Monsters Unchained, continued
- A tiny yet monumental detail: It certainly appears that the Phantom is actually faux-playing his organ. I observed what appear to be the figure's fingers pressing down on the keys in sequence (and I checked on a POV - you can see it happen). How did they manage this? A known challenge in designing animatronic figures is there's no reliable way to have even the most advanced model come into physical contact with an independent object. Think of how Hondo at Galaxy's Edge doesn't actually touch the buttons on his control panel - he mimes the motion. Yet Phantom manages to play the keys! Perhaps the solution is far simpler than I'm realizing, but as someone with theme park design experience, this stunned me.
- I much prefer Victoria's animatronic face versus her projected face! I think they could've gotten away with that in the preshow, and perhaps they will eventually make the switch (as Disney is with their Frozen characters) down the line.
Regarding the Phantom playing the organ, I recall a while back in the many patents Universal filed, one of them did involve an animatronic playing a piano/organ, along with one for an animatronic which walked forward. Patent well filed, I say!
As for the projected faces, amusingly I didn't know they actually went for a projected face on Victoria since when I went on in September it was just her animatronic face and that worked just fine, go figure!
But yeah, my thoughts exactly on Monsters. I was very curious to see where it would end up on my personal ranks, and it easily cleared into my all-time favs right along Spider-Man, Indy, ToT (WDW) + GotG: Mission Breakout! and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride*. Not an easy rank to get into, but it feels so good this one did!
* = I know Toad seems like an outlier compared to the other rides in my ranks, but the ride delivers absolute pure joy without fail, and for me that's not only a mark of a great attraction...but also more than deserving to be in the ranks of an all-time fav.