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Soarin’

  • The area of the attraction is 59,895 square feet (includes ticketing area, Great Hall, skyway, Concourses 1 and 2, gate areas and two flight theaters)
  • Before boarding, guests pass through the Great Hall where five of Earth’s biomes are depicted in 20-foot-wide panoramas, along with interesting facts and quizzes displayed on large flat-screen monitors. The featured environments are: polar ecosystem, mountain ecosystem, desert ecosystem, rain forest ecosystem, temperate (deciduous) forest ecosystem.
  • The Soarin’ experience, including pre-flight briefing, is ten minutes. The actual Soarin’ flight lasts approximately five minutes.
  • Locations featured in the attraction include: San Francisco, Monterey Coast, Yosemite National Park, Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe, Palm Springs, San Diego, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Los Angeles, Malibu and Disneyland in Anaheim
  • The ride system is a Walt Disney Imagineering-developed motion-based technology, the original ride inception was based on an erector set model created by Imagineer Mark Sumner. One million pounds of steel provides the ride structure and 37 tons are lifted during each ride cycle.
  • The projection screen dome is 80-feet in diameter
  • Scents experienced in the attractio (thanks to the "Smellitizer") include: Orange blossoms, pine forests and ocean spray
  • The beautiful orchestral musical score created by renowned film and television composer Jerry Goldsmith ("Mulan," "Air Force One," "Star Trek: First Contact")
  • 87 Guests can ride per each ride cycle.
  • The Soarin’ film uses IMAX projection systems, with high-speed (48 fps) high definition Omni-max film projectors. That’s twice the speed of normal motion picture film.
  • Because airspace inside national park boundaries is protected, it took several months for the film crew to obtain permission to fly a helicopter into Yosemite National Park. The last time a helicopter was permitted to fly through Yosemite was in the mid-1900s, when a flood had closed the park to visitors
  • Though it may be hard to see them, mountain climbers in the Yosemite sequence are making their way along a cliff face before the waterfall comes into view. The six members of the Yosemite Mountaineering School spent an entire day before the shoot placing pitons for handholds and footholds during filming. While the shot was being set up, and in between takes, the climbers literally "hung around," suspended from the cliff by ropes. One climber clung to the cliff for about six hours before the shot was ready to go.
  • Because of the status of Monterey/Point Lobos as a marine sanctuary, it took a year to obtain all of the necessary permits to film that sequence. One of the boats in this shot is a NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration) boat, whose job it was to monitor marine animal and bird activity during filming. Fortunately for the animals and the film crew, the shot was pulled off without disturbing any of the protected sea otters, sea lions or brown pelicans.
  • The scene in which guests go soaring over the USS Stennis aircraft carrier as it heads out of the San Diego port is unusual in that all of the Navy jets and helicopters can be seen on the carrier. Normally the carrier offloads all of the aircraft as soon as it comes into port. When this scene of the film was shot, the vessel happened to be making a quick turn-around and had not had time to offload the aircraft. The USS Stennis is the largest aircraft carrier in the Navy’s fleet weighing in at 97,000 tons with a flight deck area of 4.5 acres.
  • There is a scene in the film in which horses and riders gallop through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Prior to filming this scene, the crew was required to hire an archaeological team to perform a biological and paleontological resource assessment. In other words, the team hand-dusted the area from Fonts Wash to Fonts Point — a four-mile stretch of trail — in order to be sure no artifacts would be disturbed by the horses and riders.
  • In the Anza-Borrego shot, the Thunderbirds fly over the horseback riders. Many meetings with Air Force personnel were required to set up this shot. Flight paths for both the Thunderbirds and the helicopter film crew had to be carefully charted and arranged. The jets travel so fast that they would not be able to see the helicopter in time to avoid intercepting its flight path. Timing its departure and GPS location very precisely, the helicopter departed only a few miles from the filming rendezvous point, while the Thunderbirds took off from Nellis Air Force base, near Las Vegas, more than 200 miles away
  • Lt. Col. Brian Bishop, the Thunderbirds’ lead pilot, uses the code name Be-Bop. The lead pilot for the Thunderbirds may hold his or her position for no more than three years, and Lt. Col. Bishop’s participation in the filming of this sequence for Soarin’ constituted his final flight as commander of the Thunderbirds.

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About Lou Mongello

Lou Mongello is a former attorney who left the practice to pursue his passion, and is now a recognized Disney expert, author, speaker, and host of WDW Radio. Learn more…

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