CHALLENGE:

An amusement park was born in 1582. And attractions have been fascinating people since its birth as one of the best entertainments. In 2014, Yahoo! challenged to create a new category in the attraction world by connecting it with Internet.

EXECUTION:

We invented the Trend Coaster, an innovative attraction and the world’s first virtual rollercoaster driven by Internet data. The Trend Coaster transforms a graph of twitter trends for a given keyword into a virtual 3D rollercoaster — an attraction consisting of an Oculus headset and driving simulator that you can ride. Exactly as its name suggests, the machine lets you ride, experience, and learn about trends. We installed this Trend Coaster machine in amusement parks in Tokyo.

RESULTS:

Trend Coaster got very popular and the waiting time in a queue was up to 2 hours. The power of the Internet evolved the way of enjoying attractions.

The virtual rollercoaster was designed to display tweets, Yahoo! News articles, and searched images matching the chosen keyword. The virtual rollercoaster’s space is created with colors extracted from searched images matching the keyword. Furthermore, based on the rollercoaster’s calculated speed, the machine vibrates and blows air to simulate the ride and creates a splash with gas at the bottoms of the trend graph. All aspects of the ride were designed so people can truly experience trend information. We installed Trend Coaster in amusement parks.

Trend Coaster became an extremely popular attraction, with people waiting for up to 2 hours to ride. There were 37,971 ride experiences. It also generated more than four million dollars in free media publicity. We received requests to exhibit the Trend Coaster from many conferences as well as amusement parks. It is now installed at the entrance of Yahoo! Japan’s headquarters, and there is still an endless number of industry people who want to take a ride. The power of the Internet has evolved the way of enjoying attractions.