Your chance to ride Lara Croft
Wahey! Oh, hang on .. it's an amusement park ride?
As if appearing in a string of games, an action movie, a series of comic books, and numerous Lucozade adverts wasn't work enough for Lara Croft, Eidos and Paramount are set to milk the Tomb Raider franchise again next year with .. Tomb Raider : The Ride. Yes, Paramount Parks are planning to open a "unique multi-sensory adventure ride" based on the Tomb Raider movie at their Kings Island amusement park near Cincinnati, Ohio.
"Adventuring guests are in for an experience unique to the theme park universe that is filled with all of Lara Croft's real passions : raiding tombs, besting bad guys and one extreme adventure after another", according to the press release. "The excitement begins with a journey into a foreboding ancient temple. As stone walls give way to others, guests will proceed through mysterious chambers, engraved with strange, runic symbols and the debris of failed expeditions, as a sense of impending doom grows."
Oh, don't you worry - our well-honed sense of impending doom (a vital asset for any budding journalist) is growing already...
"With only seconds to spare before certain calamity, guests strap in to the only possible vehicle of escape. Playing off scenes from the motion picture filmed in Cambodia and Iceland, the escape will include rocketing upward for a close encounter in an ice cave with menacing, razor-sharp stalactites and a face-first plunge straight down toward a pit of boiling, red-hot lava."
We're not entirely sure how "razor sharp stalactites" can be considered menacing - they are after all nothing more than inanimate limestone deposits hanging from the ceiling - but the seemingly inevitable presence of red hot lava certainly warrants a restraining order in our opinion.
"Part of the thrill of the Tomb Raider property is the mystery and intrigue that surrounds each adventure. We want to preserve this mystery with the Tomb Raider ride until the first group of adventurers braves it in 2002 - so, we aren't going to disclose all of the surprises in store for riders", said Paramount's Tim Fisher, having just disclosed most of the surprises in store for riders, and thus saving us all from the grief of actually having to go on the damn ride. He went on to modestly add that "this attraction will change the face of thrill ride history and become one of the greatest adventure rides in the world".
If all of that excitement is too much for you, the Kings Island park is currently playing host to various props hijacked from the sound stage at Pinewood Studios after the movie was completed. These include a giant statue of a six-armed Cambodian warrior goddess and a group of evil stoned monkeys. Oh, sorry, that's the group that came up with the idea for the ride. The exhibit is actually made up of "evil stone monkeys". Whatever.