Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare Reviews

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

17 hours ago, beastfan11 said:

and the inverted bust is an “analog” effect/illusion that doesn’t have the option of not working, unless it’s unlit or you have vision problems. 

Or if you're like me and know the illusion a little too well, so it doesn't work. It's like when you know how a magic trick works. IMO the bust is not in the best setting since you can tell it's a box on a pedestal.

[DoomPlague]

I hadn't been able to get to the park this year until today and I avoided this thread because I wanted a fresh experience:

• As someone who enjoyed the original ride for its whole run, I have a bias towards nostalgia but I get why they went with more kid friendly designs and interactive elements.
• I appreciate that you can just ignore the interactive nature of the ride without missing any of animatronic effects. That's a big plus to me.
• I assume the flashlights use a tracking system similar to the Playstation Move controllers? Mine was a blue light and there were some scenes where it didn't work at all while I could see other people's lights working.
• I just saw some videos of the ride where the flashlights had some real hiccups to their display. Fortunately I didn't have that at least.
• I like how nice the queue is but there's too much going on in there for how loud it is with a room filled with people, including kids. I couldn't hear anything Larry or the Maestro were saying.
• Apparently they removed a bunch of ride vehicles? The line still moved fast but that surprised me.
• The lack of a big pepper's ghost scene disappointed me.
• I did dig the animated paintings in the queue

Hopefully I'll get another ride soon and I'll just not use the flashlight to take in more scenery. Today was more crowded than what I normally care for and I opted not to wait again. But I think as long as the ride is maintained properly (obviously a big concern for many people), this should continue to be a popular ride for years.

 

EDIT: It just occurred to me why they probably removed the vehicles. Guessing each scene can only track 6 flashlights?

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

4 hours ago, DoomPlague said:

• Apparently they removed a bunch of ride vehicles? The line still moved fast but that surprised me.
• The lack of a big pepper's ghost scene disappointed me.

The amount of ride vehicles (27) is the same as it was during Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Castle and Boo Blasters on Boo Hill. Where the original Phantom Theater had 55 vehicles, 28 were removed for SDatHC and BBoBH, and then half of those were moved up one space for PT:ON. There is one lone vehicle (I believe it's opera box #1) for those who are lucky enough to be placed in it. Honestly I'm shocked at how fast this queue goes when I remember waiting a lot longer for Boo Blasters.

As for the lack of a pepper's ghost scene, my complaint lies more in the fact that they went with two "small" scenes instead of either one large auditorium scene or one turntable scene and a more zoomed out stage scene. The old library looked a lot bigger because it had more depth and didn't have all of the stage wings on either side. Fun Fact: if you look in the background of the stage scene, you'll see the Boo Blasters castle painted as the background with the entrance gate and fence as a physical set piece in front of it.

[robintodd]

11 hours ago, DoomPlague said:

• Apparently they removed a bunch of ride vehicles? The line still moved fast but that surprised me.

As was said before, it's the same number of vehicles as before, just spaced differently (2 blanks between the 2 vehicles.  This helps the experience with the spacing.  

Also I'd love to see a short on how the flashlights work.  Several things are taken into account.  If you try to point it to far ahead the system get's confused (your light may be a different color) also if 2 people it the note at the same time, in my experience neither get's the note point.  Also there are different point values for different notes.  Maybe we can get everyone on here to try and find out if that is true and what the values are.

[brenthodge]

7 hours ago, Losantiville Mining Co. said:

As for the lack of a pepper's ghost scene, my complaint lies more in the fact that they went with two "small" scenes instead of either one large auditorium scene or one turntable scene and a more zoomed out stage scene. The old library looked a lot bigger because it had more depth and didn't have all of the stage wings on either side. Fun Fact: if you look in the background of the stage scene, you'll see the Boo Blasters castle painted as the background with the entrance gate and fence as a physical set piece in front of it.

Story logic, the peppers ghost effect makes no sense (it didnt in the original either, but it was trying so hard to knock off Haunted Mansion so its expected) since we have already seen the "ghosts" fully formed it never made sense why we went back to them being transparent. But I agree that the figures and the whole scene is too big and squished for the space. The turntable was clearly just a budget move where they "wrote" a scene just to use the turntable. The whole space - as you mentioned - should be zoomed out a bit - with a few rows of seating, then the stage with footlights and the characters a bit smaller - using forced perspective to make it feel like we are at the back of the theatre. The way it is feel like looking at a display window trying to be a theatre. 

[DoomPlague]

3 hours ago, robintodd said:

As was said before, it's the same number of vehicles as before, just spaced differently (2 blanks between the 2 vehicles.  This helps the experience with the spacing.  

Also I'd love to see a short on how the flashlights work.  Several things are taken into account.  If you try to point it to far ahead the system get's confused (your light may be a different color) also if 2 people it the note at the same time, in my experience neither get's the note point.  Also there are different point values for different notes.  Maybe we can get everyone on here to try and find out if that is true and what the values are.

Ah, I get it now. I never noticed the smaller gaps between vehicles on Boo Blasters or just never paid attention.

I would like to see something about the flashlights too. My best guess is that there are cameras in each scene that spot your flashlight and a computer calculates the angle and distance (game consoles have done this for years) The same computer would also be tracking the notes and their point values. while adding the colored light to the display, while removing notes as needed and assigning points, like a video game.

[Timchat2]

5 hours ago, brenthodge said:

Story logic, the peppers ghost effect makes no sense (it didnt in the original either, but it was trying so hard to knock off Haunted Mansion so its expected) since we have already seen the "ghosts" fully formed it never made sense why we went back to them being transparent. But I agree that the figures and the whole scene is too big and squished for the space. The turntable was clearly just a budget move where they "wrote" a scene just to use the turntable. The whole space - as you mentioned - should be zoomed out a bit - with a few rows of seating, then the stage with footlights and the characters a bit smaller - using forced perspective to make it feel like we are at the back of the theatre. The way it is feel like looking at a display window trying to be a theatre. 

I distinctly remember how grand the theater reveal felt on the original Phantom Theater, particularly with how the music seemed to fill the space.

[super7]

I am just amazed with the quality of ride that they produced. So these comments below are just comments.
 

There were a few things that were better about the original ride. 
 

The theater performance scene was more grand. 

The talking face projection in the armor

The talking gargoyle. 

I also agree more music would make it better, especially in the very beginning where the posters are.   The maestro’s organ music throughout the ride would increase the mood. 
 

 

[beastfan11]

2 hours ago, super7 said:

I am just amazed with the quality of ride that they produced. So these comments below are just comments.
 

There were a few things that were better about the original ride. 
 

The theater performance scene was more grand. 

The talking face projection in the armor

The talking gargoyle. 

I also agree more music would make it better, especially in the very beginning where the posters are.   The maestro’s organ music throughout the ride would increase the mood. 
 

 

Funny thing about the music. Got three rides in today. First time I could hear the score clearly through the queue and ride. Definitely seems like it’s something they’re working on. Not perfect, but it’s getting there. Appreciate the work that’s going into it, still. 
 

Side note, the show looked great. Everything worked perfectly sans the screen in the furnace. Which is a bizarre. Seemingly an easy fix. Not sure what’s up there.