Dark Rides
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DARK IN THE PARK
Park World’s annual dark rides review is back with a selection of nine new attractions entertaining guests at parks around the world this season. From family-friendly rides incorporating intellectual properties to a motor racing-themed experience in the Middle East and an attraction that blurs the boundaries between dark ride and midway game, this year’s selection highlights the breadth of themes chosen by designers to engage park guests
Unlike the park’s older dark rides Silbermine and Geister Rickscha, Maus au Chocolat at Phantasialand (Brühl, Germany) does not feature a single animatronic. However thanks to an engaging storyline, 3D film content and interactive technology, riders are having a whole lot of fun. Here the park’s head of marketing, Birgit
Reckersdrees, explains why the attraction – a mix of dark ride and high-tech shooting gallery – is perfect for all the family
Maus au Chocolat Phantasialand
A
t Phantasialand we always want to make special, unique rides that you cannot find in other parks. For example, even though we
have a Top Spin (Talocan), is not just the technology; we do it do it with fire, steam, water, and theme the whole area around the ride. Now you find a lot of people in Germany when they see a Top Spin are not calling it a Top Spin, they are like, “Ah, this is a Talocan.” Our park’s owner, Robert Löffelhardt, decided it was time to do something that would bring the whole family together and make then smile. We wanted to create an interactive dark ride, but it could not be too “dark”; it had to be something that had the fun factor.
Mr Löffelhardt was talking to Roger Houben (3DBA), and said he needed someone very creative and flexible to make the ride. Fortunately Mr Houben knows that we have a very high quality level at the park, that we always want a little bit more, and I think we signed the contract one-and-a-half years ago.
Maus au
Chocolat is both a ride and game, and you are part of the story. Inside the ride are seven screens with a 3D movie effect, which you must shoot at, and there is
always something new on the screen. We have also done a lot of theming and decoration, because the atmosphere inside must feel right.
Wide Appeal
The target group for the attraction is very wide. You see a lot of father and sons going on for the game and the battle, but I have a little niece who is five years old who is not so interested in battle. She said, “It was so nice when the mice were dancing and at the end it was snowing!” She loved it and it a put a smile on her face. We had amazing fun with the story. It’s set in the middle of 1920s Berlin with a very proud second generation baker, Gustav E Lehmann, who is famous for his tortes. When you come in to the attraction, the whole area is themed and it’s like walking into a real cake factory. One night Mr Lehmann realises his whole factory is full of mice, so he calls Oskar Koslowski the pest controller. Mr Koslowski has been a long, long time in his business so he knows it is not good to use poison because you would poison the cakes as well, so he takes out some icing bags filled with chocolate cream. Even for Mr Koslowski there are too many mice, and this is where our guests come in, as exterminators. It’s fun shooting with the icing bags, and you don’t have an aggressive shooting feeling; it’s just like icing a cake.
The ride’s name is a mix between the German word for mouse (maus) and the wonderful, rich in calories but so sweet and delicious, French dessert Mousse au Chocolat. It’s a great fit: a mouse on top of the chocolate mousse!
The station area is highly themed 30 ”
Marketing & Merchandise We got the company that made the animations for the ride to make some special images for TV, because this is not an attraction you can explain
AUGUST 2011
2011
A Berlin newspaper was mocked up to promote the ride
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