How the Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon Ride Works

Anytime a major new theme park attraction opens we always try to figure out what the technology is behind the ride, from Escape from Gringotts, to Shanghai Pirates, and Frozen Ever After. The Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon ride at Universal Studios Florida recently soft opened so we did some research and it appears the ride system is a Classic Flying Theatre attraction from DyMoRides, an Austrian company specializing in dynamic motion rides. Looking through their website, I stumbled upon this under References:

Project YYY
Design and Engineering of a Custom Ride System for a Classic Flying Theatre
Leading Orlando Theme Park (to open in 2017)

It’s a pretty safe bet that this is referring to the Jimmy Fallon ride. It’s been confirmed the Jimmy Fallon ride contains two theaters with each sitting 72 guests per theater (six rows with twelve seats per row).

DyMoRides uses a cam-based, multi-axis, all-electric motion base system. If we were to take a peek underneath Race Through New York it might look something like this graphic from their website:

Here is a short video of a real life example of one of DyMoRide’s Flyboard systems. Notice how it uses a rotatable cam system as opposed to linear actuators seen on other motion platforms.

via GIPHY

I’m sure many guests to Universal Studios will be asking “What is the Jimmy Fallon ride? Is it a Jimmy Fallon roller coaster?” The answer is yet another motion-base simulator ride. When I hear the name Flying Theatre attraction I immediately think of Soarin’ at Epcot and DCA. What’s been built for the Tonight Show ride I would not classify as a flying theater. Instead, I would simply refer to it as a simulator. It’s closer to Star Tours and Minion Mayhem then it is to Soarin’ or even the new Avatar Flight of Passage ride.