In October 1997, partway through YTV's broadcast of ReBoot's third season, 'ReBoot: The Ride' opened in Ontario, Canada and later opened in Las Vegas. The ride takes the form of a simulator where the audience is seated in a vehicle in front of a large screen that moves in sync with the video being shown on the screen in order to give the illusion of movement (i.e. Star Tours, Back to the Future: The Ride). Seeing as this ride was open to the general public, the ride doesn't rely on prior knowledge of the source material, meaning that we don't have any major references to the show's preexisting lore.
I can't seem to find any details on how this ride came about, but essentially, Mainframe Entertainment teamed up with IMAX to produce two ridefilms exclusively for their IMAX ride system. Since IMAX screens are much larger in comparison to the average TV screen at the time, Mainframe's animators needed to ensure that the city of Mainframe had as much detail as they could possibly achieve. The animator's goal was for Mainframe to have the same feel as the city in Blade Runner.
Before getting on the ride, guests view a preshow that introduces us to our host, a search engine named 'Maxine'. She gives the audience details on how she functions and traverses throughout the net. Once this commercial ends, the camera zooms out to reveal that it was being watched by Megabyte. He wishes to have control over Maxine's 'limitless power', and Herr Doktor has prepared a tractor beam that will allow him to do so. Megabyte seems convinced he will succeed, and when Herr Doktor brings up Bob, he simply says that he's sure he'll be able to keep him and Dot occupied while he carries out his operation, ordering Herr Doktor to activate the system.
The ride itself starts in The Net, with the URL at the top telling us we are currently at the IMAX website. Maxine welcomes the guests and then suddenly, the URL changes to Mainframe's (as a nice touch, it's the same URL used for Mainframe's website). The ride vehicle gets pulled straight into Mainframe where we're instantly greeted by Megabyte. Luckily, Bob intervenes really quickly, leading to the ride taking the form of a chase across Mainframe, culminating with Megabyte's failure to capture the Search Engine and it's escape back into the Net.
While I never got to experience the ride, luckily it has been uploaded to YouTube, and from the looks of it, it looks like it was a really fun experience. The ride is adrenaline filled and exciting and also has loads of little nods to the fans who are riding, such as a large statue of Gigabyte and Bob in a park, and a brief glimpse of Mouse in an apartment. The main draw, however, is how it places guests inside the world of the show. What also adds to this experience is the appearance of all the voice actors from the show voicing their respective characters and the soundtrack from the show's composer Bob Buckley.
As well as this ride, Mainframe also produced a second ridefilm. Titled 'Journey Into Chaos', this ride places us within the mind of Hexadecimal. Unfortunately, this ride was much rarer in comparison to the first one, and only one short 30 second clip of it has seen the light of day. It certainly looks interesting, and I'd love for it to one day find it's way out of oblivion, but as time passes, it's getting harder to acquire it.
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