Destiny USA’s designers have uncovered a connection between Central New York and … the Bermuda Triangle.
They plan to use it as the main story line for rides, exhibits and entertainment in a “marine life experience” at the proposed resort. Thursday at The Pyramid Cos., designer Allen Yamashita of Simex Digital Studios told the story of the lost flight:
“In 1959, there was a crew on a mission, a test mission, out of Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome. Flight NB36H. … It took them through the Bermuda Triangle.
“As they entered, they were about 30 miles off the northern coast of the Bahamian island of Eleuthera, they experienced freakishly turbulent weather. Got caught in a lightening storm. Lost the electrical and navigational controls of the plane, and the plane started to spin out of control. The plane went down.
“As it was going down, the crew blacked out. And when they came to, they weren’t in the plane any more, but they found themselves inside this place.”
Yamashita, and designers Richard D. Centolella and Charles White III plan to transport Destiny visitors there, too.
Of course, the test mission and the connection to Griffiss isn’t real. The story line will weave through the exhibit as one of the magnets to draw visitors.
The consultants haven’t fig ured the cost, and they don’t know how big it will be.
Too small, and people won’t find it fun. Too large, and they’ll feel as if they’re in a warehouse, said White, with Olio Entertainment Design in Venice, Calif.
White helped create the myth of The Dig in the Atlantis resort in Nassau, the Bahamas. The story line of an abandoned archaeological expedition takes visitors through an aquarium and exhibits there, much as the Griffiss myth will take visitors through the exhibits at Destiny.
Designers plan to use live animals, simulations and rides – all of it done in way that invokes reverence for the sea and appeal to people of all ages, White said.
“It’s going to be a movie that you’re inside of,” Yamashita said. “Rather than watching the characters in a series of environments, we’re actually going to create the environments, and you, the audience, are going to be a participant in that story line.”
The designers are going beyond making the aquarium a zoo or museum for fish, said Centolella, of EDSA, a planning, landscape design and architectural group in Santa Monica, Calif.
Centolella graduated in 1985 from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Designers plan to show ancient sea creatures, life as it is, how humans impact the sea and what could happen if no one cleans it up, he said.
By Charley Hannagan, The Post-Standard
