By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN — Producers of an innovative Broadway show unveiled the $1.3 million souped-up tour buses that will serve as mobile theaters to a curious crowd in Times Square Thursday.
The mammoth high-tech buses will be debuting next month in "The Ride," a show that is billing itself as a hybrid between a Disney theme park attraction and a Broadway play.
Audience members who board the buses will be taken on a 4.2 mile ride through Midtown, where sites including Central Park and Times Square will serve as real-life backdrops for the storyline. The show will feature 18 performers on the street and two improv-trained "tour guides" per bus. A romantic dalliance between the tour guides provides a loose plot line for the show.
Producers said they are expecting to roll out eight of the buses, which Jonathan Danforth, CEO of the company producing the show, touted as the "largest most technologically advanced vehicle you will see."
The buses are manufactured in Quebec City and then "amped" up by a team of engineers who raise the height of the roof to the legal limit and install the equipment. Passengers sit on three rows of patented stadium-style ceiling so they can look through floor-to-ceiling windows.
Brett Jarvis, 37, from Washington Heights, the show's technological supervisor and audio visual designer, said each bus carries about $250,000 worth of audio-visual equipment. That includes 40 video screens, 105 speakers, 3,000 LED lights and "enough processing power in the basement to run a medium-sized corporation."
Speakers also sit directly under the floor to make riders feel like they're in a nightclub or on a subway platform as a train passes by.
One of the goals of the show, producers said, is to interact with people who happen to be on the street when "The Ride" passes by.
"You never really know who's part of the show and who's on the street," said Kim Gamble, one of the show's writers, who has previously written for The Colbert Report.
The group is eventually planning to expand the concept into 15 to 17 cities in the U.S. and another 15 cities world-wide within the next five or six years, Danforth said.
Tourists who gathered in Times Square to find out what was under the giant orange tarp before the unveiling seemed intrigued by the concept of a roving show.
"It sounds cool!" said Charlene Stoeber, 24, who is visiting from Germany. "The buses look good."
Other were more confused.
"I'm not sure what it is," said Joe Rabuck, 50, who is visiting from New Jersey, as he stared up at the giant bus.
But after hearing the concept explained multiple times, he seemed to warm up.
"That's really neat," he said. "It's unique."
