Laser-shooting theme park game in Florida sparks online debate. ‘Horribly insensitive’
UPDATE: ICON park officials on Saturday, July 16, announced it was putting the “Bullseye Blast” game on pause, according to a statement obtained my multiple Central Florida news outlets. The original story continues below.
A new laser-shooting game at a Florida theme park has sparked debate on social media from users who say it makes light of gun violence in the wake of multiple high-profile mass shootings.
The game, “Bullseye Blast,” allows players to shoot lasers at 50 targets with varying degrees of difficulty as they ride on an observation wheel, according to a July 14 news release from ICON Park in Orlando.
“Each of the custom-made blasters has a scope on it, allowing the players to view an infrared beam and assist them when aiming at the targets,” says the release, which was posted on the park’s website. “The score is displayed on the side of the blaster and targets flash off and on to confirm a hit.”
One Twitter user called it “horribly insensitive.”
“Apparently @iconparkorlando learned NOTHING from the mass shooting in Vegas. Or Pulse. Or.....,” @OhioPianoGuy tweeted in response to an article by Attractions Magazine about the game.
The tweet references the two largest mass shootings in U.S. history — the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas when a gunman killed 58 people at a country music festival from his 32nd-floor hotel room, and the Pulse shooting in 2016 when a gunman killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
In 2022, the U.S. has been rocked by several mass shootings, including one at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 dead and another at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that took the lives of 19 children and two adults.
“You would think at some point someone in the planning stages looked around and thought, ‘Could this be problematic in any way?’ but nah, welcome to ‘murica,” George Chen tweeted in response to an article on Bullseye Blast by Laughing Place, a blog covering amusement park news.
Spokespeople for ICON Park did not reply to a request for comment from McClatchy News on July 15.
In March, a 14-year-old boy from Missouri fell to his death while riding the Free Fall ride at ICON Park. His parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the owners of the park.
The Bullseye Blast game is meant to attract gamers to ICON Park’s observation wheel, a 400-foot Ferris wheel that takes guests on an 18-minute ride, according to the news release.
“The Wheel at ICON Park is the only observation wheel in the world to provide this amazing, new infrared technology, and effectively gamify and reinvigorate the experience to an entirely new audience of gamers,” the release says.
Guests can add the game to their ticket for $5.95, according to the release.
Some social media users defended the game.
“This concept is no different than Buzz Light Year’s Space (Space) Ranger Spin at Disney’s Magic Kingdom or Men In Black at Universal Studios,” Twitter user @Swamp_Sagacity wrote in response to the Laughing Place article. “No reason for anyone to get their panties in a bunch.”
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin at Walt Disney World has guests fire lasers at a “rampaging robot army” as they go through the ride, and Men in Black Alien Attack at Universal Studios lets players zap aliens with lasers like characters in the 1997 movie “Men in Black.”
Others said they feel a Ferris wheel isn’t the right setting for a laser-shooting game.
“How did this make it off the drawing board?!” wrote Twitter user @MattJaeckel. “Big difference between shooting aliens/robots to practicing our sniper skills in a real-life urban area.”
This story was originally published July 15, 2022 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Laser-shooting theme park game in Florida sparks online debate. ‘Horribly insensitive’."