The Simpsons Go Green(ish) for the Krustyland Ride at Universal Studios

As if the Simpsons could get any cooler. The new Simpsons-themed ride at Universal Studios is going to be green less polluting due to the installation of 27,675 LED lights, which will save 662kWh a day (about what an average house uses in a month).

From underwire:

Universal Studios Hollywood’s new Simpsons Ride celebrates the carnival-barker-style commercialism you’d expect from an attraction named after a greedy capitalist clown, but there’s more than meets the eye: Krustyland is engineered to echo the eco-friendly sensibility dramatized in The Simpsons Movie last summer, which found the city of Springfield encased in a giant bubble after Homer dumps garbage in the lake.

According to Universal officials, the Simpsons Ride boasts the largest lighting installation of LED lamps in theme park history. The ride’s 2,582 energy-saving LED lights expend 27,675 watts per hour. That’s less than a third of the 82,909 watts that would have been consumed by standard incandescent lighting used by the conventionally powered attraction previously on site, according to Universal.

End result: energy savings of 662,796 watts per day. As Homer might say in between donuts: Mmmmm, kilowatts!

No matter how you slice it, theme parks aren’t green. Typically, natural areas are clear-cut and wildlife is displaced to make room for fantasyland attractions where tons of electricity is used and people generate trash like nobody’s business. And, let’s not even go into the fact that we remove real wildlife to replace it with a cleaned-up version of it that lets us ‘enjoy it on our own terms’. However, at least having LED lights is trying, right? It’s better than what they’ve been doing so far. Baby steps are better than the status quo.

Link [underwire]