Six Flags unveils twist on record-breaking ride (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Drop of Doom VR, a new virtual reality experience on Zumanjaro at Six Flags Great Adventure, will be available to guests for a limited time. Watch video

JACKSON - Imagine sitting on top of the world's tallest and fastest drop ride, knowing that at any second you will plummet down 41 stories at speeds of up to 90 mph.

Now add the fact that your eyes are covered and instead of being about to scope out the real world around you prior to the free fall, all you can see are giant spiders that are trying to kill you as they attack a city.

That is the experience that riders of Drop of Doom VR - a new virtual reality experience on Zumanjaro at Six Flags Great Adventure - had the opportunity to experience for the first time on Thursday. 

"Drop towers are pretty scary already, especially when they're the tallest one in the world. So how do you up the game to make this a more fearful experience?" asked Sam Rhodes, the corporate director of design for Six Flags.

As they were buckled into the ride's floorless seats, riders over the age of 13 were given the option of strapping on Samsung Gear VR headsets, which transport guests into a 360-degree virtual world where they become pilots of a futuristic gunship under attack by mutant spiders.

The VR headgear transforms Zumanjaro's 41 actual stories into 100 virtual stories, as the riders teeter on the edge of a helicopter high above city skyscrapers that are being attacked by the spiders.

Following a gun battle against a giant arachnid, the ride takes a 10-second plunge straight down between the skyscrapers.

"We thought this was a really great direction for a VR experience because you're getting a very good sense of height being next to, and above, these tall skyscrapers. And we make sure you fly close to the buildings so you get a really good sense of it. And then we added spiders, because why not?" Rhodes said of the virtual-reality gaming experience, which he said has an image quality of 60 frames per second.

While virtual reality was first introduced to Six Flags guests throughout the country last year, Rhodes said he has been using virtual reality in designing rides for theme park chain for several years.

"We use it in the pre-design of the coasters to see what the guests are going to see before we build them," he said. "We don't want to waste our money building something that is not going to be effective on the ride, so we use virtual reality to help us with that."

Even though Six Flags had success using virtual reality on some of its roller coasters last year, a completely new technology had to be developed in order to partner virtual reality with the drop towers. Instead of using a sensor on one of the wheels like the roller coasters did - because the wheels of the drop tower gondolas do not touch the tracks at all times - the drop towers use strategically placed sensors and lasers to track where the gondolas are, Rhodes said.

"We have three gondolas that are different weights and because they are different weights, they drop at different speeds.  So we had to make sure they were all calibrated correctly, which is really the most important part about the attraction. It has to be synchronized to what you're seeing," he added. "It was a little bit of a challenge, but it works fantastic."

Rhodes said Six Flags is already looking toward the future for other possible ways to incorporate virtual reality onto rides, including walk-through and motion-based experiences, season-specific experiences, and for riders being able to chose different virtual reality experiences on a single ride.

"Even though you're sitting right next to me, you could be doing a different experience than what I'm doing. There's an opportunity for that in the future," Rhodes said. "For us, we're really just scratching the surfaced of what VR can do."

Drop of Doom VR will only be available for a limited time for riders who are at least 48-inches tall and 13 years old. Riders who meet the height requirement, but are not at least 13 years old will still be able to ride Zumanjaro, just without the virtual reality headgear.