Steffen Kottkamp, director at MackCreative, MackMedia

Europa Park revitalised its oldest rollercoaster in September when it added a world-first to the ride experience – virtuality reality.

Up to 2,000 visitors per day can take the Alpenexpress VR-Ride, donning the wireless Samsung Gear headsets and launching into an immersive journey combining virtual reality with the real world experience of riding a rollercoaster.

Park mascot Ed Euromaus guides the VR adventure, featuring a ride on a mine cart and a lift on the wings of a dragon. Using precise synchronisation, the 3D animated world – produced by MackMedia, Europa Park’s in-house design and ideas engine – perfectly complements the coaster track.

Steffen Kottkamp, director of MackCreative (like MackMedia, a division of Mack Rides), says the technology can be applied to an old ride to reinvent it for a new audience, but that it has more significant applications.

“You have to imagine it as defining an area and in this area you can manipulate movement to appear how you want it to,” Kottkamp says. “We take the existing ride, unfold it and then put it back together again as a new ride, using every curve, ascent and descent of the track to add to the virtual experience. It’s a bit like driving or flying through a game, but here you feel the real movement. This is an immersive experience like you’ve never had before.”

The project was a collaboration between VR Coaster, Mack Rides, MackMedia and Samsung, and was developed with Thomas Wagner, professor in the department of Virtual Design at the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern in Germany.

“It’s cheaper than building an entirely new coaster, but that’s not the aim of the technology,” says Kottkamp. “It can give an existing coaster a new lease of life, as we did with Alpenexpress. This is a first step, but there will be a lot of companies that decide to build a new coaster and integrate the technology from day one.”

Kottkamp says he thinks the solution will be somewhere in between.

“We didn’t invent the technology in order to give old coasters a new-world sensation,” he says. “We invented the technology to create a much higher level of experience, where we can create a ride bespoke for virtual reality.”

The revolutionary technology is being distributed by Mack Rides to the wider theme park market, and Kottkamp says there’s interest from multiple parties.

“We’re making a business model out of it – one that also takes care of the operational side, such as ride capacity, hardware hygiene and ticketing solutions.”

So does Kottkamp believe the rollercoaster, as we know it, is dead?

“The future of the rollercoaster lies in a combination of real physical forces and appropriate thematic content. Using VR, we can create a much more elaborate and interactive themed world,” he says.