Riders will board anti-gravity aircraft and set off on a mission with King Kong and Godzilla on a first-of-its-kind dark ride that could lead to more theme park attractions based on the Dune and Pacific Rim movie franchises.
The new Kong x Godzilla: The Ride attraction will open on Friday, July 24 at Lotte World Adventure as the South Korean theme park’s largest investment.
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The new attraction built by Florida-based Sally Dark Rides will be the world’s first theme park attraction based on Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse.
The Monsterverse franchise starring King Kong and Godzilla has collected $2.5 billion at the global box office. The new “Godzilla x Kong: Supernova” hits theaters in March 2027.
The queue for the new Kong x Godzilla attraction will pass through a Monarch research and maintenance facility where new recruits will receive their mission briefing.
Riders will travel in anti-gravity exploration aircraft known as Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicles during the 11-minute dark ride that will feature video screens, animatronics and special effects.
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The dynamic motion ride vehicles will pitch, roll, yaw and heave as riders embark on an adventure through Hollow Earth, the subterranean birthplace of Titan creatures in the Legendary Monsterverse.
The Legendary filmmakers collaborated with the Kong x Godzilla ridemakers to turn the Monsterverse into an interconnected world, according to Legendary Executive Vice President James Ngo.
“They work with us every step of the way and they try to tie so many touchpoints back into the film, back into the comics,” Ngo said of the filmmakers in a Variety interview. “They suggest certain storyline tweaks in order to better tie it into the next film.”
The new Lotte World attraction will feature animatronic versions of King Kong and Godzilla at a “massive, massive scale,” according to Ngo.
Kong x Godzilla: The Ride brings together the Legendary Monsterverse Titans in a world’s first attraction — but the iconic giants have each previously starred in their own theme park rides.
The Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood was once home to a 30-foot-tall King Kong animatronic that weighed seven tons. The King Kong Encounter was destroyed by fire in 2008.
The King Kong 360 attraction that opened in 2010 on the Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood features a wrap-around movie screen with a backstory based on Peter Jackson’s 2005 “King Kong” film.
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Japan offers a pair of Godzilla attractions — with one taking riders on a flying theater experience at Seibuen amusement park outside Tokyo and the other letting riders zip line through the mouth of a life-size Godzilla at Nijigen No Mori theme park on Japan’s Awaji Island.
Legendary Entertainment is treating the Kong x Godzilla attraction at Lotte World as a test case for developing more theme park rides based on its other film franchises.
“The biggest challenge in the past, especially for ‘Pacific Rim’ and Monsterverse, has been the scale of our characters and the scale of our world,” Ngo told Variety. “It’s an amazing thing to experience in location-based entertainment, but it’s also very hard to execute.”
Legendary Entertainment has explored theme park and location-based attractions tied to the Dune, Pacific Rim, Enola Holmes and Detective Pikachu film franchises, according to Variety.
“Some may be a large theme park ride or attraction, or even a whole land, and others may be more pop-up and dining experiences or escape rooms and murder-mystery experiences where it makes sense,” Ngo told Variety.
Legendary Entertainment’s other popular film franchises include Clash of the Titans, Street Fighter, Minecraft and The Hangover.