Last week I brought my son to his first big screen experience, which was watching “Soar Over Taiwan” at the FlyOver Canada ride in downtown Vancouver.
Three staff members (including a Supervisor) measured him to make sure he was tall enough to ride the ride (40 inches). We purposely wore his boots with heels and measured him before leaving home. I did not want a repeat experience of being unable to ride Radiator Springs Racers at Disneyland after waiting in line because he was just under the height restriction. My son has also played Microsoft Flight Simulator with me at home (a 3-year-old can fly around the Statue of Liberty surprisingly well), but the Taipei 101 Tower isn’t visible in the game. He really enjoyed going up this tower when we visited Taipei last year, so we were excited for this ride.
A brilliant colleague and friend, Aditya Kolli, worked on the Visual Effects and Compositing in the video for this ride as well as for other FlyOver Canada shows. I’m deeply thankful for the work done by him and all the artists and technicians required to craft such a fun, educational, and memorable experience. Sitting next to my son as we “flew” past Taipei 101, his eyes lit up as memories connected to this new experience. We talked about our favourite parts afterwards (SPOILER: he liked going underwater).
The Taiwan experience has been replaced by Flyover Hawaii, but I expect it will return in the future. You can view the trailer here.