The Simpsons Ride

The Simpsons Ride
Blur Studio | 2008
Ride Film

After about 20 years running the venerable Back to the Future ride film created by Douglas Trumbull, Universal Studios replaced it with a brand new Simpsons themed ride. As far as I know, it was the first 180 degrees Imax dome projected digitally, which presented a number of technical challenges on their end. On our end, creating the film wasn't a piece of cake either.

Blur created about two thirds of the film (our scenes are the Rollercoaster, Happy Little Elves, Captain Dinosaur, Simpsons house, Kang and Kodos, Death Drop and ending), while ReelFX did the middle sections. We rendered everything with a 180 degrees fisheye lens, plus a number of tricks that I came up with during layout to keep the horizon line where we wanted.

The layout process was very long and tricky, with constant visits to the dome at the park so we could test the work in progress versions in a temporary setup with the hydraulic cars (whose motions had to be syncronized to the screen) and improvised projectors. The motion kept being tweaked almost all the way to opening day.

The script was provided by Film Roman, the same guys from the show, and they also did the pre show which sets up the story while you wait in line. The director, John Rice, was often with us and was very nice to work with. Despite Gracie Film's producers inexperience with ride films, all of the Film Roman artists that we had contact with were great and essential in bringing the Simpsons flavor to a medium vastly different from the TV series.

The ride went on to become extremely popular among the park visitors and win theme park awards.