Boo Blasters on Boo Hill

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Nibbins said:
My kids just got 7000 and 8000 points at Boo Blasters.

Ride broke down.

They turned on the light after a few minutes and then evacuated the ride a couple minutes after that.
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HOW ARE THOSE EVEN POSSIBLE?!?! My highest was something like 2149 and that was from riding alone.
 
I have heard that the one at Carowinds doesn’t have the cars stop anymore in the station, they keep moving at a slow pace now (similar to what they did with Scooby Doo/Pirates at SFFT). I’m curious if our Boo Blasters is going to follow suit, because I also heard from some workers about how improvements will be made to the ride to reduce downtime. Because a huge chunk of Boo Blasters’ downtime’s this season apparently were from cars bumping into one another in the station.
 
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Doesn't sound very friendly to handicapped people to keep the cars moving.
You'd think its possible to prevent the cars from running into each other at the station.
 
I'd venture to guess that ADA compliance was one of the things they'd have looked into before changing to continuous loading since nobody enjoys being on the receiving end of a lawsuit.

Also, didn't the ops manual indicate there's a way for ops to manually jog cars into position this leading to potential bumps?
 
Nibbins said:
Doesn't sound very friendly to handicapped people to keep the cars moving.
You'd think its possible to prevent the cars from running into each other at the station.
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In that case, there’d be a button to stop all motion in the station to make it easier for handicaps to get on a car. You could argue that it would make everyone want to continue having cars stop in the station for loading/unloading, but my answer to that is why did Six Flags and Carowinds implement the continuous system in the first place? Surely they still get handicap guests as well.
 
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Carowinds previously announced a gaming system upgrade for their Boo Blasters (mentioned in the linked video on this post). And this past weekend having gotten the chance to ride the now upgraded Boo Blasters at Carowinds, I was very impressed by the new experience.

Some of the things I noticed:
  • The sensor on each of the props is now noticeably larger in diameter (thus easier to target) and much more responsive/sensitive.
  • Each sensor now responds to multiple shots from the same gun; where it gives visual feedback (in terms of different colors) each time you hit it, and eventually turns red after the max number of shots allowed.
  • Each gun - which of course now works (for the time-being) - seems to have a nicer/enhanced force feedback and sound after firing.
  • Each row of the car has an updated display (pictured below) to track scores.
  • And just before exiting the car (so rounding the final corner), there's a display mounted on the wall which shows the score of all 4 riders; so it's no longer possible for those in row 2 to verbally fudge/inflate their scores to those in row 1 😉.
I have not gotten a chance to ride Boo Blasters at KD or KI this season. But if neither has been updated yet, I certainly hope this same upgrade comes soon to both.

IMG_7688.jpg
 
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This thing is a mess. Almost nothing works. And no it was not (just) my aim. lol. There’s also one room where all the lights are out. There’s stuff to shoot except you can barely see them and of course they don’t work. I thought this was refurbished? If so it has completely fallen apart since then
 
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Crunchewy said:
This thing is a mess. Almost nothing works. And no it was not (just) my aim. lol. There’s also one room where all the lights are out. There’s stuff to shoot except you can barely see them and of course they don’t work. I thought this was refurbished? If so it has completely fallen apart since then
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This has been my experience on it for the last couple years. I know my aim isn’t that bad, I just can’t figure out how to get any points. It’s usually cool and has no line, plus my son loves it so we usually ride it. Just wish it would work so it was more enjoyable to me 😂
 
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Crunchewy said:
This thing is a mess. Almost nothing works. And no it was not (just) my aim. lol. There’s also one room where all the lights are out. There’s stuff to shoot except you can barely see them and of course they don’t work. I thought this was refurbished? If so it has completely fallen apart since then
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I thought they had replaced the blacklights in some scenes to make the ride more colorful and darker again. Although there is one scene that's intentionally dark (with some strobe lights) and that's the skeleton scene, unless you referred to another part of the ride.

Also the Boocifer animatronic in the finale is completely gone. I don't know what happened, maybe they're doing something with it behind the scenes. The effects in that particular room have struggled to work for quite some time now. There used to be music, strobe lights, and the whole room lit up after Boocifer sunk into the well. I think there used to be fog effects too if you looked real close back in the day. Now it's just a dull abyss of a scene, illuminated by those pale blacklights.
 
cschnizer said:
I thought they had replaced the blacklights in some scenes to make the ride more colorful and darker again. Although there is one scene that's intentionally dark (with some strobe lights) and that's the skeleton scene, unless you referred to another part of the ride.

Also the Boocifer animatronic in the finale is completely gone. I don't know what happened, maybe they're doing something with it behind the scenes. The effects in that particular room have struggled to work for quite some time now. There used to be music, strobe lights, and the whole room lit up after Boocifer sunk into the well. I think there used to be fog effects too if you looked real close back in the day. Now it's just a dull abyss of a scene, illuminated by those pale blacklights.
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Not sure what room it was but nothing was lit up. It was just dark. And none of the targets in that room were lit nor registered. Also I don't recall any strobe lights at all anywhere. Also I would estimate that, at most, maybe 10% of targets registered. It was terrible. Of the 3 of us, I was the only one that kept trying. lol.
 
The trick with the Kings Domion install of Boo Blasters is to keep the trigger pulled for the entire ride, and hold the laser beam on target untl it registers. And don't even bother with the skeletons, and in the last scene, ignore the will and focus on the three bottom right targets on the boxes. (This makes for some nice bonus points if the unload station is backed up. If you want extra bonus points, there is a test target in the station above the camera screen, you should be able to get an extra 100 bonus points as this target has a really short reset timer. Just don't be annoying and pull down the lap bar before grabbing the blaster. This target also is great when you have the row to yourself to find the better blaster.) Perhaps management should be required to ride the ride every day so they can be as annoyed by broken effects as I am.
As much as I want the targeting system replaced, I do like the lack of tiring out my trigger finger.
As far as scenes being dim, it probably has more to do with the paint degrading rather than failling light fixtures. Hopefully the powers that be will bring Sally in to give the Carowinds treatment to KD. (Repainting the props and replacing the target system, maybe they will consider adding a never stopping station well they are at it.) The park could go all out and market this as a great off year addition.
On a different note, I got my first estop on this ride a couple of weeks ago. I knew the lap bars would release for fire safety reasons, but I was not expecting them to pop open so forcefully.
 
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I'm not disliking what you said specifically @jscll - more that there has to be a stupid 'trick' of the system like that so you can do the primary draw of the ride.
 
jscll said:
As far as scenes being dim, it probably has more to do with the paint degrading rather than failling light fixtures.
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I’m pretty sure it’s an issue with the blacklights, most of them are an incredibly pale-violet, almost white color. This causes the scenes they light up to be much brighter, to the point where you can see more clearly the ride track and other things you’re not really supposed to see. The scenes with the normal, deep violet blacklights are darker and more colorful. When I worked the ride in 2021, one day they put a deep violet blacklight in the station alongside the paler blacklights, and I could really see the difference in the room lighting. Even maintenance said the ride looked darker and more vibrant with these darker blacklights.
Crunchewy said:
Not sure what room it was but nothing was lit up. It was just dark. And none of the targets in that room were lit nor registered. Also I don't recall any strobe lights at all anywhere. Also I would estimate that, at most, maybe 10% of targets registered. It was terrible. Of the 3 of us, I was the only one that kept trying. lol.
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Maybe it wasn’t working when you rode but there is a strobe effect in the skeleton room. It has a very slow flash rate but it’s there. 2:07
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