MACK One has introduced eatX, which it describes as the world's first Dark Ride Dining Attraction - a patented, commercially deployable format in which the meal and the ride are the same experience rather than consecutive stops in a guest's visit.
At the centre of the concept is the FlowDiner, an autonomously moving, battery-powered dining vehicle developed and manufactured by MACK Rides over a two-year period. Each vehicle carries a group of up to four adults and two young children through a sequence of themed environments. It travels at up to 0.5 metres per second on an on-board electric drive and operates within a trackless ride system, which the company says allows layout and narrative journey to be configured for individual operators and intellectual properties.
A hybrid format the company places in its own category
MACK One positions eatX outside existing attraction or dining typologies, describing it as a hybrid spanning ride engineering, immersive storytelling and system gastronomy. Projections, set design, lighting, soundscapes and cuisine are presented as simultaneous parts of one narrative, with the food framed as neither decoration for the ride nor the ride as packaging for the food.
The commercial argument rests on three pressures the company says operators in theme parks, resorts, family entertainment centres and arenas face at the same time: limited available space, demand for high-value guest experiences, and the need to grow revenue per square metre. Because diners are seated inside the ride vehicle, the same floor area is intended to serve as both attraction space and dining space.
eatX is designed as a white-label concept, so the intellectual property, story and brand identity remain with the operator while MACK supplies the engineering and the format.
First installation planned for summer 2027
Karls Erlebnis-Dorf in Elstal, near Berlin, is named as the first operator, with an installation scheduled to open in summer 2027. The 'Strawberry Dining Journey' is to take guests through five themed worlds across a three-course menu, built around the historically documented discovery of the garden strawberry in 1714. MACK One says the narrative is grounded in the Karls brand identity of family, farming and authenticity, and is realised through projection, set construction, lighting design and choreographed cuisine. The story is the same for every guest, while the company presents the memory as unique to each table.
Developed from an existing restaurant prototype
According to MACK One, eatX did not originate in a design studio. The MACK Group developed Eatrenalin, a Michelin-starred immersive fine-dining restaurant at Europa-Park Resort, as a prototype for combining dining and storytelling. That operational experience, together with MACK Rides' engineering background and MACK One's role as the group's innovation and experience design arm, is presented as the starting point for the new format.
MACK One argues the concept could serve different operator types: converting underperforming or legacy spaces in theme parks into higher-value destinations, turning transitional dining at resorts into a storytelling asset, and giving malls, family entertainment centres and stadiums an anchor concept intended to increase dwell time, per-capita spend and social sharing.
The company states that the format is scalable, brand-agnostic and operationally lean, with system gastronomy intended to support precision, throughput and quality, and the trackless vehicle system allowing layouts to be adapted per site. These remain the company's characterisations of a format whose first commercial unit has yet to open.