Disneyland Resort is taking video gaming 4-D next year. It will launch Toy Story Mania at California Adventure in Anaheim and Disney-MGM Studios outside Orlando, a ride that will blend "manic game play with a next-generation ride experience," says Tom Fitzgerald, executive vice president and senior creative executive at Walt Disney Engineering.

The ride is the latest example of Walt Disney Imagineers working with Pixar Studios to bring a CGI movie experience to life and follows the recent grand opening of the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage at Disneyland in Anaheim.

Fitzgerald, who spoke during a news conference in Anaheim, said Toy Story Mania will feature a variety of video game challenges accompanied by characters from the "Toy Story" films, including Mr. Potato Head, who plays a carnival barker that shrinks a vehicle down to the size of a toy.

Riders will shoot virtual ammunition at targets at specified stops along the way. The guns will change ammunition from darts to colored eggs as the games change from room to room. Thanks to 3-D glasses, the riders will see the ammunition fly. Special bonus shots will unlock additional points.

(The fourth "D," by the way, refers to water, air and other effects that affect the ride experience.)

"Walt Disney used inspirations from the '50s to create the worlds in Disneyland, and over time, we added modern adventures like Star Wars' and Indiana Jones,'" Fitzgerald says. "But there's a generation of park visitors now who have grown up playing video games, so we're taking things beyond the scope of Buzz Lightyear's Space Rangers Spin and Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. We've raised the bar, and we're using digital media to create these challenges, just like you'd see in a video game."

Fitzgerald says new challenges will be added to keep the ride fresh. "We have the flexibility in the system to not only add new targets or levels to the games, but we could create seasonal overlays like a Christmas theme, which is especially important with repeat visitors that we get at Disneyland," he says.

Pixar will create original CG animation for Toy Story Mania; it also produced 15 minutes for the Nemo ride.