Forget Star Tours or the Back to the Future Ride, or even the old Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas...the granddaddy of all those motion simulator rides is the
Astro-Liner. This is one of my all-time favorite rides! I was in love with this ride when I was kid, and rode it several times at the beach and whenever we would find it at a carnival or fair. You don't see this classic ride around too often anymore, but luckily it's still alive and kicking at Dutch Wonderland. I'll explain the ride in geeky detail by taking a quote from
The Art of Stop Motion Animation:
Wisdom Manufacturing, Inc. in Sterling, Colorado, first introduced the 40 passenger Astro-Liner in 1977. There are two designs, one a NASA two-stage rocket and the other a vessel that would be right at home in the pages of a Jules Verne novel. The Astro-Liner is a hydraulically controlled ride whose moves are synchronized to a film that the passengers view from inside the rocket. The film is projected from behind a rear projection screen, which serves as the cockpit window. The film, combined with the hydraulic movements of the vessel create the feeling of truly travelling through space.
Filmed in 35mm, the film was then printed down to Super-8, which used to be the projection system for the Astro-Liner until video came along. Now the ride uses a video projection system.
To put it simply, riders enter the spaceship shaped tubular theatre , grab a seat, and watch a movie as the ship raises up at an angle and then tilts from side to side. There's no seatbelts or safety bar, so you really do have to hold on as the spaceship rocks slowly but to about a 60 degree angle. The screen used to look like a cockpit and the front window of the spaceship. Over the years, Dutch Wonderland has kept up maintenance on the ride and recently installed a large screen High Def monitor to show the same old 8mm film, but now stored digitally. The screen is a bit smaller than the original version, and a wee bit of the effect is lost because of it...but you take what you can get.
Here's a shot of the interior of the ship...
The movie is very similar to Disney's Star Tours rides. Your ship breaks free from a loading dock and then proceeds on a crazy out of control voyage through several different parts of the galaxy.
They used to have one of these rides at Ocean City, MD. I remember the film on that version ended with the ship making a free-fall decent into an amusement park. Supposedly, the park you were riding the ride in...but It didn't really match up with the layout of the rides at the boardwalk.
At Dutch Wonderland, across from the Astro-Liner they added a newer ride VR VOYAGER. The ride is a souped-up 2000's version of the Astro-Liner. Honestly, I don't think it's near as fun as the original 1970's classic but it's very cool of DW to house both rides across from each other. They even have a sign that explains the significance of the two rides...
Dutch Wonderland has several spots where they pay homage to the parks heritage and that's a swell touch!
My boys and I after a voyage on the Astro-Liner. June, 2010
Forget Star Tours or the Back to the Future Ride, or even the old Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas...the granddaddy of all those motion simulator rides is the Astro-Liner. This is one of my all-time favorite rides! I was in love with this ride when I was kid, and rode it several times at the beach and whenever we would find it at a carnival or fair. You don't see this classic ride around too often anymore, but luckily it's still alive and kicking at Dutch Wonderland. 
To put it simply, riders enter the spaceship shaped tubular theatre , grab a seat, and watch a movie as the ship raises up at an angle and then tilts from side to side. There's no seatbelts or safety bar, so you really do have to hold on as the spaceship rocks slowly but to about a 60 degree angle. The screen used to look like a cockpit and the front window of the spaceship. Over the years, Dutch Wonderland has kept up maintenance on the ride and recently installed a large screen High Def monitor to show the same old 8mm film, but now stored digitally. The screen is a bit smaller than the original version, and a wee bit of the effect is lost because of it...but you take what you can get.
The movie is very similar to Disney's Star Tours rides. Your ship breaks free from a loading dock and then proceeds on a crazy out of control voyage through several different parts of the galaxy.
Dutch Wonderland has several spots where they pay homage to the parks heritage and that's a swell touch!
My boys and I after a voyage on the Astro-Liner. June, 2010
I don't think we've mentioned Geppi's Entertainment Museum here on WWoB before but we should have! It's a wonderful attraction located in Baltimore's Inner Harbor right outside of Camden Yards stadium. Inside you'll find the history of our country as traced through popular culture. There's everything from comic books, toys, dolls, books and posters all on display to take you on a tour from the very first newspaper comic strips all the way up to Spongebob and The Simpsons. I did a post about my first visit to the museum on a Disney website called The Blog Wore Tennis Shoes. Last week I took the kids there to see all the Super Hero stuff. But instead of posting pictures of old comic books and valuable antique toys, I snapped a few pictures of some wild and wacky crap that they have on display there...
Before cable TV and videos, one of the only ways kids could revisit movies over and over again was through a Storyreader Record Album. Everyone had a Star Wars or Muppets record when they were younger, but not many kids probably had this recorded dramatization of the classic 1964 science fiction epic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians! This is one of those movies that many people will put on their list of "movies that are soooo bad they're good"!?! Well, I've seen Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and I can tell you that the film is just plain bad. It is so bad that you can't stop looking at it...kind of like a car accident...but by no means is it a good film. This was actually one of the first movies I bought on VHS when I was younger. I had read about the movie in a book and some years later found it around Christmas time at the mall. Ten bucks was a lot of money for a 13 year old in 1986, but it didn't matter to me - I just had to see this movie! Perhaps it's better if you just hear about the film on a record than actually seeing it!
Here's the actual Playbill program for another legendary production, the stage version of the Superman story! It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman was a flop of a Broadway musical that opened on March 29, 1966 and closed on July 17, 1966. The whole idea is so ridiculous that, like Santa Claus and his martians, the show has taken on a life of it's own in later years. I always pushed for this to be our spring musical in high school but we always did little known shows like My Fair Lady or Camelot! Another play I've always wanted to do is called Pinocchio Don't Smoke That Cigarette, but that's a story for another time...
Besides the occasional "Weird Al" Yankovic song, novelty records don't get much respect. However, things were different in the earlier days of rock n' roll. Some silly songs became so popular that merchandise was created to cash in on the songs popularity. (A few weeks ago we featured the board game version of Hello Muddah, Hello Fuddah.) In 1958, a gentleman named Sheb Wooley went all the way to the number one spot on the Billboard charts with his ditty titled The Purple People Eater. Here's a cool little plastic hat that you can slip on and become a Purple People Eater yourself! They must have sold plenty of these because the song stayed on the charts for 6 weeks! Can you imagine a month and half of hearing that song on the radio every hour or so!?
