I'm concerned. Hear me out.
Would a flying theater feel at home at SeaWorld Orlando? Yes. Does a flying theater offer the ability to further the conservation and education missions of SeaWorld? For sure. Could a flying theater investment in Orlando represent an outsized value to the company as a whole due to the ability to reuse one of the most expensive aspects of the project (the media) at potential installations at the other two domestic SeaWorld parks? Yep, certainly. Does SeaWorld Orlando, specifically, need more indoor attractions? 1000%. Does SWO need more family-accessible, low-height-requirement rides? Undoubtably.
I have a few reasons I'm hesitant about a flying theater in particular though.
Orlando is already home to the original (well, a clone of the original), very famous, highly regarded, flying theater, Soarin'. A theoretical SeaWorld Orlando flying theater project will be viewed as a "Soarin' knock-off" from the very start—meaning that it will have an outsized public perception hill to climb immediately when it's announced. Then, if SeaWorld Orlando cannot clearly top, Epoct's Soarin', SWO's attempt will always be viewed as the lesser knock-off of an attraction you can find down the road. Just ask anyone from the Mid-Atlantic about Europe in the Air. Despite Soarin' being 800 miles away from Busch Gardens Williamsburg, EitA was widely derided by the public as a poor Soarin' imitation. That effect will be significantly worse when Epcot is minutes away.
More frighteningly, I've already experienced a Brognet flying theater in Florida at Legoland and, let me tell you, it doesn't even come close to Soarin'—and that has nothing to do with the IP involved, the target audience of mostly kids, etc.—it has everything to do with the quality of the attraction hardware—namely the significantly less impressive motion, the cheap and amateur-ish feeling load and unload process, the distance from the screen, the size and shape of the screen, the quality of the projectors, and more. Every aspect of the experience feels like a bad attempt at Soarin' by a company that bit off way more than they could chew.
Speaking of biting off more than they can chew, let's talk about SeaWorld Orlando. What two recent attractions in SWO's history would be closest to a flying theater? Turtle Trek and Antartica. Compared to a flying theater, Turtle Trek had much lower operational and maintenance costs, yet it was killed due to a lack of a desire to maintain or staff the attraction. Compared to a flying theater, Antartica was far more popular than the likely potential ceiling for a probably-worse-than-Soarin' flying theater in Orlando but was killed due to some amalgamation of high maintenance costs and just a general management disinterest in the attraction. Why on earth would the park that just threw all of the investments made into those two attractions turn around and build a flying theater which is essentially the exact mid-point between those offerings? At best, I think such a move would illustrate just how absurdly braindead the murder of Turtle Trek and Antartica were. At worst, I think it would show a complete and total lack of direction for the company, of understanding of their industry, and of the wants of their market.
Potentially even worse yet, assuming SWO does build "bad, underwater Soarin'" and it turns out that the local market is pretty lukewarm on "crappy, wet version of what we have had down the road for decades," this could very well be used as further evidence to show "Hey, our guests don't actually care about dark rides or indoor attractions! Back to coasters!" even though the reality will be that, once again, SeaWorld Orlando will have just picked their dark ride very, very unwisely.
I want SeaWorld Orlando to build a darkride—but I want it to be a sure-fire success. Some sort of probably-interactive, Sesame Street dark ride is just such an incredibly and obviously correct solution for SeaWorld Orlando that I legitimately cannot fathom how it hasn't yet happened—and really can't imagine why it would ever be prioritized behind a flying theater. If you want to stick with the SeaWorld theme and message instead (presumably to put it in front of the Wild Arctic exhibit), an undersea-themed, Sally-style, traditional darkride would be a sure-fire hit I'm sure. Theme it to an expedition to the artic—maybe make it interactive with "cameras" that can "capture photos of" illusive wildlife along the way.
Ultimately, I'm just worried that SeaWorld Orlando is, once again, getting caught up in an attraction fad. This happened with the original Wild Arctic when simulators were in-style, flashy attractions no one really understood. It happened with Antartica when trackless darkrides were seen as the wave of the future. It didn't take long for the industry to see the major weaknesses in both of those attraction types—and then SeaWorld was left holding their incredibly expensive, sub-par versions of these, no-longer-hot-commodity ride systems. It's about time that SeaWorld go back to basics and focus on building something good rather than chasing the current wave of mediocre flying theaters rippling through the industry. Honestly, it's especially annoying with flying theaters since we've already seen a much better version of the concept—once again, right down the road—with Flight of Passage at Disney's Animal Kingdom.
