With dark rides becoming ever more sophisticated and action-packed, Britain-based simulator manufacturer Simworx has extended their product portfolio with a highly dynamic type of dark ride vehicle. The new protype is dubbed the AGV Dark Ride and was first showcased at last week’s IAAPA Expo Europe. Simworx brought a complete vehicle with them and placed it inside their booth, where it attracted many visitors thanks to its impressive size and large range of movements.
The AGV dark ride vehicle is a motion-based vehicle hosting eight riders. With its high side panels, limiting the passenger’s view to see only straight ahead, the vehicles have a similar appearance as the vehicles used for The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man (Universal Studios Islands of Adventure). The major difference between these vehicles is that Simworx created a trackless ride system, moving through the space without track or wires. This allows even more freedom to the design of the ride, on top of the many degrees of freedom that the motion-based vehicle already offers.
Simworx first conceived this vehicle in 2019, but never produced a full-scale version to test it. That changed over the last year, when they found a partner in Katapult. Together, they came up with the ride concept ‘Overdrive’, where the vehicles take shape of large Police units, ready to start a chase. “Overdrive will provide an example of the limits to which dark rides can be pushed in 2022, delivering an adrenaline-fuelled chase around the metropolis as riders role-play as either cops or robbers,” according to Simworx. The Overdrive-concept serves as a way to show the many possibilities that the AGV dark ride system offers.
