Please don't misunderstand me--I LOVE Space Mountain as it is. I rode it four times last time I was in the park. It's truly a great ride, and I hope it stays for a long time. BUT--one of the things that slightly diminishes the experience for me is how easy it is to deduce where structural elements are based on the way the stars move around you. Even though the ride is much darker now, you can still see the stars forming I-beams and projector enclosures and so on, disrupting the illusion of space.
So, to further obfuscate our perceptions of Space Mountain's real-world scaffolding and ladders and tunnels, I'd like to suggest a very simple and cheap effect: add countless tiny lights at the ends of very thin, long, stiff, black sticks at random points throughout the ride. They can stick out of the walls, poke up from the floor, even attach to the track. The point is that they would be sprinkled randomly through 3D space, not adhering to surfaces. That way, guests feel like there are stars everywhere, not just showing up flatly on all the real-world surfaces inside the mountain.
At the same time, the number of stars projected on everything else could be cut back a little. As a result of all this, I think the experience would be even more immersive, and it'd be even harder to notice the structures around you. As long as these new stars were all out of the reach of guests and they didn't get in cast members' ways, they could add a lot to the ride in terms of quality without costing Disney much at all.
(Now, if they really wanted to go all-out, they could create colored 3D arrays of these points, forming images of galaxies and so forth that would actually look real and three-dimensional. But that'd be a lot harder.)
What do you guys think?
So, to further obfuscate our perceptions of Space Mountain's real-world scaffolding and ladders and tunnels, I'd like to suggest a very simple and cheap effect: add countless tiny lights at the ends of very thin, long, stiff, black sticks at random points throughout the ride. They can stick out of the walls, poke up from the floor, even attach to the track. The point is that they would be sprinkled randomly through 3D space, not adhering to surfaces. That way, guests feel like there are stars everywhere, not just showing up flatly on all the real-world surfaces inside the mountain.
At the same time, the number of stars projected on everything else could be cut back a little. As a result of all this, I think the experience would be even more immersive, and it'd be even harder to notice the structures around you. As long as these new stars were all out of the reach of guests and they didn't get in cast members' ways, they could add a lot to the ride in terms of quality without costing Disney much at all.
(Now, if they really wanted to go all-out, they could create colored 3D arrays of these points, forming images of galaxies and so forth that would actually look real and three-dimensional. But that'd be a lot harder.)
What do you guys think?
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