``I'm always looking for something new,'' she said, minutes after she just did. ``I'm always amazed when people come to Disney World for the first time and they get on the rides and say, `Wow.' It's kind of like old-hat for me, but they're so thrilled.
``Here, I feel like that person.''
``Here'' is DisneyQuest, the five-story, 100,000-square-foot, interactive, multimedia, virtual-reality, arcade/indoor carnival/animation workshop/roller-coaster heaven that opened in June in the Downtown Disney section and, it was announced last week, would expand its operation to Philadelphia.
And when the facility makes its planned opening in 2000 at Eighth and Market Streets, Philadelphians, accustomed to such old-school attractions as the Franklin Institute's heart and the old Christmas village on what is now Strawbridge's eighth floor, will receive a new, state-of-the-art, mini-amusement park that makes even veteran Disney Worlders go ``Wow.''
For about $25, visitors can romp through five stories and four specially themed zones featuring everything from cutting-edge computer games to such old faves as Skeeball. It's as though the Walt Disney Co. put a '90s video-game arcade and a '50s state fair in a blender: The result is a venue that's somewhere in between, one that Disney hopes will help it tap Philadelphia and other urban markets.
``I almost equate what we're doing to what Walt Disney did when he first developed the idea for the theme park,'' said Kent Mitchell, general manager. ``We're creating a whole entertainment element.''
Disney hopes to expand that element to as many as 30 cities worldwide and already has plans to open a DisneyQuest in Chicago next summer. But out of all the cities that would have relished a chance to host Disney's new playpen, why Philadelphia?
