Preshows in theme parks are lame now

I always thought of Pre-shows as just a way to distract us from all the hours of waiting in line.

Maybe someday we can add up all the queue times one spends in an average day at a park..

Someone added the time the ball actually moved during an NFL football game... So when the ball was hiked to when it stopped moving... And it was 12 minutes.

We watch a 3 hour NFL game for 12 actually minutes of football..

I bet the parks are similar in actual ride time. You probably spend 1 hour on rides movement in a 10 hour visit....

Not gonna lie I got a kick out of "hinder rerideability" as if there has ever been any possible way to reride any of these attractions ever. I have never heard anyone say "I really want to ride [attraction] again, but I don't want to watch the preshow near the end of the 90 minute line."

While I don't fully disagree with the topic, the examples cited aren't exactly ones I feel really back it up...

Flight of Passage: The nature of a simulator ride necessitates the last step prior to boarding is going to be waiting in a room for 3-5 minutes. Even if the preshow isn't the best, would it really be better to just be in a room with nothing going on?

Runaway Railway: Given the premise of the attraction, I actually really like the preshow for this one. You could absolutely do the exact same ride with a different setup not needing a preshow, but that probably would have been a weaker fit given the location in the park (especially at DHS).

Supercharged: The whole ride is bad, so it's not just the preshow here. In fact, the live actors knowing the attraction is one of the worst on property and going all in on not trying to hide that fact is probably the main reason I rode it more than once.

Gringotts: Possibly a hot take, but I actually like the preshow on this one better than the ride itself. The elevator is a lot more convincing to me than going screen to screen to watch events play out. Even on my own, I will wait in the regular line over single rider up to about 45 minutes to get the preshow experience.

Personally, if an attraction goes through the effort to be themed throughout and they have a preshow element that fits naturally and is engaging, I think that's a much better way to handle the waiting than more switchbacks, and depending on the design of the attraction it may actually help with pulsing guests through in a more natural flow. However, there are three specific cases where pre-shows don't work...

Case #1: The disruptive preshow. Most attempts at a preshow found at regional theme parks fall under this category, where the presentation either hinders guest flow onto the attraction or feels out of place due to a lack of theming elsewhere. A good example of this is Dr. Diabolical's Cliffhanger, which actually has a very elaborate two-part preshow that's unfortunately wasted as theming on the ride itself is limited to a couple audio cues.

Case #2: The actor on a screen. A recent example of this that comes to mind is Web Slingers, where we're watching a video of Tom Holland tell us what's going on. While the content is important, these sorts of things are better told through clips playing on loop throughout the queue line (for example, the way it's done in Transformers) as getting herded into a room for a mini lecture isn't particularly compelling from an experience standpoint.

Case #3: The instructional briefing. To me, these are the biggest offenders as they generally have little to do with immersing guests in the story and instead take them out of it by reminding them that this is a ride and they need to do certain things. Mario Kart is a very recent example of this, where not one but two preshow rooms are used to explain how the ride works in a format that could have simply been a few static signs posted on approach to the loading area.

As for re-rideability, I understand this point on a truly dead day, but once a line exceeds 15-20 minutes the existence of a preshow is negligible in impacting this factor. Plus, destination theme parks generally don't design with this in mind...modern attractions are designed to be experienced from beginning to end, with the ride component being only one piece of it, and at the destination parks only a tiny fraction of guests are going to do the attraction enough to want an abridged version.

I just feel like this is a mental block super fans can't get back. Except on the deadest of days, you were going to spend that time in a switchback. If this is really that big a deal ... have you considered you go to these theme parks too much and should do something else instead?

I don't get this criticism. Preshows and queues leading to them are infinitely better than they were 10-20 years ago. The examples provided are are actually some great preshows that provide foundation for their respective attractions and introduce the narrative that drives each ride.

For Flight of Passage, the preshow helps to prepare guests for what they're about to do, which is to link with a Banshee, and give guests not familiar with the IP enough grounding to understand what's going on. Sure, the preshow provides no "mission" or other stakes for the experience, but there is no narrative for the actual ride, so nothing else is needed. FoP is one of those rare attractions where nothing goes wrong, so as such that element of danger does not need to be introduced in the preshow. Because of that, the videos end up being a bit on the dry side, but that works perfectly with the overall experience. Frankly, I think the way FoP stages guests through the individual rooms to lead to each individual gimble box is brilliant, and the preshow(s) do an incredible job of keeping guests immersed during the sorting and queueing process so it feels seamless.

MMRR's preshow is great, because it serves as the bookend to the ride experience. Guests enter through the movie screen into the cartoon world, and if you've ever looked behind you as you exit the ride, you walk under a similar cut-out screen when you leave to reenter the real world. Without the preshow, there's no context for the ride itself, and it might as well just be a normal Fantastyland-style dark ride.

I love GotGCR's preshow because of the effect, which uses the same principles and tech as the old Star Trek: The Experience "transporter" effect. The only issue with GotG is that the final room of the preshow takes too long, is too large with too many guests allowed inside, and far too many people who want to get a jump on the crowd know where the door is. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the show itself other than it being a bit long (which it needs to be to match the length of the pre-preshow room), and the layout of the queue beyond that rewards guests exiting the preshow room early, which frankly is no different than what happens at Haunted Mansion's "stretch room", which is considered one of the greatest preshows ever created.

I'm curious if these three attractions are examples of "lame" preshows, what are some examples of old attractions that have significantly better preshows?

The worst pre-show I've experienced in recent years has been the one for the otherwise excellent Bourne Stuntacular. I haven't watched any of the films, but nobody needs to be stuffed into a cramped warehouse to watch a lengthy recap of the entire film series to understand what's going on in the show.

I will say one preshow I sorely miss that always had me in stitches was the one featuring the hapless crash test dummies before the Back to the Future ride at Universal.

I get the sense that the examples of preshows I listed feel obligatory. They seem to be there because, well, that's what E-tickets have now. They need a preshow, so they put a guy up on the screen and make him give exposition. None of them take advantage of the preshow medium or do anything that clips playing on screens in the queue couldn't do.

Except for Runaway Railway. I'm pretty sure I only don't like that one due to many experience of lazy cast member acting, which is probably more of a bias on my part.

To answer your question, Russell, you already helped me with the Stretching Room. I'll add Dinosaur and MuppetVision (rest in piece), plus ToT, Rock'n'Roller Coaster, and I'll always love E.T. even if it's probably not the best. While most of these are characters on screens, they come from an era where preshows were used more sparingly, and were only really relied upon if there was a good idea behind them. And the Muppets ones are just plain funny.

OK, so I see where you're coming from. You prefer a preshow that is pure entertainment and can stand on it's own, and there certainly were a bevy of attractions created around the turn of the century and a bit earlier that had preshows that were purely supplemental to the attraction and did not get bogged down in exposition or serving as a first act to the main attraction. I do think there are places for those types of preshows, but when designers are throwing so much time and energy (and capital) into themed queues and technologically advanced ride systems, a simple stand-alone preshow film just doesn't cut it anymore. Also, I think it's important for experiences to slowly build excitement and anticipation as you get closer and closer to boarding, and getting piled into a room to watch a movie that really doesn't serve the main attraction creates a disconnect in today's world of immersive, narrative-driven attractions.

I get it, so many of these newer preshow experiences are 1-trick ponies that reduce the appeal of re-rides when you're forced to sit through the buildup to a surprise you already know is coming, but I feel that the majority of guests are only riding things a handful of times in their life, so re-ridability shouldn't be high up the list of concerns when designing a preshow.

It depends how you define "pre-show". The Potter attractions have walkthroughs directly associated with the attraction and are off the scale for immersion and are part of the overall experience also at MK many of the older attractions have so much in the queues for you to look out for which is far more fun that a separate pre-show re Haunted Mansion, Big Thunder Mountain.