On January 2, 2001, U.S. Patent No. 6,168,531 issued to William Adamson and Donald Updyke, Jr. on a “Soup Bowl Attraction”:

As explained by the patent, the invention is a giant bowl with fog generators to make it appear like a steaming bowl of soup:

The Examiner was apparently not familiar with classic 1960’s television, because this “attraction” is strikingly similar to the soup bowl in which Beaver Cleaver got stuck in “In the Soup” (Season 4, Episode 32, of Leave it to Beaver (1961)):

The ‘531 patent was assigned to Sony Corporation and Hyper Entertainment Inc. One wonders what Sony had in mind for this technology.