CoasterRadio.com #102 - Curse of DarKastle Media Day

Busch Gardens Williamsburg has just unveiled their newest dark ride and it looks like it is going to be one of the top new attractions in 2005.

"Curse of DarKastle: The Ride" is a dynamic, motion-based, 3D attraction that sends guests on a terrifying, gravity-defying ride through the mysterious corridors of a Bavarian Castle.

Across the country, teams of animators, engineers and designers worked for 13 months to bring this ride from concept to completion. The result is an amazing attraction that one would only expect to find in Orlando theme parks.

Mike Collins and Flava were on hand at the media preview of"DarKastle." Instead of using their press credentials to ride the attraction with the rest of the media, they waited to ride with the general public to see what the reaction was like. In this week's show, they'll tell you all about the attraction (without giving too much away) and let you know how average park guests were reacting.

They'll also talk with Brent Young of Hollywood-based Super 78. Brent's company created all of the animations for this new attraction. They'll ask him about some of the technical advances that were made in the design of this ride. One of the biggest is that DarKastle's animated scenes are digitally projected and stored on massive servers located in Williamsburg. Brent and his team can update the scenes in Hollywood and upload them to the servers at any time. This allows scenes to be tweaked constantly and possibly even updated or replaced in the future.

The guys also will talk to Dave Mauck of Orlando-based Oceaneering.Dave and his team designed the motion-based ride system for DarKastle.Dave will explain how in 13 months, his team had to create intelligent ride vehicles that used "linear, circular and vertical motion" and allowed for "varying rates of acceleration."

In English, that means the vehicles have to give perfect rides to 1,450 people per hour all season long.

Not an easy job.

There was no winner in last week's "Soundwave" contest. We received a lot of guesses that were very close, but no one has sent in the correct answer. So, the guys will give a clue this week to help you figure it out. To hear the Soundwave, listen to our first show found in the Show Archive section.

Speaking of the Show Archive, this week's show is a special episode of CoasterRadio.com. Because of intense media demand, the entire crew was not able to attend the media event at Busch Gardens. So, if you are a new visitor and want to hear the show with all five hosts, head to our Show Archive section to listen to last week's show.