New interactive ride in Walibi excites visitors of all ages

Walibi Belgium can look back on the 2019 season with a smile. They recently received the Diamond ThemePark Award for “Best Theme Park in Belgium” for the fourth time in a row, and their new attractions are nominated for several renowned awards. One of those new attractions is Popcorn Revenge, designed by Alterface and realized with Barco projection.

In 2018 Walibi Belgium announced a renewal wave with new family-friendly rides in order to open up their offering with attractions that excite all ages. The new rid Popcorn Revenge definitely fits this strategy. Like many other existing dark rides from the interactive attractions specialist, Alterface, the Popcorn Revenge features a wide range of innovative technologies including projection mapping, 3D shooting and special effects.

Barco and Alterface have an impressive track record together with amongst others the award-winning Basilisk ride in Legendia (Poland) and Maus aus Chocolat in Phantasialand (Germany). Convinced by the great price-performance ratio of our projectors, the manufacturer of multi-dimensional customized solutions for theme parks and other visitor attractions called upon Barco’s expertise again with the installation of eight Barco projectors for the new interactive ride in Walibi.

The projectors support an immersive journey through a Bollywood-inspired cinema complex with seven different rooms: the popcorn machine, a central hall, four themed movie theatres where visitors are presented with iconic film scenes, and of course a grand finale. In these rooms the journey is suddenly disturbed by the popcorns come to life; with the help of the laser guns in the trackless vehicles, passengers can shoot away the annoying creatures.  Visitors always see only six of the seven rooms in random order, so multiple trips are needed to experience all the different scenarios.

The Barco laser phosphor projectors are the quietest laser phosphor projectors currently available. Theme parks significantly benefit from the combination of these low noise levels together with vivid color performance and razor-sharp image quality to enhance the immersive experience of the dark rides. What’s more, with the laser phosphor light source offering a long lifetime and low maintenance needs, they minimize the risk of visitors disappointed because their favorite attraction is closed for maintenance. The reliability of our Barco projectors enables our theme park customers to keep their guests happy at all times.

Jean-Christophe Parent, Walibi Belgium managing director, is pleased with the results: “The ride has met and even exceeded our expectations (…) with unsurpassed image rendering and projection quality! The new ride obviously involved some technical challenges but we managed to get it all right and work smoothly together with Alterface teams and expert partners.”