DisneyQuest: The Final Video

Well folks, here it is. My biggest video ever clocking in at over 50 minutes long. It's one final look at DisneyQuest in Orlando Florida. (I look forward to hearing from trolls on YouTube that the video's too long, meanwhile they'd complain if I spit it into multiple videos to get more hits...)

As you may have heard Disney announced that the place would be closing to make room for a new NBA Experience...store? They haven't exactly stated, they also haven't exactly stated when DisneyQuest would be shutting down. I had a cast member tell me he had heard they closed up the week prior to me getting there and then finally heard they'd be closing at the end of the year...five bucks it doesn't last that long.

The place sure has seen better days. They still have the nerve to ask for full 40 dollar admission in order to enter. While they got some new games in like Jetpack Joyride and a new Skylanders game they had to do away with one of their signature games, Ride The Comix. The last few times I went they took down the units on the 4th floor and moved everything up to the 5th and now all of the units are gone. They even went as far as taking it off the leaflets they hand out as well as the maps no longer list the game. It's a real shame because I loved the game when I played it back in 1999. According to the Wikipedia entry the ride shut in September of 2014 in order to make room for more seating for the FoodQuest quick service restaurant, which you know is BS since I never see either floor packed with people eating.

Aladdin's Magic Carpet still has a few "working" units. I say that because like the last time my headset REEKED of sweat even though you wear a "halo" to prevent your head coming into contact with anything and since we're using close to over 20 year old VR headsets the image is REALLY blurry. It actually hurts playing it. Between the horrible picture and the smell I took off my headset midgame and walked away.

I say this in the video, but I would like to ask anybody at Disney reading this, PLEASE release the source code for both Ride the Comics and Aladdin's Magic Carpet so people can bring them to new Virtual Reality headsets like the Rift. I would love to have a chance to play them again with some online gameplay!

The pinball and arcade games are totally destroyed. Most of the classics have been retrofitted to LCD monitors which look horrible. The few running on CRT's have terrible burn in and there's a lot of control issues with various games. Tetris Giant a game I was excited to play only had one working "Deka-Con" controller and it wasn't fully working because it's supposed to have force feedback when you score a double or larger. I tried to play Discs of Tron and the fire button stuck two minutes into my game.

The pinball machines are even worse. The Iron Monger in Iron Man won't even come up and the flippers don't have any power to make the combo ramps, X-Men's multiball is totally disabled, Avatar, Avengers, Transformers and Rolling Stones are all filthy and Tron...my Tron is the worst. The game is still running on the original code, it was never updated but the ball actually gets stuck on the return lanes. I actually picked the game up and shook it and the ball would not come loose. Only when the game would cycle through and the right sling shot would fire did the ball finally get loose.

The whole place was such a shame going. Over 40 dollars and they can't maintain what the have. Not just the video games and pinball but their highlight attraction games. I thought I'd be able to play Ride the Comix one last time, even with the vomit educing headsets. I left the place very disappointed. I almost wanted to ask for my money back but I bet there's a "no refund" policy on the back of the ticket. Hard to believe when I first went there back in 1999 they where taking around investors to try to franchise the place all over the country and the whole world. While Chicago saw the only other DisneyQuest that one died in 2001 due to low attendance and also the cost since people didn't feel like paying 40 dollars to get in. If for some reason you're going to be down in Florida by the end of the year, don't even waste your time going.