Have you ever built a ride thru?


s8ntmark

s8ntmark

Member
I was able to obtain a copy of someones homemade Indiana Jones Ride thru, and as fun as it was to listen to, I was consantly thinking, I could do better!

I KNOW, it WAS a rather pompous attitude, but Im sure we've all heard a homemade ride thru and thought that. So I started wondering...who has actually BUILT a ride thru, either as a "Better version" to someone elses they heard, or just beause they love the attraction they are recreating and happen to have enough of the material to actually do it.

Ive found a treasure trove of World of Motion tracks and am debating building a ride thru with them (In fact Im downloading Gary Owen's isolated narration right now as I write this :D )

What I want to know is, what did you build, were there any problems (like screwing up the order of the scenes on an attraction you werent familiar with...Like Im able to do with WoM seeing as how the last time I rode it was 1982!)

Also, any tips? Im curious to know what people love enough to spend so much time on.

Thank you
Mark!
 
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MaX

Member
I made a ride trough of POTC in Paris. I didnt really screw up the scenes, as I had some good info sources ;). The most diffiucult part was to fill up the gaps of the stuff where I didnt have any recordings from, and to mix the french dialogue, since I dont understand french ;). And since I made it in 5.1 surround, I had a lot of problems with fading the tracks from the front speakers to the back speakers. I was working with about 25 audio layers :s . And then there's ofcourse the problem of recreating sound FX that are not recording, like splasing water. It turned out pretty well, but the first thing I thought when listening to it was "I can do that better" ;) . But I didnt do a 2nd version yet, though...

why I did the ride trough? cuz I *love* POTC, and cuz I wanted to experiment with 5.1 remixing.
 
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dws warzone

Member
I do, when I create my own WDW Park album for each year. I edit/arrange the Haunted Mansion, Pirates Of The Carribean, Tiki Room, Spaceship Earth (once), and I create Intros for the CDs.
 
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DavidG

Member
I made a PotC Paris ride-through too, though only in Stereo (with some pro-logic effects). I've started working on a Phantom Manor ride-through, but am missing some tracks in sufficient quality... and that's usually the biggest problem I have. If certain parts are missing, how to best cover it up. :)

It worked pretty well with PotC.
 
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Tim Hollis

Member
Just to show how off-center I am, when I saw the original question I thought people were actually out there building their own homemade dark rides in their basements... then I figured out everyone was talking about reconstructing the soundtracks only, if I am interpreting things correctly now.

That said, believe it or not, when I was elementary school I used to actually construct my own full-scale walk-through versions of a dark ride I was fascinated by at Six Flags Over Georgia. In case no one has ever heard of it, it was known as "Tales of the Okefenokee," and in more ways than you can count it was the forerunner to Splash Mountain. Even Tony Baxter admits that he was familiar with the Okefenokee ride before designing Disney's version.

At Six Flags, you rode through in boats, Small World style, and saw animated scenes from the Brer Rabbit stories, all of which were built by Sid & Marty Krofft. As a kid, I used to recreate it in walk-through form using a combination of cutout figures and toys. I had recorded the soundtrack of the ride, and used that as my audio. It was just as cheesy as it sounds, but it shows why I had the misconception when I saw this topic.

Now I really do have all the original voice and music tracks from the Okefenokee ride, which I obtained after Six Flags trashed everything to do with it.... Life seems to be one big rerun!
 
s8ntmark

s8ntmark

Member
Tim-its funny you should mention that because when I was younger I lived in a 3 story condo in Del Mar, CA. The top floor was the entirly the master bedroom, the second floor was the kitchen and living room, and the bottom level was the front door, 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Since I was an only child I had the bottom level all to myself and I cant tell you how many Disney attractions I designed to go down there :) When worked right I could make a single path through all the rooms.

(Front hall to the first hallway to the first room to the outside patio to the second room to the first hallway again to the front hall again)

From Pirates, to Alice, to Snow White and Pinnochio. And of course the Haunted Mansion over and over and over. I would use the music and sound effects from the Ron Howard HM story album and of course it only had part of the theme (cause Thurl started the narration half way through it ) but all that brings back great memories.

David- If I run into that problem I try to see what I do have, and never rule out live elements. Creative uses of what you do have is always a plus. There is ALOT of PM stuff floating around...you shouldnt have any problems getting what you need. I just got an isloated version of the Bride singing in the portrait hall-I didnt even know there WAS a bride singing in the portrait hall! ;)

And Max- What program do you use to work in 5.1 surround? I would LOVE to check that out. I use Wave Lab 4.0 which is really good for what I need. But it doesnt have a surround feature.
 
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sds910

Member
Mark:

Oh, boy, have *I* built ride-throughs. In fact, you might want to keep your eyes open for my World of Motion track -- an improvement (IMHO) over the original one that floats around out there (usually on Usenet and the IRC hangouts) albeit one that's somewhat less-well-distributed.

Tips: 1) Get LIVE recordings -- as many as you can get your hands on -- to use as reference material. The more closely you can listen to a real-world recording, the better your efforts have the potential to become.

2) Best multitrack mixing software: Cool Edit Pro 2.1. Bonus fact: Version 2.1 now has nearly full support for 5.1 surround audio -- all that it's missing is a dts encoder, but you can obtain the Surcode applet to handle that final stage once you've used Cool Edit Pro to create the six individual mono WAV elements.

3) Missing gaps: try to avoid having them. I know it sounds facetious, but if you don't have the necessary elements, don't do the flow-through. Having said that, you can fake *certain* things. Sound effects and set-piece audio can usually be cleaned up from live recordings and mixed alongside inline music and dialog elements with no-one -- even yourself! -- the wiser when it comes time for playback. Check out my flowthroughs of Impressions de France, World of Motion and Spaceship Earth for examples of this. Impressions de France, for example is constructed using the following elements:

a - CD-quality score (unsold audio from WDW Forever system)
b - isolated narration captured using the attraction's ALD narrowcast
c - foley taken from a live in-the-seats recording found on a website several years ago

Steve
 
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DavidG

Member
Well, actually, a lot of the good-quality PM stuff out there on the web comes from me and a friend. Maybe I'm too much of a perfectionist, but I haven't yet been able to find a really good quality recording of the Foyer music, or of the Phantom's Stretch Room narration. There are a few more things missing, but that's all stuff I can work around.
 
s8ntmark

s8ntmark

Member
Well gosh darnit David, If you put all that stuff out there would it have killed ya to put a really good version of the Phantom Canyon Piano Rag in rotation to? huh??

;)
 
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GrizzlyHall

Member
SDS...let's see what have you done

- Horizons
- Splash Mountain
- Impressions de France
- World of Motion
- Spaceship Earth (one of my favorites)
- Pirates
- Space Mountain (in the works? :) )

...and I'm probably forgetting some.

I was able to remaster a bunch of the WoM tracks, so I decided to do a WoM flow-through. Never got finished.

But I was able to construct a Share a Dream Come True in Spring, 2002. I think I'm going to redo it...but it wasn't all that much.

Oh! I did do a Horizons flow-through. I tried to make the loops flow as they did in the attraction a bit more...with some better quality tracks (things just keep getting better and better!) That was fun. No narration...

Let's see..ah yes. I just made an Adventureland flow-through...I wanna get this one out mainly because of the transitions to/from Swiss Family Robinson (you probably know what I mean), but it goes all around - area music, Jungle Cruise, and it's only about 3 minutes.

I did make a JII w/Figment soundtrack (all live) based on 5 live recordings last summer (in at least one scene of each, the sound system was off...reverb and whatnot.)

My next 'project' (when I can have time) is CoP. I have a few sources...about 4 direct recordings - plus several live tracks. I really need to remaster these things...*really decrease the 1kHz level*. Slight reverb wouldn't be bad...it's just a bunch of hiss and noise which really gives it its fault.

Ah yes, I did make two Rio del Tiempo "medleys" - based on the newer 16? minute ride-through. Each was about 4 minutes. Not all of the material is available, but I had fun.

- Grizz
 
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SharonKurland

Active Member
I know y'all are mainly talking about music...and I never built any kind of ride-through (music or life sized). Though I made a GEAT playhouse, complete with flowerboxes in the windows, when we got a new refrigerator .

MY little OCD went to building replicas of attractions at Six Flags Great Adventure, in my early and mid teens. Made out of toothpicks. Yes, toothpicks. I made a ferris wheel, the parachute jump, and about a half-dozen others, all out of toothpicks and glue. I was a bizarre child .
 
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xfkirsten

Member
Actually, I was working on a better version of the Indiana Jones one! I already have better material than the one one the net... I think the only two pieces I'm missing at this point is the sound effects from the dart room, and the Indy phrases at the snake. So if anyone has copies of these and can send them to me, I think I can finally put it together! :)

-Kirsten
 
s8ntmark

s8ntmark

Member
Wow, Bill, That sounds really great! I love the idea of a Rescuers ride, if done right it could be really exciting. I thought of one as well, but I never got past the idea of combining the 2 movies. But then I started liking the idea of actually creating a new villian and a new adventure.

But the project Ive spent the most time working on is a ride based on The Great Mouse Detective I call RATIGAN. Basically, It would go where the old Skyway loading area in Fantasyland is (and behind it) and it was going to be a simulator. In a nut shell, you accidentally walk in on Ratigan and his gang while they are pulling a job and they take you prisoner. Basil and Dawson have to rescue you while you are tooling around the London skyways in a giant dirigable.

Ive spent so much time on this thing that now Ive totally lost where I was going with it. It has literally been through at least 5 different versions and now it just sits under my nighttable and....well ROTS I guess.

But Ive since bought a mic, a "pop filter (home made ;) )", and a mic stand and have started doing a bunch of recording...Im seriously considering doing an audio version of the ride.

And hense the Topic comes back full circle :) Hee hee
 
Dr. Know

Dr. Know

Member
Steve's Spaceship Earth ridethrough is one of my favorites -- man! it is so professional!

Question -- there is a file floating around with the music only track of Spaceship Earth -- it runs 18:25 and sounds quite good, but unfortunately it is only available in a low bitrate -- 64 kbps, I believe. Presumably, a higher quality version exists -- but has it been (or can it be) made available? I just love the original score to this attraction.

Thanks!
 
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