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Westworld premiered on HBO two weeks ago (as of the writing of this question, we've only seen Season 1, Episodes 1 and 2).

One of the things they haven't shown us yet (I hope will be revealed soon) is how objects in the physical world (host robots, guest humans, even inanimate items like cowboy hats and guns) get "transported" into the park ("Westworld").

I know the guests ride trains and then somehow they're magically "in" the park, but that's obviously not how they really get transported (it wouldn't be believable or even remotely realistic).

There was a Michael Crichton book as well as a movie in 1973 surrounding the same story line. Anybody know how you actually travel or get transported in/out of the parks?

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  • TL;DR - I was under the impression that the "park" was a VR world similar to The Matrix or Total Recall. Doesn't seem to be the case: seems that the park is actually in the real world, so this question is kind of moot. But perhaps other people will have the same misconception as I did! – smeeb Oct 12 '16 at 18:31
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    "I know the guests ride trains and then somehow they're magically "in" the park, but that's obviously not how they really get transported (it wouldn't be believable or even remotely realistic)" Um...No? Clearly the train car was parked up to the building. He walked into the rear and when both guests arrived the train left. It is perfectly realistic and believable, as is the point of the park. We then get a shot of the train and it is clearly high up on a bluff, which matches earlier aerial views of the main building. – Joshua Oct 13 '16 at 0:23
  • This question is based on a fundamental misunderstanding: Westworld is NOT virtual reality. Once you understand that, the answer to "how do they get there" is quite mundane: they take some sort of transportation. – Martha Oct 19 '16 at 0:24
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It's still unknown.

Where, exactly, is this place? How do paying customers catch the train? It's a nice touch that customers arrive in town along with hosts, but it's also confusing. It's a bit more clear in Michael Crichton's original flick, in which visitors travel in together from a real-world location via hovercraft and arrive at a futuristic-looking greeting area at an adult amusement park called Delos, where they are outfitted and then shipped off to one of three themed subsections: West World, Medieval World, or Roman World. Will the HBO series pull back to reveal the functional world outside the park?

As per CBredlow's comment, some of the mystery has been answered in the second episode. We know how paying customers catch the train.

We do know how paying customers catch the train, as in episode 2 we see people walk down a hall after they get dressed and cross a threshold into the bar car of the train into the town.

Just to clear up a few questions raised in the comments, the park is not virtual reality, but rather a physical facility.

Nolan told Entertainment Weekly all about the logistics of the Delos' maintenance facility.

"So the idea is that most of the facilities are underground," Nolan told EW. "We sort of pictured a 100-story building skyscraper that goes down instead of up, which for us was also a visual metaphor for the age of the park. When you’re in the older portion of it [far below the surface], the cold storage, it has been clearly repurposed from something that used to be more grand."

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    We do know how paying customers catch the train, as in episode 2 we see people walk down a hall after they get dressed and cross a threshold into the bar car of the train into the town. – CBredlow Oct 12 '16 at 17:01
  • Thanks @FuzzyBoots but this still doesn't add up! That means they're already in the park. Which means the scene the scene where Jimmi Simpson's character is walking down the hallway, he's already in the park. Or is that what you're saying? – smeeb Oct 12 '16 at 17:19
  • I don't actually watch the show, but it is not explained how they get into the facility, but once there, it's shown how they get onto the train. And, as mentioned above, this was more explicitly shown in the original film. – FuzzyBoots Oct 12 '16 at 17:21
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    Don't we see them in a modern subway-style train at the beginning of episode 2 before they get to the "interior" part of the facility where they dress up, talk to consultants, etc, and then eventually get on the train? – starpilotsix Oct 12 '16 at 17:25
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    I don't see any indication of there being Virtual Reality/The Matrix style shenanigans involved in any way... if there was, why do they need robots? Why not just have them be digital simulations all the way through? – starpilotsix Oct 12 '16 at 17:41
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Based on the maps available on the Westworld Website, guests arrive by high-speed subterranean monorail, disembark at the Mesa Gold facility's "Arrivals Monorail Terminal" (situated a few miles from the centre of the park), then catch the olde-fashioned steam train which takes them the last few miles from the facility to the town of Sweetwater.

enter image description here

I've highlighted the probable route of the monorail, but obviously if it's underground it could literally come from any direction, including directly below the conventional train track.

enter image description here

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Based on the first two episodes, we know:

  • Regional travel appears to be via a vast high-speed underground train, possibly an evacuated tube. If the tunnel air is evacuated, this could be a long-distance transportation network of the future, invisible to the surface.

  • The above explains what we know about the park headquarters complex, described as a 100-story skyscraper buried underground, also mostly invisible (and deliberately hard to find; the Man in Black appears to be killing people to search for the hidden entrance where Hopkins' character emerges "at the end of the Blood Arroyo where the snake lays its eggs", cut to Hopkins mesmerizing said (artificial) snake).

  • It appears to be buried within a mesa, with Grand Canyon Skywalk-style balconies (for executive living quarters). At one point the camera pans out of the escalator complex and up from the top of the mesa.

  • The underground (modern) train explains why its so deep. Parts of the complex (cold storage) appear abandoned, and reminiscent of a space horror film. These appear to be former train terminal entrances, perhaps from an earlier era when the park was more affordable, given the Jurassic Park-style entry-hall accommodations in these abandoned levels.

  • The steam train leaves the mesa complex in a tunnel high up on the ridge line, is entered by a visitor tunnel, and appears to be an ordinary mechanical replica steam train. The hosts (we see) that are programmed as town residents board the same train, and are programmed to wake up when the steam train leaves the tunnel.

  • The steam train travels through a (real) desert landscape until it reaches the main town. The park area appears to be exceedingly vast -- judging from the holomap in the command center, perhaps over a hundred miles of mostly desert range land.

  • As with Jurassic Park, at least half the park area beyond a certain river is wilderness or off-limits to "family" guests and reserved for more "dangerous" excursions.

  • If the shadowy execs imagine, say, military or other applications for their robots, this could explain the source of the land being abandoned government or military range land.

  • It does not explain, however, why those other applications of the technology have not been pursued until now (at least 30 years into the park's history), or even why the park appears to be unique. Given the way the staff and guests talk about it, other parks with different themes do not appear to be contemplated.

  • Even the oldest robots appear to be fairly lifelike, and we know of no instruction or ordinance against lifelike robots in the real world. However it could be that the park is so exceedingly expensive to maintain that it is a category-killer, in the fashion of Disney World.

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