An evil awakens… will you be able to stop it? Explorers, choose your team wisely, the newest adventure at Fantasy Island is fast-paced, immersive and highly interactive. Island Adventures – a brand new attraction with custom-made, branded content.
Hot off the launch of Fantasy Island’s brand new ride Harrington Flint’s Island Adventures we were invited by the park to come up and experience it for ourselves.
This impressive trackless dark ride at Fantasy Island in Skegness is located within the attractions pyramid at the resort. Guests will come face to face with Professor Crow who is on a mission to raise an ancient Mayan god of war to take over the world.
Harrington Flint’s Island Adventures uses the EFT ride system from the defunct Resident Evil: Bio-Terror, an interactive dark ride that was located at Hub Zero in the United Arab Emirates.
Theming
Fantasy Island certainly prides itself on immersive theming and Harrington Flint’s is no different.
The theming of the ride perfectly compliments the indoor-themed space of the pyramid and introduces guests to the ride with a very subtle town facade acting as the rest-stop before your adventure begins.
Plants adorn the structure of the queue line, there’s a wonderful window display above the queue and screens lined the queue line showing various images of the characters you’re about to meet on your upcoming journey.
Plants hang from the rafters and it has got a very foreign and uncharted feel to it.
Ride Vehicle
The ride vehicles were originally themed to the Resident Evil Bio-Ware ride located at the now defunct Hub Zero but have been rebranded to the original story of Harrington Flint’s Island Adventures.
With Mayan-style drawings on the ride train, this ride can seat 5 people and following a trackless system navigates the experience smoothly.
Using guns equipped with laser sights you must shoot numerous digital targets to rack up your score. There are physical targets to aim at throughout the ride but these activate certain animated props dotted around the layout and do not contribute to your overall score.
The great thing about this ride is the competitiveness of the score system with riders coming off, taking a look at their score on the screens at the exit of the ride and wanting to go back around to beat their original scores.
It’s great fun for all the family!
Ride Experience
With a mix of digital screens to shoot at, physical props and set dressing Harrington Flint’s Island Adventures is a very fun and immersive experience.
Fans create wind effects at certain portions of the ride, the audio is absolutely spot on and the screens are very high quality compared to that of The Guardian ride which had a terrible quality screen, something that really ruined our experience upon riding it earlier in the year.
One scene in particular (see image above) showcases a beach scene as you shoot the Mayan zombies down. The floor has a projection of water across it which instantly brightened up the scene as the floor is black for 99% of the ride and there is a water fountain just to the right of you as you pass. This was the stand-out scene for me, it all came together and with the theming above you and not just either side of you, it was completely immersive.
One niggle that I had with the experience was how open-planned everything was. If you’re going through mine shafts or exploring different scenes it was all done in a very open planned manner.
When riding the Ratatouille ride at Disneyland Paris there is a scene where you pass through a freezer and suddenly this open planned ride gets narrow as huge props hang above your head and you’re completely immersed in the space.
With such open planned scenes, you could see what was coming next so the surprise element (bar one sliding screen section) was non-existent.
A tighter scene or a corridor or even a mine-shaft narrow experience would have been a welcome addition.
Overall
Harrington Flint’s Island Adventures is a perfect addition to Fantasy Island’s ride line-up and is certainly the stronger of the two 2022 ride additions to the park.
Whilst The Guardian wipes the floor with Harrington Flint in terms of the queue-line theming the ride experience of Harrington’s is certainly the stand-out performer between the two new additions.
Recently we were in Disneyland Paris for the opening of Avengers Campus and their new dark ride WEB Adventures was an interactive dark ride where you use your hands to shoot webs at numerous spider bots.
I felt more immersed within Harrington Flint’s than I did at this multi-million pound Disney attraction. With a physical gun in hand and no stupid 3D glasses anywhere to be seen, I was all-in and invested in the storyline and my objective of shooting Mayan zombies.
Yes, the ride technology at Disneyland Paris was much more sophisticated, yes the queue line was better themed but I was detached from the experience whilst onboard. I can’t say that about Harrington Flint, I was completely invested and bar wearing an Indiana Jones hat I was on a mission to save the world from a Mayan god threatening to destroy life as we know it.
Whether we’ve been invited by a park or not we always try to bring our honest reviews no matter what and other than the open plan of the ride in many places I can’t say a bad word about it.
Harrington Flint’s Island Adventures is a wonderful addition to the park and a superb investment for the Skegness-based resort.
