The Advanced Technology Leisure Application Simulator, or ATLAS, is a large

hydraulic Hydraulics () is a technology and applied science using engineering, chemistry, and other sciences involving the mechanical properties and use of liquids. At a very basic level, hydraulics is the liquid counterpart of pneumatics, which concer ...

motion simulator. It was designed, as the name implies, for the theme park industry. The ATLAS is a product of

Rediffusion Simulation Thales Training & Simulation Ltd. is a Multinational corporation, multinational company which manufactures simulators, including full flight simulators and military simulators, and provides related training and support services. It is a wholly o ...

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, now owned by Thales Group and known as Thales Training & Simulation. Disney filed multiple patents on their variant of the device, including US Utility Patent #516110

The ATLAS was derived from military flight simulation technology. It uses six hydraulic actuators to provide a broad range of movement. In the later half of the 1980s,

Walt Disney Imagineering Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, Inc.—commonly referred to as Walt Disney Imagineering, Imagineering, or WDI—is the research and development arm of The Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation, design, and construc ...

bought and refined this technology for two theme park attractions; Star Tours at

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...

(and later Disney's Hollywood Studios,

Tokyo Disneyland is a theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo. Its main gate is directly adjacent to both Maihama Station and Tokyo Disneyland Station. It was the first Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Disney park t ...

, and Disneyland Park) and Body Wars at Epcot. The technology was also used in 2016 for the Iron Man Experience at Hong Kong Disneyland. The Disney attractions feature large, 40-person cabins (45-person in Hong Kong) hidden from outside view, arranged lengthwise with four or six simulators per installation. There are four simulators at Disneyland's Star Tours and EPCOT's Body Wars, while the remaining Star Tours installations have six. At Hong Kong Disneyland's Iron Man Experience, there are five simulators. Body Wars is now defunct and the simulators have been removed from the building in the years since the closure of the Wonders of Life pavilion.

References

Simulator rides Disney technology {{Tech-stub