For decades, guests at Universal Studios Theme Parks have enjoyed an array of immersive ride films. From Back to the Future: The Ride to Terminator 2: 3-D Battle Across Time to Transformers: The Ride, each experience seems to up the ante on the use of motion simulators, large-scale imagery, stereo, high frame rates, stereoscopic projection, photorealistic animation and visual effects. Now, with Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringotts, that level of immersion has been increased yet again.
Since 2010, Universal’s design division, Universal Creative, had been developing designs for a new ride based on the Gringotts section of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Director Thierry Coup wanted the ride – which opened last July in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Diagon Alley themed area at Universal Orlando resort – to take guests deep among Gringotts’ underground vaults via a roller coaster cart synchronized to enormous 3D projection screens. Here they would witness Harry, Ron and Hermione battling a fire-breathing dragon and escaping the wrath of Voldemort and Bellatrix.