Hang on to your hats--and wallets.

The article focuses on the Iwerks Entertainment Inc. of Burbank, California and the entertainment centers it is designing called Cinetropolis. The company, which started out seven years ago making films and motion- based simulators for amusement parks, has what Wall Street likes to refer to as a "concept." This concept has quite a lot going for it. Iwerks is designing a series of entertainment centers to be called Cinetropolis--a kind of high-tech amusement park in a box-that will offer stomach-churning thrill rides using motion simulators and big- screen film. Nearly all the top 50 U.S. theme parks have one or bigger simulator rides in the works, usually keyed to movie hits and embellished with elaborate layouts and pre-ride video scene setting. The theme parks are a huge potential market. Essentially, these rides are an evolutionary development of the movie business, using technology to make the viewer feel much more part of the action.