Feeling down on Chicago? A strikingly classy and emotive new attraction at Navy Pier — one that lands somewhere between tourist attraction, interactive performance, movie and theme-park thrill ride — has arrived to restore one’s faith in this city’s beauty, resilience and fortitude. For a few minutes, at least.
Flyover Chicago, a bespoke creation of a company known as Pursuit, part of the Arizona-based Viad Corp., now occupies the Navy Pier space that formerly housed the now-defunct IMAX Theater. In essence, you pay your money ($24.95, but currently only $5 for students at Chicago Public Schools) and first enter a chill-out room with screens offering narrative vignettes of the city. From there, groups of around 60 are led into a second room offering a stirring, interactive presentation in tribute to the city. Aside from one line saying “this city is not perfect,” the film is a high-quality homage to Chicago, focused on its industrial heritage via C&B Welders, its iconic locations (such as Manny’s Deli, the Maxwell Street Market and Wrigley Field) and, above all, its diverse people.
The main event follows: patrons head upstairs where they are strapped into seats and sent off on a motion stimulator intended to make you feel like you are a drone swooping and soaring across the city of Chicago. And it’s quite a ride, up to the top of Tribune Tower, alongside the “L” tracks, level with the faceless statue atop the Chicago Board of Trade and out, out over Lake Michigan, landing you into the middle of a Navy Pier fireworks display just as a bluesy singer wails into the night on a stage filled with flowers.
The whole experience takes about 35 minutes, But the filming, says Lisa Adams, the Melbourne, Australia-based executive producer, took close to two years, and includes vistas of the city at different times of the year and also features choirs, movie-style car chases, musicians on roof decks and ballet dancers who just happen to be rehearsing inside the Joffrey Tower as the ride zooms by. Water lightly splashes the faces of audience members as the drone heads out into mid-summer Lake Michigan, jostling with watercraft as audience feet dangle in the air. Adams declined to state the total investment in the attraction, which is in a space leased from Navy Pier. But it’s upward of $40 million, with construction costs for the space alone costing more than $13 million, according to previous reporting.
Flyover Chicago is not unique. With technological origins in aviation training, so-called simulator rides where audiences are shown a movie while their seats move to correspond to the footage on a screen long have been a feature 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, the technology has improved to the point where the experience very much feels like a rollercoaster ride in the real world. Audience members, or riders, feel like they are suspended in mid-air as they take stomaching-churning leaps while soaring along the Chicago River, climbing Buckingham Fountain and racing through the doors of the Chicago Theatre. And the overall pictorial landscape (think an IMAX screen) is as massive as it is definitionally and sonically immersive.
According to Adams, this is the company’s first attraction that’s specifically dedicated to a city.
Most similar drone-based (and, depending on the shot, helicopter-based) simulator experiences are set in natural phenomena — the 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-have for a genre that heavily relies on the illusion of height and a rollercoaster experience, “the buildings are the equivalent of the mountains.”
And so indeed it feels.
Thus towers and canyons of the Loop dominate the journey, even though one might wish for more forays into low-rise Chicago neighborhoods where most tourists never venture. But this is not about aerial views of low-rise streets, and time is short. Artistically, the experience is better, more dignified, more beautiful than the one in 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.
Aside from being a major new tourist attraction in a city that badly needs fresh offerings, Flyover Chicago likely will compete for tourist dollars with the city’s observation galleries atop its tallest buildings, offering a seductive digital replica in which the view whistles by at roaring speed. The influencer narrations and website blurbs — and there will be many — will write 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, offering variety for those who have seen Flyover Chicago. But, she said, “Chicago will always be there.”
That’s great. Yet it’s actually the supporting attraction, the fantastic pre-show experience, that lingers longer than the ride because its emotional landscape ranges deeper.
You get to fly over Chicago, and it’s a total gas, but you really can’t beat Chicagoans telling their own stories.
Opens March 1 (hours 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday) on Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand Ave.; timed tickets $14.95 children (up age 13, must accompany an adult) and $24.95 adults (riders must be at least 40 inches tall) at www.experienceflyover.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
