Last night after Dave and I had recovered from our space shuttle adventure, we went back over to Downtown Disney where we checked out the magic store and the LEGO store and had lunch at Planet Hollywood. Later that night we popped into Disney Quest, the five story virtual reality and arcade complex.

The VR games were actually pretty cool. You strap on a bike helmet and then this huge HMD on a trunk cable slides down from the ceiling and gets snapped over your face. Very Matrix-y. We played “Ride the Comics”, which was essentially a re-themed lightsaber simulator, and Aladdin’s Magic Carpet ride where you fly around collecting gems.

There was a white water rafting simulator where you got into an actual raft and paddled to avoid dinosaurs. The Pirates of the Caribbean VR game was great. A team of five players goes into a room which has a ship’s steering wheel and six cannons. The walls are all giant screens. One player steers the ship while the others run around the deck firing the cannons at enemy ships.

There are arcade games on every floor, all set to “Free Play”. The classic arcade had Discs of Tron! Dave and I played this Land of the Lost-style shooter where you sat in a jeep for about half an hour shooting giant spiders.

My favorite part of Disney Quest was Cyberspace Mountain. You got to design a roller coaster a la Rollercoaster Tycoon. I laid out all these crazy loops and jumps wending their way through the canyons of a lava planet. Once you design the coaster, it gets uploaded to a rollercoaster simulator, which you then ride. It was a fully enclosed capsule on hydraulics, and it even went upside down.

The tickets for Disney Quest were half off ($20), probably because we went there in the evening and it was off season. If you get a chance to go to Orlando during the off season, it is definitely worth checking out.