TPS Report
Hard Rock Park - Backstage Tour
When the Hard Rock Park was first announced, there was a hearty dose of skepticism out there about it. There were a lot of hurdles to overcome, and it seemed like an insanely arduous process. For months upon months we'd see news reports about city council meetings, zoning regulations, investors swaying - it was just a lot of red tape to get through. On March 31, 2006, it became official. And yet the online theme park community was still skeptical. There were questions about how large the park could be, how much $400 million could buy, and whether or not the location was really ideal. A few months later, following an official groundbreaking ceremony, there were still a lot of questions out there (egged on by the park's decision to not show its hand yet - details of what attractions would be in the park weren't publicly released until IAAPA in November of '06).
Any other questions about the nature of this park have been answered by the "Backstage Tour," a walkthrough attraction that opened in April of 2007. I don't know why it took us so dang long to make it up there, but we finally did. What follows is a quick TPS Report showing what we saw. Hope you enjoy it.
The park's E-ticket attraction, the Led Zeppelin coaster, is already in testing. Video of the test runs can be found at DiscoverMyrtleBeach.com, although I gotta tell you navigating that site is a bit of a PITA. I also found watching the online videos to be rather underwhelming - looking right at it, I was a lot more excited about this attraction.
Hopefully that chain link fence will be replaced by something a little more pronounced. Nothing pulls you out of a theme park faster than seeing the outside world (incidentally, I noticed a few businesses have already sprung up across the street from the park hoping to ride its coattails. Coasters Ice Cream and Theme Park Pizza (why didn't we name the site that?) were the two most apparent contenders).
I'm fascinated by Maximum RPM. That ferris-wheel lift is terribly unique and visually cool, but I worry that it may make the loading/dispatch process unnecessarily longer. Premiere Rides is a pretty reliable manufacturer (comparatively speaking), so hopefully there's nothing to worry about there.
All right, let's check out this Backstage Tour thing...
The Magical Mystery Tour bus sits outside.
Another nice ride.
Standing by the entrance to the Preview Center, you'll find this statue of "The Hermit" from the inside sleeve of Led Zeppelin IV. Go check your parents' old LPs and compare and contrast. Pretty cool, huh (and a big FAIL to everyone who wrongly states that it's the album cover of IV - the album cover is an old man carrying a bunch of sticks on his back).
$150 for an annual pass is crazy steep, but I guess the pros outweigh the cons here (hooray Free Parking!). I am intrigued by the "Special Member Events and Hours" bit.
Okay, so the preview center consists of a series of rooms with each room representing a separately themed area of the park. The first major room is the "Rock & Roll Heaven" room.
Of course, the headliner of this area will be the aforementioned Led Zeppelin: The Ride.
This is a really, really cool model, but I think it loses a lot of its impact when you've got the real thing sitting outside...
They also have a computer rendered POV of what the coaster will be like. Since a big part of Led Zeppelin - The Ride's impact will be the on-board audio, there's headphones you can put on to hear how the music (the last minute and a half of "Whole Lotta Love") is going to sync up with the ride experience. If you're like me and you can't wait, a video is up here at DiscoverMyrtleBeach.com (again, that site is a betch to navigate - hopefully they won't move the video around and deaden this link).
Yeah, I want to ride this thing NOW. Screw the water dummies, let me on.
The Backstage Tour Continues on Page Two