Dark Rides
parkworld-online.com DARK IN THE PARK 2013
“A dark ride can differentiate your attraction from your competitors, they are not planning-contentious, you can create much of it with local contractors, and they can charm, intrigue, thrill or scare according to what your guests want.”
These are the words of British attraction designer John Wardley, whose credits include Alton Towers’ Haunted House and the fondly remembered Professor Burp’s Bubbleworks at Chessington World of Adventures. Whether it’s a classic ghost train style attraction, storytelling boat ride, or the latest 3D interactive dark ride, the themes are endless. Whilst Disney and Universal may have access to some of the latest branded content such as Toy Story and Transformers, canny park operators can create their own intellectual property (witness Hobs Pit at Pleasurewood Hills) or even revive an older, out-of-copyright story (Thor’s Hammer at Tusenfryd). Here, over the next few pages, is Park World’s pick of new dark rides for 2013 – proof that you can have more fun with the lights off.
Hobs Pit Pleasurewood Hills, UK
After deciding to revamp their Fairytale Fantasy ride into something a little darker, the team at Pleasurewood Hills in the UK hit upon something more elaborate – a dark ride and walk-through attraction all in one! Here the UK park’s marketing and social media executive, Ben Rowe, who played a major role in creating Hobs Pit, explains how it came to fruition
Our general manager, Alexis Camelin, wanted to create an “immersive queue line” that built up the storyline through some staged scares leading up to the main ride section. It quickly became apparent that for the effects to work, the queue would have to be staggered. It was at this point we decided that if we were going to add a walk-through section, we’d do it properly with live actors.
Haunted dark rides can of course be found at many theme parks while walk-through horror mazes have become popular Halloween attractions, however it was only while researching various concepts around the world that it became clear that a dark ride combined with a walk-though attraction was a rare combination.
Although the initial concept had been decided last summer, we didn’t get budget approval until October, and work finally commenced at the park in November. Most of the attraction was developed by our in-house team, including
illusionist Sean Alexander, along with help from Hollywood veterans Rob Ostir and Corry Burton, who have worked on various attractions at Disney and Universal and provided us with special effects and voices. While Fairytale Fantasy was predominantly aimed at younger children, with Hobs Pit we have created a much needed indoor attraction that is specifically aimed at teenagers and young adults, a market that the park hasn’t really catered for in recent years. We’ve even given it a 12A age limit! Set inside an abandoned mine shaft, the storyline centres on an ancient and cursed sacrificial ground where gifts and life were offered up in return for peace, healthy children and good crops. Over time, the pit was forgotten and slowly the entrance to the tunnels beneath were forgotten, until the 18th Century when the pit was opened up in the hunt for flint, a local and plentiful stone that many of the buildings in East Anglia are built from. Amid objections from local residents, concerned that they may disturb the devil presence they called ‘Hob’, a group of miners were hired. Over the course of a week, the miners begin to complain of noises and odd occurrences. Several went missing, yet their bodies were never found. A lone miner trapped by falling rock alone with only his caged canary as company is slowly taken possessed by the evil within the pit as he uncovers the skeletons of his colleagues. This is the character within the ride that you attempt to escape from. We officially opened Hobs Pit on 2 June, and seeing visitors run out of the attraction screaming and clearly enjoying the experience was a weight off our mind; we had made a scary attraction! Because guests exit the mine through the themed shop where the queue is located, visitors standing in line get to see people’s reactions first hand. This really adds to the build-up. My personal highlight is the first miner scene at the start of the walk through- section. It combines a classic Pepper’s Ghost
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illusion and air blast scare with a rather gory/graphic CGI sequence. This section alone lets visitors know this isn’t your typical dark ride experience.
It is hoped Hobs Pit will attract an additional 20,000 visitors to the park by the end of the season. For our Pleasurewood Chills celebrations over Halloween we are working on a ‘remixed’ version of the attraction together with AtmosFear Scare Entertainment, which we will call Hobs Pit X-Scream. This will feature more than 10 live actors, and will really set us up for 2014 with added scares and new effects. I certainly feel Hobs Pit has set a new benchmark for Pleasurewood Hills, with a level of attention to detail, theming and marketing not seen for some time.
pleasurewoodhills.co.uk
AUGUST 2013
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