Diners Go for a McRide : Buena Park McDonald’s Serves Up High-Tech Adventure to Customers

Along with the Big Macs and fries, a McDonald’s restaurant here is offering a new kind of shake: rides on McThriller, a high-tech attraction opening today.

The 14-seat ride simulates 10 adventures, among them speeding down a city street on a motorcycle, gliding above the countryside in an ultra-light aircraft and making a bobsled run. The ride, which costs $2.50, lasts between 2 1/2 and 3 minutes. It combines film footage shown on a large screen with sound and movement to give the illusion of speed and motion.

“I thought it was incredibly realistic,” said Charles Salazar of San Gabriel, who with his family took a test ride in McThriller on Friday. “You get the whole nine yards.

“I think it’s cool--you wouldn’t expect this at a fast-food restaurant,” Salazar said. “It’s kind of neat, and it’s going to attract a lot of customers.”

That’s certainly the goal of the owners of the restaurant at 7861 Beach Blvd. Partner Mark Brownstein estimated that the ride could draw as many as 250,000 people a year.

“Hopefully we’re going to complement the rest of the entertainment corridor to attract people to the area,” Brownstein said.

A grand opening for McThriller will be Monday at 2 p.m., with Ronald McDonald taking the official inaugural ride.

Brownstein would not reveal the cost of the entertainment investment, which also includes a gift shop selling McDonald’s memorabilia and souvenirs, and a video arcade to open in August.

The entertainment simulator is manufactured by Rediffusion Simulation Ltd., a British subsidiary of Hughes Aircraft Co. Ed McKim, manager of entertainment marketing for Hughes’ Training Inc. divisions, said rides like McThriller typically cost between $150,000 and $200,000 each.

Similar rides are at the Santa Monica Air Museum and at Church Street Station, a family entertainment center in Orlando, Fla.

McKim said the entertainment simulator has been marketed primarily in Europe since Hughes started manufacturing the product five years ago. It is part of Hughes’ strategy to expand from defense production to commercial industries, he said. “It’s a commercial application of aerospace technology for the entertainment market.”

Hughes has sold 120 of the rides worldwide, McKim said, most of them to amusement parks and entrepreneurs.

The Buena Park McDonald’s is among the first U.S. fast-food venues to feature such an attraction, said Peter Horner, another partner in the restaurant. A McDonald’s in Mexico City installed a similar ride in April, he said.

The partners, who operate 13 McDonald’s outlets in Los Angeles and Orange counties, have no plans at the moment to install McThrillers at other locations.

“We want to see how this goes,” Brownstein said. “This is a big investment. You don’t want to overextend. But if it does work, we’ll look at other applications.”

He noted that the Buena Park restaurant is not the typical fast-food eatery anyhow. Electric trains chug on tracks around the ceiling, and the restaurant serves freshly baked pastries and pretzels and plans to add pizzas to its menu at the end of the month.

Guests who rode McThriller on Friday for free said they’d definitely pay to go again.

“It’s exhilarating. It was like a high--fun and exciting,” said Lore McGee of Long Beach. “I think it’s worth it, but only if they let the kids ride before they eat.”