What a difference a decade makes

Actually, it was 11 years ago that we announced The Raven.

I'll never forget that day.

And our ... well ... "model."

It was remarkably low tech.

But it was all we had.

No virtual ride, no streaming video, no sound effects, no 3-D renderings.

Will recently dug the model out of his office closet and sent it over to archives.

The archives room just happens to be right outside my office, so before the model got packed away, we talked our good-natured boss into posing with it one last time:



Fast-forward 11 years and imagine our glee when we had a virtual ride of The Voyage to add to our website on July 13.

Immediately, I heard from some folks who wanted to be able to download the file rather than stream it.

It took a while for me to figure out whom to ask and how to ask it, but we got it done. So if you're one of the downloaders, please go help yourself.

Meanwhile, here's one of the visuals we included in our 1995 Press Kit:



You may have noticed there were a number of changes made to the layout after this rendering was ... rendered. (Hint: The swoop over Lake Rudolph.)

A number of years later, a request came in from a producer of one of the "top coasters" shows (I'm pretty sure it was the Discovery Channel). The Raven made their list and they wanted a 3-D graphic of the layout to use for the show.

Enough time had passed that it wasn't a problem getting one made.



Looks weird without all the trees, doesn't it?