Who needs amusement parks? The lines are interminable, apoplectic ankle-biters are everywhere, and a candy apple costs as much as a fancy microbrew. Take a staycation with io9's YouTube recap of bygone theme park attractions. You're always first in line, you can ride in your underwear, and nobody cares if you're drunk and rowdy!

1.) Back To The Future: The Ride
Where: Universal Studios Hollywood and Florida
Open From: Hollywood: 1991-2007. Florida: 1993-2007.

In BTTF: The Ride, 1955 Biff Tannen absconds with Doc Brown's time machine to the future. Audience members hop inside an eight-passenger DeLorean and chase Biff to 2015, the ice age, and the Cretaceous Period. If you absolutely must ride this, it's still open at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. Doc Brown will likely be screaming at you in Japanese, but it's the pilgrimage that counts.

2.) Kongfrontation
Where: Universal Studios Florida
Open From: 1990-2002

The classic animatronic King Kong ride, complete with banana-scented halitosis. This staple of Universal Studios closed in 2002, presumably due to the cost of maintaining two 39-foot gorilla robots. If I were an eccentric billionaire, I'd buy both just to keep the help in line. Giant robot gorilla butlers. Fucking A.

(Also, R.I.P. King Kong Encounter.)

3.) ReBoot: The Ride
Where: Segaland Playdium (Mississauga, Ontario), then Circus Circus and The Luxor (Las Vegas)
Open From: 1997-2007

This ReBoot IMAX attraction ran for a solid decade and well after the show had gone off the air. The footage is a little grainy, but you'll get the gist of it.

4. Star Trek: The Experience

Where: The Las Vegas Hilton
Open From: The Klingon Encounter: 1997-2008. Borg Invasion 4-D: 2004-2008.

In The Klingon Encounter, guests time-traveled to the TNG-era Enterprise and were attacked by the raving Klingon Korath, who claimed one of audience members was Jean-Luc Picard's distant antecedent. As far as Klingon plots go, it's total genius. Rather than engage Picard in interstellar combat, it's way less work to slaughter a bunch of confused Vegas tourists.

The highlights of Borg Invasion 4-D were a visit to the Borg Cube and a last-minute rescue from Captain Janeway, during which she opined, "Congratulations. You've defeated the Borg with one thing the Queen can never assimilate: the human spirit." Thanks, Captain Janeway. I'll remember your rosy words when I'm getting my kidneys forcibly replaced with an 8-track player.

Star Trek: The Experience was supposed to re-open at the Las Vegas Neonopolis mall sometime this year, but there's nothing new to report these days.

The Klingon Encounter:

Borg Invasion 4-D:

5.) Stargate SG-3000

From what scant information I found about this Stargate SG-1-themed attraction, it once resided at several Six Flag affiliate parks but is now only open at the Space Center in Bremen, Germany, which - according to German Wikipedia - closed in 2004. Either way, es ist sehr verrückt, ja?

6.) The Ghostbusters Spooktacular Show
Where: Universal Studios Florida
Open From: 1990-1996

They replaced this with a goddamn Twister ride. How's that for looking out for posterity?

[Ads of the World via Super Punch]

Here's a list of all the movies with production budgets of $170 million and over, for the past ten years. (We chose the threshold of $170 million because there were a ton of movies clustered around the $150 million-$160 million mark.) Movies that failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office are underlined.

2009:

Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince: $250 million

Avatar: $237 million (according to AP)

Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: $225 million (according to NY Post)

Terminator Salvation: $200 million

G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA: $175 million

Up: $175 million

2008:

Quantum Of Solace: $230.6 million

Prince Caspian: $225.6 million

Iron Man: 186.5 million

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: $185.5 million

The Dark Knight: $185.5 million

Wall-E: $180.5 million

2007:

Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End: $317.4 million

Spider-Man 3: $272.9 million

The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials: $213.4 million

Rush Hour 3: $187.4 million

2006:

Superman Returns: $295.3 million

Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest: $223.1 million

X-Men: The Last Stand: $209.3 million

Poseidon: $171.3 million

2005:

King Kong: $232.5 million

Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe: $197.6 million

Sahara: $176.8 million

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire: $150 million (2005 dollars)

2004:

Spider-Man 2: $232.2 million

Troy: $199.9 million

Van Helsing: $182.8 million

The Polar Express: $186.6 million

Alexander: $175.4 million

2003:

Terminator 3: $238.4 million

The Matrix: Reloaded: $176.7 million

Master And Commander: $175.6 million

The Matrix: Revolutions: $175.6 million

2000:

The Perfect Storm: $175.6 million

1999:

Wild Wild West: $221 million

The World Is Not Enough: $173.3 million

The 13th Warrior: $206.8 million

Notes: All figures are in 2009 dollars, adjusted for inflation. These figures are just production budgets, and are based on the most accurate figures we could find. They don't include marketing budgets. And of course, many of the films which failed to break even at the U.S. box office did make a profit when you factor in international box office.

Conclusions:

There hasn't been a movie as expensive as Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End since 2007, so you could argue that, over all, movies are not getting more expensive. However, after a few years where there were four mega-budgeted movies per year, the last two years have each seen six movies with budgets over $170 million (in inflation-adjusted dollars.) And as we mentioned above, this year had the most movies costing $200 million or more of any year, with next year likely to see even more films over $200 million.

And the listing above doesn't reflect this fact, but we also found a steep rise in the number of movies costing around $150 million every year — this seems to be the safe point for a film that is expected to do well, but may not be a blockbuster. Films like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Batman Begins, Star Trek and many others all have production budgets in the magic $150 million zone.

At the same time, Hollywood seems slightly better at picking winners lately. We haven't had a year where most of the hugely expensive movies failed to make back their budget at the U.S. box office since 2004, when two historical epics, The Polar Expressand Van Helsing all bombed. Or 2003, when one of two Matrix sequels underperformed, along with Terminator 3 and Master And Commander.

One thing jumps out at me: There were apparently no budget busting movies in 2000, 2001 or 2002. Apparently the first X-Men movie, which came out in 2000, had a budget of only about $75 million. And the Star Wars prequels, hideous though they were, were apparently on the cheap side, costing around $120 million each (in non-adjusted dollars.)

Why would this be? Well, look at the three big-budget movies from 1999. Notice anything the three of them have in common? Hmmm... Other mega-expensive bombs in the late 1990s include Speed 2: Cruise Control, Lethal Weapon 4 and, of course, Waterworld. The only mega-budget movies to make money in the latter half of the 1990s were Armageddon and Titanic.

Sources: Know Your Money, Forbes.com, Listphobia, The Numbers, IMDB, Box Office Mojo, Wikipedia, and other sources as cited.

Confession time: I'm currently bridesmaiding my way through a dear friend's wedding. I'm utterly hopeless with making plans and offering suggestions but, with the madness of this wedding season surrounding us all these days, I thought it only prudent to share my ideas with you all. If an undead couple atop a tower of icing doesn't say class, I don't know what what does. To love!

Additional reporting by Caitlin Petrakovitz.

Every visitor gets a chance to take a peek into the Weta Cave, which is packed with memorabilia from the many films whose props and creatures came to life in the Workshop. We have tons of pictures from there, as well as a haunting series of images of the full-size boat set from King Kong, which has been rusting away majestically at a nearby dock.

Though we couldn't take any pictures in the Weta Workshop proper, we did catch some tantalizing glimpses of cool stuff being created by humans - and by a bunch of 3D printers. We also got some amazing snaps of the trophy case in the Workshop conference room, packed with a bunch of monsters and armor. Oh, and a few golden men.

Look out for more Weta goodness tomorrow - we got an exclusive interview with Greg Broadmore, creator of the Dr. Grordbort's universe, as well as some very personal time with his ray guns.

More about Weta Workshop.

It's the scifi monkey barbershop quartet, featuring Harry, Teenwolf, Cornelius and Chewy! Oh the lovely sounds they'd make.

Annie Plays It Safe [via Loiter]

Barbershop Brothers: Harry, Tweenwolf, Dirty Ape, and Chewie [via Loiter]

It's important to note, of course, that number of SFX shots is not the same as complexity of effects. It's also possible that different movie directors define the term "special effects shot" differently. But still, the raw number of special effects shots in a movie is often used as a proxy for how effects-heavy it is, and how fancy it looks. So here's a ranking of SFX shots per movie, starting with the original Star Wars:

Star Wars: 380 special effects shots, according to Harrison Ford: The Films. Other sources just say "around 300".

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: 400 special effects shots.

The Matrix: 414 special effects sequences.

End of Days, directed by Peter Hyams: 450 special effects shots.

Minority Report: 477 special effects shots.

Starship Troopers: Around 500 SFX shots.

The Frighteners, directed by Peter Jackson: 570 special effects shots, according to the book Stalking The Beast.

Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back: 414 special effects shots (same book), or 605, according to Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas. The ballpark figure of 600 gets tossed around a lot, along with the meme that this movie had twice as many effects shots as the original Star Wars.

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers: 800 special effects shots, plus another 160 on the DVD.

The Matrix Revolutions: 804 special effects shots.

Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi: 900 special effects shots, according to this book.

Spider-Man 3: "over 900" special effects shots.

The Matrix Reloaded: over 1000 special effects shots.

Spy Kids II, directed by Robert Rodriguez: 1050 special effects shots.

Tron: 1100 special effects shots, according to director Steve Lisberger.

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King: 1500 SFX shots.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: 2000 special effects shots, according to George Lucas.

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones: 2000 special effects.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow: over 2000 special effects shots.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith: 2000 special effects shots, or 2151 according to this article.

Independence Day: 3000 special effects shots.

King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson: 3,000 special effects shots.