Disney's newest draws: a 3-D ride and the future

What do you get when you combine a shoot-'em-up video game with an amusement-park ride?

The Walt Disney Co. hopes you get a way to lure jaded gamers off the couch and into its California Adventure theme park next to Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.

Disney has melded the interactive elements of a video game with the kind of immersive 3-D experience of an amusement park to create Toy Story Midway Mania, a new ride that opened Tuesday at California Adventure. Riders don 3-D glasses, board a vehicle and travel through a carnival arcade hosted by familiar characters from the popular "Toy Story" films. Riders move, in rapid-fire fashion, past giant screens displaying classic boardwalk games. There's Buzz Lightyear's ring toss, Woody's Rootin' Tootin' Shootin' Gallery and Bo Peep's dart throw. The 3-D characters coax players through each game, offering tips and encouragement.

Toy Story Midway Mania is the first installment in a $1.1 billion, five-year effort to upgrade California Adventure, which opened in 2001 and has been literally and figuratively in the shadow of Disneyland.

Today's house of the future

In adjoining Disneyland, the Innoventions Dream Home also opened Tuesday in the Tomorrowland area. It's a mix of technology, fantasy and marketing between Disney and partners Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard., home automator Life/Ware and builder Taylor Morrison.

The 5,000-square-foot house, whose total cost was around $15 million, is an updated version of a Disney staple of the 1950s and 1960s, the Monsanto House of the Future.

That house featured cutting-edge technologies such as a microwave oven and a giant (but nonoperational) television that hung on the wall.

Disney's new house of the future also features technologies that are heading toward mainstream, such as touch-screen PCs and Microsoft's "Surface" table computer. Each company paid Disney — $1 million and up — to participate in the home for five years.

But compared to the original House of the Future, Disney's latest one isn't really that futuristic at all, said Jonathan Cluts, director of strategic prototyping for Microsoft. "Eighty percent of this stuff you could immediately go out and purchase," Cluts said. The rest, he added, is already technically possible, even if not readily available.

Visitors to the Innoventions house interact with the fictional Elias family as they plan a party for son Robbie's soccer team.

While mixing and mingling with the Elias family actors, guests can play with the Microsoft Surface computers throughout the house. They can see how the touch-screen HP computers work in the kitchen and home office. And they can try out the home automation products from Life/Ware that automatically dim lights, set customized music and temperatures and illuminate the outside of the house for parties and holidays.