Men In Black Goes Into the Dark

ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.10 - JANUARY 2001

Men In Black Goes Into the Dark

by Jacquie Kubin

Outside Universal Studios Florida's newest attraction -- the largest dark ride in history featuring Men In Black! All photos courtesy of Jacquie Kubin.

A trip inside Universal Studios Florida's newest attraction -- the largest dark ride to date featuring Men In Black!

The best entertainment wraps things that we know in new packaging. The Universal Studios Florida theme park proves this by premising its attractions on popular studio films such as Terminator, Twister, Jaws and King Kong. Rekindling the real-world mystery of the July 1947 alleged crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle near Roswell, New Mexico and then mixing it up within a 1964 retro-modern-style plaza plucked from the New York World's Fair, Men In Black (MIB): Alien Attack is the largest dark ride ever conceived. "The art of making a theme park track attraction is the art of making an assembly line interesting and with MIB we have taken the traditional dark ride and put it on its ear," explains David Cobb, Creative Director for Men In Black: Alien Attack. "This ride is a people eater and the art form is to make it unique. With Men In Black, the idea was to create a dark ride attraction with repeat ride-ability. Now we have done a 3D ride in the dark before, and our Spider-Man attraction is a 21st century dark ride, but MIB: Alien Attack is a step back to showmanship and technical flair."

A variety of instantly recognizable aliens compose a large part of the amusement park's new ride.

Enter MIB
For the theme park, MIB offered itself as the perfect property for its next incantation on multiple levels. It combines theatrical visuals with fast-paced thrills while thrusting its occupants through a life size, interactive video game where the points earned actually affect the outcome of the riders' experience. In addition, the movie enjoyed a broad demographic appeal with its combination of comedy, action, adventure, drama and science-fiction. Cementing the concept was that movie lead actors, Will Smith and Rip Torn, were both willing to participate in the attraction's development. The conceptual phase began in December 1997 with the first ideas of a dark ride emerging in February 1998. The entire development, including designing more than 400 aliens, the story, vehicles, guns and animatronics took from concept to opening day an aggressive 27-months. Able to move between 2,000 and 2,500 people through the ride per hour, the high capacity attraction's pre-show is timed to be 2 to 3 times the length of the average wait time.

When people enter the experience, they are greeted by MIB Director, Agent Zed (Rip Torn), who apologizes about the phony theme park nonsense that they, as new MIB trainees, had to endure. During the pre-ride "holding" process Agent Zed provides a training lecture regarding aliens that live among humans and MIB's mandate to keep them under control. Trainees learn a little bit about alien spotting, as well as the proper use of the MIB issue guns and the vehicles they will be using during their training mission. In keeping with the movie, MIB facilities and actions are secret, even though they are hidden in very plain site. All of this is taking place in a massive 70,000 square-foot building!

Then two training vehicles, which operate in tandem teams of 6 people, blast into an interactive video game whose goal is to shoot as many aliens as possible. Game players quickly learn from Agent Jay (Will Smith) that a shuttle carrying some nasty bugs being deported to Planet LV-428 has crashed and those bad bugs are roaming the streets of New York City. Featuring some of the most extensive animatronics ever seen in a dark ride, MIB combatants square off against 127 varieties of aliens in an effort to rack up points, individually and as a cumulative total for the car. Each of the alien figures has its own animatronic technology, with movement, lighting and sound.

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