Looney Tunes River Ride

Looney Tunes River Ride opened with the Warner Bros. Movie World on 3 June 1991 as Looney Tunes Studio - Journey into Fantasy, and was sponsored by the Nine Network.[3][4][5][6] It was one of four attractions in the Looney Tunes Land section of the park.[7] The ride later had its name changed to Looney Tunes Studio Tour, with Nine Network's sponsorship of the ride ending in 1995, and in December 1997, the ride's name was changed to Looney Tunes River Ride alongside the launch of Looney Tunes Village.[8]

On 30 June 1996, Looney Tunes Adventure opened with Warner Bros. Movie World in Germany. The ride was very similar to the version that opened in Australia with the primary difference being references to Australia were changed to Germany.[9][10] On 3 April 2004, Warner Bros. Movie World in Germany was acquired by StarParks.[11] This acquisition resulted in various Warner Bros. licensed properties, including DC Comics and Looney Tunes, being removed from the park on 31 October 2004.[11] On 19 March 2005, Movie Park Germany opened with Looney Tunes Adventure being rethemed to Ice Age Adventure.[11][12]

In early January 2011, as Looney Tunes River Ride had many ongoing technical problems and was out of date, Warner Bros. Movie World announced that the ride would close on 14 February 2011 until further notice in early January, 2011.[13] The ride was also closing due to the closure of Looney Tunes Adventure. Towards the end of the month, the closing date was re-announced to be 1 February 2011.[14] On 1 February 2011, the ride was permanently closed, and its queue area was converted into a viewing area for the Road Runner Roller Coaster, and the Speedy Gonzales animatronic featured at the end of the ride can be found in Speedy Gonzales Tijuana Taxis.[3][15][16][17] It was later confirmed on 12 September 2014, that the Looney Tunes River Ride would be replaced with Junior Driving School.[18] On 10 December 2012, the boats, electric steam boilers, colourbond slimline tanks and sawed tree used in the Looney Tunes River Ride were put up for auction at Village Roadshow Studios.[2]

The ride began with riders queuing outside a white colourbond show building decorated as a movie studio. They would then be led into a room by a guide where they were welcomed to "Hollywood". Guests were then informed that they would be taken on a tour of the studio where the latest Looney Tunes movie was being shot. However, Bugs Bunny had dug a hole into the centre of the earth down to Australia, resulting in the production to cease. The guests would then walk into another room where the guide would show them a light which indicates the production status. Since production had been stopped, the guests would proceed through a door to the next room. This room was filled with animatronic Looney Tunes characters, three of whom (Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and Wile E. Coyote) were looking down a hole in the ground. Guests were told that Bugs Bunny had dug a hole through the middle of the earth to Australia. Riders then were moved into a giant earth drill where they were transported through the Earth to come out at Australia. Guests would then get on 4 boats, each with 4 rows of 4 seats each before being taken through an animatronics filled ride with a surprising drop towards the end.[3] Then guests go past another scene identical to the one with the animatronics in the pre-show, but now Bugs Bunny has joined them and is directing the movie. The boats stop at the unloading station and the guests are unloaded whilst Porky Pig delivers his signature line, "Th-th-th-that's all, Folks!".[10]

• Greg Burson as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Tasmanian Devil, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé Le Pew and Marc Antony
• Joe Alaskey as Daffy Duck, Sylvester and Speedy Gonzales
• Bob Bergen as Porky Pig and Tweety
• Paul Julian as Road Runner (archive recordings)

Looney Tunes River Ride was originally designed in-house by Warner Bros. Movie World in Australia. Sanderson Group was also involved in the ride's development, as it designed the ride's entrance, queue areas and theming and the earth drill, and was responsible for the ride's special effects.[1] The park's parent company, Village Roadshow Theme Parks, previously opened Lassiter's Lost Mine at Sea World in 1987, which utilised the same in-house ride system used on the Looney Tunes River Ride.[19][20] The ride system was designed by Australian Electric Vehicles and controlled by ASI systems from Anitech Systems Inc.[21][22][23][24] The ride had easily spotted sensors that would trigger the animatronics' movements and voices when a boat passed them from below, and its fourteen boats catered for 16 riders distributed in rows of 4.[25][2][3] The ride's first pre-show room's walls were themed after the 1981 jigsaw puzzle The Looney Tunes Characters.[26] Village Roadshow Theme Parks approached many companies about designing animatronics for the ride. Each company was asked to produce a "test/demonstration Bugs", and then Village Roadshow Theme Parks would decide on the company to go with the Bugs Bunny animatronic that they produced. Greg McKee, Matt Ward, John Cox and Chris Chitty designed a demonstration Bugs Bunny animatronic in just a few weeks. This animatronic could sing the Warner Brothers Cartoon Cavalcade version of The Bugs Bunny Show's "This Is It", followed by his catchphrase, "Eh, what's up, doc?" McKee, Ward, Cox and Chitty contacted Keith Scott directly to voice the Bugs animatronic when he says, "Eh, what's up, doc?" He wasn’t well known internationally at the time for Looney Tunes voices, and the exposure from doing voices for Warner Brothers Movie World helped him get further voice credit with Warner Bros., and he went on to do narration voiceovers on George of the Jungle, George of the Jungle 2, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and others. The animatronic won McKee, Ward, Cox and Chitty the multi-$1,000,000 contract to design the animatronics for Warner Brothers Movie World in 1990, including the 91 audio-animatronics (which used actuators and pneumatics) featured in Looney Tunes River Ride; and was sufficient to strip it away from German animatronic company Heimo and one other company.[27][28][29][30][31] No one had ever made life-sized three-dimensional versions of the Looney Tunes characters before. Cox had to reconcile all of the poses from the individual character model sheets into a 3D sculpture that looked accurate from every angle. It turned out to be very difficult with quite a few of the characters. Cox used coloured plasticine to replicate the colours of each character. This helped enormously with getting the lines correct, and also made it easy to see the finished character come together in the sculpt. McKee, Ward, Cox and Chitty made plaster waste moulds of the sculptures and then laid 8 millimetres of dark green plasticine into the moulds. A fibreglass part was then made from this which was 8 millimetres smaller as an allowance for the 8 millimetres of fur that was going onto each part. This meant that the finished furred animatronic was the correct size which meant the character likeness remained correct. Cox still has the demonstration Bugs animatronic and most of the other characters (or at least their heads) in his workshop. According to Parkz Forums user aussienetman, Village Roadshow Theme Parks Proprietary Limited then did something sneaky: they decided to use all the demonstration Bugs animatronics (including one designed by Heimo) in the ride, which was why they all looked slightly different from each other.[31]

The German ride, Looney Tunes Adventure, was manufactured by Intamin and Australian Electric Vehicles, and its ride system was controlled by ASI systems from Anitech Systems Inc., and it had easily spotted sensors that would trigger the animatronics' movements and voices in the ride when a boat passed them from below.[21][22][23][24][25] Looney Tunes Adventure and another Warner Bros. Movie World in Germany attraction, Bermuda Dreieck (now Bermuda Triangle: Alien Encounter), utilised the same in-house ride system. The ride's eleven boats catered for 12 riders distributed in rows of 4, and offered a capacity of 1000 riders per hour. Zeitgeist Design and Production's Ryan Harmon served as the Director of Show Development for Warner Bros. International Recreation Enterprises, where he conceived, wrote and managed the design team for Warner Bros. Movie World in Germany's worth of rides, shows and attractions, including Looney Tunes Adventure.[32] Alan Griffith Architect was also involved in the ride's development. The ride's theming was designed by Botticelli's - Atelier der angewandten Malerei and Sanderson Group.[33][34] Like Looney Tunes River Ride, Looney Tunes Adventure's first pre-show room's walls were themed after The Looney Tunes Characters.[26] The pre-show rooms were painted by Botticelli's - Atelier der angewandten Malerei.[33] Looney Tunes Adventure had more animatronics with moving eye pupils than Looney Tunes River Ride. The ride shared its water, maintenance pools and exit with Die Unendliche Geschichte - Auf der Suche nach Phantasien (now Excalibur - Secrets of the Dark Forest).[35] In 2003, the head of the Speedy Gonzales animatronic in the pre-show was redesigned. The animatronic's open mouth was what made it even creepier than before.[36]

Thinkwell Group was contacted by StarParks because of its expertise in creating intellectual property-based attractions. Thinkwell brokered the relationship between 20th Century Fox and StarParks to bring Ice Age to Movie Park Germany. StarParks was worried about the cost of licensing a blockbuster intellectual property. Thinkwell convinced StarParks that it wouldn't cost as much as they feared. The project was less than nine months from start to finish, which was about a third of the amount of time it would typically take to complete such an attraction. Thinkwell kept the existing ride system and reworked much of the existing theming from Looney Tunes Adventure to work with the new intellectual property. Unbeknownst to Thinkwell, its storyline was very similar to what Blue Sky Studios was developing for Ice Age's sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown. Thinkwell worked closely with Fox and Blue Sky to develop the story, got their approvals quickly and went to work completing the design and fabrication to make opening day for the new season as Movie Park Germany.[37]

Blue Sky helpfully provided its 3D computer models of the characters to Thinkwell. This allowed Thinkwell to do CNC carvings for the animatronics rather than traditional hand sculpting, which saved weeks, if not months, in production. Craig Hanna, Thinkwell's Chief Creative Officer and co-founder, flew to New York and met with Lori Forte, John C. Donkin, Chris Meledandri and Chris Wedge, the producers and director of the films, and got to meet the animators and understand the essence of the intellectual property. Later, Thinkwell's designers worked with Blue Sky's animators to pose the characters from the film for the ride. It was a great process. In the beginning, to save time, Thinkwell sent a team to Movie Park Germany, where they worked on-site in temporary offices that they provided for Thinkwell. They quickly developed the initial concept and full presentation to executive management, complete with layout, storyboards, scene descriptions and script in one week. On the night before opening, the last shipment of animatronics arrived from the United States and Thinkwell were in waders walking through the filled trough carrying animatronics through the ride to get them loaded in, installed and wired in place of the animatronics featured in Looney Tunes Adventure in time for Movie Park Germany’s opening on 19 March 2005.[37]

The cost to license the soundtrack from Ice Age was prohibitive, so Thinkwell hired Jean-Francois Cote, a composer from Cirque du Soleil, and created their own that was reminiscent of the film’s theme song, but it was actually a whole new piece.[38] They also had to hire German voice actors to do the voices of the characters in the ride. The voice actors from the German release of Ice Age, such as Otto Waalkes, who voices Scrat and Sid, were too expensive, so Thinkwell hired other sound-alike voice actors. Those actors were famous German comedians that were more popular than the people who did the voices from the film.[37] The ride had a multitude of immersive special effects, including a real snow flurry, explosive steam geysers, smoldering fissure eruptions, and intense blasts of heat and cold.[39] The audio, special effects and lighting system vendors were project managed by Thinkwell's European Technical Director, Philip Hartley, who was working alongside Philip Hartley Associates' technical co-ordinator Annika Oetken. It was announced at the 12th Annual Thea Awards, at IAAPA 2005, that Ice Age Adventure had won the outstanding achievement award in the category of "Limited Budget/Refurbishment". The award's presentation to Thinkwell was made at the Thea Awards Gala on 18 March 2006.[40]

In later years, Ice Age Adventure was not received well by visitors to the park. Many of the ride's animatronics were broken and the special effects weren't operating anymore.[41] In 2012, Movie Park Germany promised that a major refurbishment in 2013 would be planned, with characters (like Crash, Eddie, Ellie, Peaches and Buck) and scenes from Ice Age, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Ice Age: Continental Drift.[42] However, the refurbishment was cancelled since the ride didn't quite fit the theme of Nickland.[41][43] On 1 November 2016, Ice Age Adventure performed its last run, and a wreath was laid down at the ride.[41] On 6 December 2016, it was announced that Ice Age Adventure would not reopen in 2017, because Movie Park Germany's 10-year licensing of the ride had expired at the end of 2016.[41][35] The ride's closure was also due to the cancellation of its refurbishment, and it resulted in the retirement of the Scrat, Sid, Diego and Scratte walk-around characters.[41] However, the show building that enclosed Ice Age Adventure does not remain unused, as there are already plans for the future, and the ride's queue area was converted into a picnic area, and the souvenir shop still exists, albeit used for Excalibur - Secrets of the Dark Forest, and the boats used in the ride are used as additional boats for Bermuda Triangle: Alien Encounter, and Ice Age 4-D: No Time for Nuts is still shown at the Roxy 4D-Kino, and one of Ice Age Adventure's Diego animatronics can be found in the Roxy 4D-Kino's entrance lobby, and another Diego animatronic and a Manny animatronic can be found as circus animals in Circus of Freaks during the Halloween Horror Fest.[41][44][45][46][47][48]

• Bermuda Triangle, another now defunct Village Roadshow water ride which utilised the same ride system
• 2011 in amusement parks

• Looney Tunes River Ride at the Parkz Database