Flyover Chicago opens on Navy Pier, a true video thrill ride

Feeling depressed in Chicago? A stunningly stylish and moving new attraction at Navy Pier, which falls somewhere between tourist attraction, interactive performance, film and theme park thrill ride, has arrived to restore faith in beauty, the resilience and courage of this city. For a few minutes, at least.

Flyover Chicago, a custom creation of a company known as Pursuit, part of Arizona-based Viad Corp., now occupies the Navy Pier space that once housed the now-defunct IMAX theater. Essentially, you pay your money ($24.95, but currently only $5 for Chicago Public Schools students) and first enter a lounge room with screens offering narrative vignettes of the city. From there, groups of around sixty people are led into a second room offering an interactive and exciting presentation in homage to the city. Beyond a sentence saying “this city is not perfect”, the film is a high-quality homage to Chicago, focusing on its industrial heritage via C&B Welders, its emblematic places (like Manny's Deli, Maxwell Street Market and Wrigley Field) and above all its diverse population.

The main event follows: Guests head upstairs where they are strapped into seats and sent on a motion stimulator meant to make you feel like a drone diving and soaring through the city of Chicago. And it's quite a journey, up to the top of the Tribune Tower, along the L tracks, to the faceless statue atop the Chicago Board of Trade and out over Lake Michigan, landing you in the middle of 'a fireworks display from Navy Pier right next door. as a bluesy singer wails into the night on a flower-filled stage.

The whole experience lasts approximately 35 minutes. But filming, says Lisa Adams, the Melbourne, Australia-based executive producer, took nearly two years and includes views of the city at different times of the year and also features choirs, films. car chases, musicians on rooftop terraces and ballet dancers rehearsing inside Joffrey Tower as the ride passes. Water lightly splashes on audience members' faces as the drone heads toward Lake Michigan in midsummer, jostling with watercraft as audience members' feet dangle in the air. Adams declined to specify the total investment in the attraction, which is in leased space at Navy Pier. But that's more than $40 million, with construction costs for the space alone costing more than $13 million, according to previous reports.

The Chicago flyover is not unique. With their technological origins in aviation training, so-called simulator rides where audiences see a movie while their seats move to match images on a screen are a hallmark of Disney and other theme parks. This company also has attractions in Vancouver, Las Vegas and Reykjavik, Iceland. A competitor with similar technology recently opened something similar at The Island in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.

But in recent years, technology has improved to the point where the experience is much like a roller coaster ride in the real world. Audience members, or riders, feel as if they are suspended in mid-air as they take breathtaking leaps while soaring along the Chicago River, climbing the Buckingham Fountain and passing through the gates of the Chicago Theatre. And the overall pictorial landscape (think of an IMAX screen) is as massive as it is definitionally and sonically immersive.

According to Adams, this is the company's first city-specific attraction.

Most similar drone-based (and, depending on the plan, helicopter) simulation experiments take place in natural phenomena: Smoky Mountains National Park, the Canadian Rockies, the Nevada desert, the glaciers of Iceland . “In Chicago,” Adams said, noting that topographical variation is a must for a genre that relies heavily on the illusion of height and the roller coaster experience, “buildings are the equivalent of mountains.”

And that’s actually what it feels like.

So the towers and canyons of the Loop dominate the trip, although one might wish for more forays into Chicago's slums where most tourists never venture. But these are not aerial views of low streets, and time is running out. Artistically, the experience is better, more worthy, more beautiful than Tennessee and also far exceeds any tourist B-roll, and that would be true even without all the sensory bells and whistles of the ride itself.

In addition to being a major new tourist attraction in a city sorely in need of new offerings, Flyover Chicago will likely compete for tourist dollars with the city's observation galleries atop its tallest buildings, offering a replica seductive digital in which the view whizzes by at dizzying speed. Influencer narrations and website presentations, and there will be many, will be written by themselves. Adams said that over time the company, which can reprogram its physical setup with relative ease, will introduce its other offerings, such as Iceland, into the mix, providing variety for those who saw Flyover Chicago. But, she said, “Chicago will always be there.”

That's great. Yet it's actually the secondary attraction, the fantastic pre-show experience, that lingers longer than the ride because its emotional landscape is deeper.

You can fly over Chicago, and it's crazy, but you really can't beat Chicagoans telling their own stories.

Opens March 1 (11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, until 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday) at Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Ave. ; timed tickets $14.95 for children (up to 13 years old, must accompany an adult) and $24.95 for adults (passengers must be at least 40 inches tall) at www.experienceflyover.com

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

[email protected]