Aquaticar underwater amusement park ride, Digi Mart USA News (California, USA): Ordinarily, being in an underwater car is not a good thing. The Aquaticar, however, is a new amusement-park-ride vehicle powered by bubbles.
Designed and manufactured by California firm Sub Sea Systems, the two-passenger, three-wheeled vehicle is the key component of the company’s Aquaticar Underwater Adventure Ride. The first such system is already in use at the AquArabia Water Theme Park in Saudi Arabia, where it began operations this April.
Although courses can be customized for each client, a typical layout may incorporate a total of 17 self-steering Aquaticars taking passengers on 6-minute underwater rides along a 137-metre (450-ft) circuitous track. The depth from the wheelbase of the car to the surface is 2.5 metres (8.2 ft).
Each passenger sits with the top of their body dry inside an air-filled watertight canopy, allowing them to breathe normally, while the bottom of their body gets wet. The twisty, turny tracks are flanked by scenery for passengers to view, and the vehicles can be outfitted with Bubble Pulse Guns that let passengers shoot toroidal vortices, or spinning bubble rings, at underwater targets.
A network of hoses beneath the track delivers air to a series of wand-like triggers at regular intervals along the track surface. The car mechanically engages those triggers as it passes over them, causing them to release air into an intake on its underside.
Some of that air is directed into the canopy through nozzles at the top, while the passengers’ exhaled breath exits through exhaust vents at the rear. The rest of the air powers the car’s rear wheel through what is known as the Bubble Engine.
This setup consists of two large vertically oriented rotors sitting side by side, linked to the rear wheel by a chain drive. Each rotor has a series of louvered scoops around its outer edge.
As the air rises, it fills those scoops and pushes them up, turning the rotors, which in turn drive the rear wheel and move the Aquaticar forward. This process repeats as the car moves from one trigger to the next.
Each vehicle has an onboard camera monitored by staff, along with a push-to-talk button that lets passengers communicate with staff at any time. Other safety features include an onboard air cylinder providing an additional 25 minutes of breathable air, and air bags that allow the car to be raised to the surface and moved off the track if needed.
The Aquaticar was invented by Sub Sea Systems CEO and founder Jim Mayfield, who was inspired by one of the company’s existing products, a tethered diving helmet called the SeaTREK. His daughter, Hannah de Bie, Sub Sea Systems’ VP of Marketing and Communications, said her father wanted to create a bigger version of SeaTREK in which two guests sitting side by side could share the excitement of being underwater.
“He’s a grandfather to six grandkids, and is always inspired to create products that he can share with his whole family,” she said. “Thus, Aquaticar was born.”
