Disney Quest Walkthrough Tour 2013 (Part 4)

Here is the forth and final part of our 2013 walkthrough tour of Disney Quest in Orlando Florida. The last time I took a video I decided on not showing off the bottom two floors since their all Virtual Reality and simulators. Showing a video of the outside of the attraction and describing what it is didn't come off right..but then I had tons of people asking what was on the other floors so I decided on checking them out.

Since there's a lot to talk about I'm going to throw in a page break so I can try to keep most of the DQ videos here on one page, so feel free to hit the jump and read on about what's on the lower two floors!




The second floor is home to the Create Center. They have a section where you can draw Disney characters at certain times of the day, kind of like Journey into Disney Animation at Hollywood Studios. (It will always be MGM Studios to me) One of the coolest things is Cyberspace Mountain. You're given a card and you get to put it into a touch screen where you can design your own rollercoaster. You can go all out with the classic Space Mountain takeoff and you can also throw in flips and rolls too. After you finish you can watch a preview video of what it will look like, then you take it up to the simulators where all the data gets loaded off the card and you can ride the rollercoster you just created. Also for some odd reason you can still, in 2013 get a VHS tape of the ride you took. Yes, they never upgraded it to burnable DVD's, they still use VHS.

The second floor has one more attraction. The Virtual Reality game, Aladdin's Magic Carpet. Just like I said with Ride the Comix, this game is very old and still runs on Windows 95 hardware. If I'm correct, this actually pre-dates Disney Quest by a few years. I had watched a special on Disney Channel where they were showing off this, at the time, new Virtual Reality equipment and how Disney could recreate you flying through the Cave of Wonders, just like in the movie. The game is actually a team game. The VR Headsets while REALLY primitive compared to the Oculus Rift, does have a headset so you can speak to other team members. You and your team fly through the Cave of Wonders, the marketplace and finally the palace where you need to collect certain items to progress. While this all sounds cool the technology is pretty dated and that's where the biggest problem lies. The last time I played the game at Quest I was given a pretty busted headset. The screens where really blurry and hard to see, some of the padding for the headset was also flaking off and got into where the screens where. The biggest problem was the smell. Have you ever worn a baseball cap all day during the summer? You know that smell it gets from it on your head all day? Well, think that and somebody shoved the cap over your eyes...the thing stunk. I actually stopped mid-game and told the tech that it had to be cleaned, I was gagging from the smell. While they do use a halo like strap for the VR units so your head doesn't really come into contact with it, the last person must have not washed their hair and was sweating. Disgusting.

Floor number one has the most Sega units in a LONG time. Five deluxe Let's Go! Jungle's, three stand-up units of LGJ, six stand-up units of Jambo! Safari, Maze of Kings and Primeval Hunt. Then of course, two Temple Run machines since that's what the kids like on their phones and by god their going to make an arcade game of it. (Oh yeah, Sega announced their making a Plants Vs. Zombies arcade/ticket game this week, on top of laying off a bunch of people...)

The first floor has two more games. First up is the Virtual Jungle Cruse. Sadly since the three times I've been to Quest I've only gone by myself so I've never gotten a chance to play the Jungle Cruse or Buzz Lightyear's game. The Pirates of The Caribbean game I've also never played. A lot of games like the Alien's Attack game that's up on the 5th floor require you to play the game as a team. Every time I played both games they didn't have enough players so I didn't get to play the game the way they intended. The best was playing the Alien Attack game and the host didn't put one of us in the main pilot's seat so we just sat there and died and got told to leave not even three minutes after getting into it. Lame.

So that right there is all five floors of Disney Quest. Would I recommend you visit? Well, it all depends. As I've said about going to theme park video arcades, I treat them like the cherry on the sundae. If you're planning a vacation with the family to Disney World consider how many days your going. If you're pressed for time and want to get all four of the parks in I wouldn't recommend going since Tomorrowland and also most of the hotels have decent game rooms. If you get washed out or it's really hot and uncomfortable out then it's a good way to get a break. The biggest problem is the price. To get in you have to pay 50 dollars. You'd think because all of the games (just not the claws) are on freeplay and the rides, that'd be a value? The pinball on floor 5 gets beaten to death, kids hog the games even though there's a sign on every single game saying not too and just feel free to go back and read my story about the VR games... I really wish they would have made upgrades to the games but they never did. The place is 15 years old and it feels like it. While the 80's games and pinball are always a treat, it has an odd blend because their putting in games that are in every other Dave and Busters and Chuck E Cheese's and it sucks because there's just so many games there's no possible way that a whole team of techs could keep every game up and running.

I've read and spoken to people that have gone to the arcades we've visited and said they've come back disappointed. Tons of stories of people saying they didn't like the condition of games at Pinball Wizard, FunWorld in Nashua NH, Pinball Hall of Fame and of course FunSpot. I get quite a few saying how unhappy they were that multiple games they wanted to play didn't work. One person online wrote a review about FunSpot saying that "they know they have cancer and it's not long for this world..." or something to that effect. Hell, even a popular forum for classic gamers has a whole thread just about the trackball speed on the Missile Command at FunSpot. But here's the thing folks. Neither arcade flat out charges you FIFTY DOLLARS to just walk into the door. At FunSpot if you use the voucher you pay 20 dollars for tokens and get 25 which results to the games being about 13 cents. While I too get a little pissed that I can't play certain games when I go up yearly to FunSpot I didn't find out the game was broken after dropping fifty dollars before I walked into the place. 13 cents? Not that bad, just move onto one of the other 400+ games, you'll find one you like that works. For fifty dollars I want a clean VR helmet, I want to see different exclusive games, not stuff running on almost 20 year old hardware.

So that's my long winded rant about this. If you've got the extra time in your schedule, if the weather is lousy and you don't mind putting up with some broken games you might like it. Otherwise feel free to check out one of the many hotel game rooms.