The new version of the Knott’s Bear-y Tales ride closely follows the story line of the original 1975 attraction created by Disney Legend Rolly Crump that fans have been asking Knott’s Berry Farm to bring back to the park for decades.
“It’s a return to the original,” Knott’s producer Eric Nix said during a media preview for the ride. “That was the idea of this version of Bear-y Tales. Let’s not reinvent the wheel. People have such a fond memory of the original attraction.”
The new Knott’s Bear-y Tales: Return to the Fair 4-D interactive dark ride will debut on Thursday, May 6 when the park reopens to season passholders with rides and attractions after a yearlong coronavirus closure. Knott’s reopens to the general public on May 21.
REVIEW: Knott’s Bear-y Tales delivers fast and furious game play in fun tribute to 1970s ride
The new Bear-y Tales dark ride pays tribute to the original one-of-a-kind attraction that could only be found at Knott’s Berry Farm.
Just like in the original attraction, Bear-y Tales riders once again follow Boysen Bear and Girlsen Bear as they travel to the Country Fair in hopes of winning a blue ribbon for their boysenberry pie. Crafty Coyote and his mischievous pups are back with their eyes on the pies and thievery on their minds. New digitally-rendered scenes recreate the Boysenberry Pie Factory, Frog Forest, Fortune Teller Camp, Thunder Cave and Weird Woods from the original dark ride.
The backstory for the new ride picks up where the old ride left off when it closed in the 1980s.
“What happens to all these characters 35 years later?” said Nix, a former production manager at Walt Disney Imagineering and Disneyland. “Little Boysen Bear that was the little sailor? He’s grown up and now he owns the factory. Crafty Coyote has gotten a little too old to steal pies, but his pups are around to do his bidding.”
The original Knott’s Bear-y Tales dark ride was commissioned by the Knott family and created by Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump, who worked on the Enchanted Tiki Room, Haunted Mansion and It’s a Small World at Disneyland.
Knott’s Bear-y Tales creative consultant Chris Crump — son of Rolly — worked on the original Bear-y Tales dark ride, which reflected his father’s quirky, offbeat, odd and weird aesthetic.
“It was all him,” Crump said during a media preview for the new ride. “He had so much freedom. That was what he enjoyed about when he got to do his own thing.”
The younger Crump teamed up with the Knott’s creative department and the animation artists working on the digital video game elements of the new attraction, bringing along his father’s original artwork for Bear-y Tales and photos of the ride from 1975.
“The story is still the same,” Crump said. “The attraction layout and the storytelling is exactly the same. The characters are the same and they have come to life.”
SEE ALSO: What to expect when Knott’s Berry Farm reopens this week
The original Bear-y Tales ride was replaced by Kingdom of the Dinosaurs, which also closed. The space sat unused until Knott’s teamed with Montreal-based ridemaker Triotech to create Voyage to the Iron Reef in 2015. The interactive Iron Reef shoot-em-up dark ride only lasted until 2020.
Fans have been asking Knott’s to bring back a new version of Bear-y Tales for decades.
“The fan base for Bear-y Tales is huge,” Crump said. “People went crazy for that attraction. The word is going to get out and people are going to go crazy again.”
A Bear-y Tales remake naturally filtered to the top of ideas for an Iron Reef replacement and synced nicely with Knott’s plans for a 100th anniversary celebration, according to Nix.
“All the creative decisions that would happen around this version of Bear-y Tales were rooted in, ‘Let’s not ruin it for everybody. If we’re not going to do it right, then let’s not do it.’” Nix said. “Thankfully, we think we did it right.”
The big difference between the old and the new attractions? In the original, visitors were just along for the ride. In Bear-y Tales 2.0, riders are active participants trying to stop the coyote pups from stealing pies.
Riders are armed with Boysenberry Blasters that fire jam at pie-thieving coyotes during the fast and furious game play that unfolds on a series of massive screens.
“Everything is interactive,” Nix said. “You can shoot at signs and they spin or twirl. You can shoot any of the characters and they react in some way. You can shoot the pies and the coyotes.”
SEE ALSO: Knott’s targets Disneyland passholders with $101 season pass as theme park wars heat up
The new Bear-y Tales ride is filled with tributes to the original and the new digital characters and backgrounds are based on Rolly Crump’s original artwork, aesthetic and intention for the attraction, according to Nix.
“We’re definitely diving into that nostalgia,” Nix said. “This is a throwback to what we used to have, but a modernized version.”
Easter eggs are hidden throughout the new ride that offer nods to the original. The frogs that filled the original ride pop up as physical figures in nearly every scene of the new attraction.
“That’s a fun tribute,” Nix said. “Especially because they were such an iconic, simple Rolly Crump design.”
The new ride is very faithful to the original, according to Chris Crump.
“They nailed it,” Crump said. “They hit all the beats. It was really fun to see the characters actually come to life.”
Knott’s creative team set out to blend the big digital screens of the new ride with nods to the practical scenic sets of the original.
“We’ve taken those areas and places that you visited in the original attraction and just re-envisioned them,” Nix said. “We didn’t tread a lot of new ground as far as the locations. It was just, how do we modernize it a little bit and add some gameplay and interactivity to those areas.”
SEE ALSO: Southern California water parks prepare to reopen under new guidelines following pandemic closures
The revamped ride is designed to be familiar to older fans, but also appeal to a new generation of riders.
“I only went on the original attraction maybe four or five times, but it left such an imprint on me,” Nix said. “Smelling the boysenberry. Seeing the Chug-A-Chug machine. I can’t wait to bring my son and be able to say to him, ‘Hey I rode this as a kid. It’s a little different now, but now we get to experience it together.’”
The new Bear-y Tales ride is an emotional return for the Crump family. Chris Crump — who continued in the family business and went on to work for Disney on the Tokyo DisneySea theme park and the Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Undersea Adventure dark ride — has shared concept art, character sketches and the backstory of the new Bear-y Tales ride with his father.
“He loves it,” Crump said. “He’s thrilled that they brought Bear-y Tales back.”
"original" - Google News
May 05, 2021 at 09:00PM
https://ift.tt/3xOGuMc
Knott’s Bear-y Tales pays tribute to original 1970s ride with a modern digital attraction - OCRegister
"original" - Google News
https://ift.tt/32ik0C4
https://ift.tt/35ryK4M
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Knott’s Bear-y Tales pays tribute to original 1970s ride with a modern digital attraction - OCRegister"
Post a Comment