryland on the site of Le Visionarium, the Circle-Vision 360° film that had been part of the park since opening day and closed in 2004. Where the Visionarium had presented a time-travelling tour, its replacement made guests participants rather than an audience — the first fully interactive ride of this kind at the Paris resort.
The concept had already proved itself elsewhere. The original version, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, opened at Magic Kingdom in Florida on November 3, 1998, and versions followed in Tokyo, California and Hong Kong before Paris. The story in each case draws on Toy Story 2 and the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command series: Zurg is collecting crystallic fusion cells — batteries, in toy terms — to power a weapon, and Star Command recruits guests to stop him. Paris kept that premise, its Omnimover ride system and its scoring game, while fitting the show into the Visionarium building.
The ride has been refurbished in extended closures since opening, including a major rehabilitation in the early 2020s that concentrated on lighting, sets and the entrance, after which it reopened in 2021. It remains, notably, the most recent new attraction to have been added inside Disneyland Park itself, a distinction it has now held for two decades.[2][3][4]
Experience
The queue shrinks guests to toy size. Oversized screws, toy packaging and instructions surround them, along with pictures of Buzz and the Little Green Men, before an Audio-Animatronic Buzz Lightyear briefs the new recruits in front of a wanted poster for Zurg, Star Command's public enemy number one. Guests then board their cruisers in pairs and move continuously through the ride on the Omnimover system, in the Paris version described as the XP-41.
Each cruiser carries two laser cannons, one for each rider, a dashboard score display for each player, and a central joystick that can spin the vehicle through a full circle, letting riders aim at targets the ride would otherwise carry them past. Targets marked with Zurg's Z symbol are scattered through scenes of robots, alien planets and batteries — 88 of them in the Paris version, in published guides. Their shapes set their value: round targets score 100 points, square 1,000, diamond 5,000 and triangular 10,000, with lit targets and well-hidden ones worth more. The ride builds to a confrontation with Zurg himself before the cruisers return to the station.
At unload, each score is converted into a Star Command rank, running from Star Cadet at the bottom to Galactic Hero for a maximum 999,999 points. A ride photograph is taken during the mission, and the competitive scoring — every rider has their own cannon, display and final rank — is what gives a slow-moving dark ride its repeat value.[5]
See also
- Disneyland Park (Paris)
- Disneyland Paris
- Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain
- Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters