Compared to what? The last four years?
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HA! I enjoyed how unbelievably LAME that was! I was trying to imagine how much more lame that could be, but alas, failed. Could the the carny owners have seized the opportunity to sell some stuff in the Chamber of Back and Forth to make it even worse? I think that would only make it more terrifying an experience, so no, even that would fail.
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Before the park was demolished, a buddy of mine actually bought the original Haunted Castle dark ride from Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Panama City Beach, FL. It was re-homed, and exists now as The Terrortorium:
If you’re ever in Oxford, AL at the right time of year, check it out. It’s better than the original!
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That’s how it’s done! The spinning tunnel reminds me of the Universal Studios tram tour. It really did make you feel like the train was spinning, especiallly when you couldn’t see the end.
I’d love for someone to turn an abandoned mall into a giant dark ride with a Dawn of the Dead theme. I would travel cross-country to see that!
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Yeah, they really did a fantastic job of restoring the ride to its former glory!
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Wasn’t much better in it’s original configuration
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At least you wouldn’t get a sunburn while inside it, though.
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The scariest thing about the ride is what it says about the operators and society in general. It’s a real thinking man’s ghost train, I guess.
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This was one of the things that went missing from the Wacky Shack. So sad.
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I see your Merryville Halloween Ride and raise you…
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So “excessively gory” dark rides = bad too? Is that why they changed my beloved haunted house ride in Santa Cruz and got rid of the cryptkeeper character who was hacking up bodies to cook? I miss that. Luckily I took pictures of it.
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Then there’s the “Jack Chick”-themed haunted houses. Those are the worst.
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What the hell was that??
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A money vacuum.
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I was going to be generous and say that the truck with the partitions, props, and set decorations got “lost” en route to the event. In that case, there should have been markings to where each of the props were supposed to go.
If I were the organizer, I would have “bribed” a high school cheer squad/drama department to do their best at set dressing on a shoestring budget and extreme time crunch with the promise of ride tickets, and still come out heaps above the current setup.
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Remember “The Royal Nonesuch” in Huckleberry Finn? For those who don’t: The King and The Duke, itinerant con men, advertise the hell out of a three-nights-only theatrical event…WOMEN AND CHILDREN NOT ALLOWED! Half the men in town show up. The performance is only a couple of minutes long and consists of The Duke prancing about naked making odd noises. The playgoers are about to storm the stage when a man points out that if word got around how they were hoodwinked, they’d never live it down. So instead of murdering the swindlers, the suckers go out the next day telling everyone how great the show was. That night the other half of the townsmen show up and get the treatment. On the third night every man in town attends the show, all of them concealing rotten fruit and dead animals with which to bombard the players. But The King and the Duke had skipped town the moment the box office closed. While an angry crowd waited for the show to begin the scammers were miles away, planning how to apply the technique to carnival rides.
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i recognize this ~exact traveling carnival ride from (egads) 50 years ago! It was notably better tricked out so long ago inside with looming space aliens and werewolves with lights suddenly illuminating their faces at the limits of that serpentine path, but it was the @!#$n same path. wow - depressingly nostalgic somehow.
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I was thinking either mouse trap or Flight to Mars that was at the Seattle Center Fun Forrest since like forever
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I was equally entralled-with and terrified-by the Wacky Shack growing up. But my favorite part of Joyland was the creepy clown playing a player piano.
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