Future of Dark Rides?

[DjDoornob]

Al Alven said something in the "Hey Al" thread that sparked a thought.

To paraphase, Al said- "I would think there's a good reason why dark rides are being phased out".


Does anybody think that with the recent spike in horror movie interest, a similar trend may be able to start with dark rides?

It seems American society just wants to scared now-a-days!

[Robert]

Dark rides aren't always lost because they're unpopular, sometimes they're lost beyond the owner's control such as fires, also years can take their toll on older ones, look at Dr. Blood's and the Golden Nugget. But the sad thing is when business and ROI and profit and safety issues and bottom line get in the way. Park owners fear lawsuits the worst, and parks don't want to set themselves up for any liability, so there's less dark rides and fun houses around today, and new ones are built to new standards. Dark rides are actually a higher insurance risk than dangerous looking freefall tower rides and 200+ ft. tall coasters and inverted coasters because of the nature of them, in a coaster you're strapped in, but in a dark ride there's nothing preventing a few jerks from jumping out of the ride cart and causing havoc. Walk throughs are worse because there's no cart, anybody can cause trouble in the dark if they wanted to. Sometimes a park owner will remove/destroy dark rides just for the heck of it, in the case of Hunt's Pier when they demolished the Jungleland and Pirate Ship, then later on the Keystone Kops and Whacky Shack. For what? New thrill rides? The new owners of Hunt's wanted to appeal to teens more, so they added the Kamikaze, and a bunch of portable rides, removed the Flyer, Jungleland, Pirate Ship, etc. But even then, about 1990 they still had 5 or so dark attractions, the Golden Nugget, Keystone Kops, Hunt's Horror, Sourier Grotte, and Mystery Mansion a walk-through haunted house. Now, what do they have? Go-karts? Closed Golden Nugget? Also Castle Dracula was a major loss, that was the best dark ride in Wildwood and also the last of the old NJ haunted attractions built in the 70's. And it had the oldest working ride in Wildwood, the old mill built in 1919. The others were Morey's Haunted House, Fun Pier Castle Frankenstein, Brigantine Castle and Long Branch Haunted Mansion. All of them except Morey's burned down.