Dark Rides
THE HAUNTED MINE DROP Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park, Colorado
A
lready home to several Soaring Eagle attractions, Glenwood Caverns
Adventure Park is set to open its newest attraction this summer - the Haunted Mine Drop. It will be the first dark drop ride to go underground, dropping riders 110-120 feet down inside Iron Mountain. As usual with this family-owned park all of the contractors involved in the onsite construction are from Colorado. However the park is working
with two out-of-state industry experts to theme
and build the attraction. The ride is being constructed by Stan Checketts who previously built the park’s Giant Canyon Swing and Soaring Eagle zip ride. “We were asked if we could do it and we said well we can build anything", says Stan Checketts, Soaring Eagle CEO. “We have never done any kind of ride like this, it is a whole new concept. It took months to dig the hole and dynamite was used was even used to create the hole! We designed and built the drop ride to fit in to the hole, and are just waiting for the last theming bits to be finished. Once you’re on the ride the floor moves
Simworx have introduced a new range of Advance Guidance Vehicles
away and then you drop, it is a complete free fall. It is definitely doing to be a neat ride when it’s done.” Mark McDonough and his team at St. Louis based
Creative Visions are theming the attraction which will include Pepper’s Ghost, an illusion technique invented by Professor John Henry Pepper and English engineer Henry Dirks in the 1800s. The building housing the ride will be themed to look like an old mine building and will be located on top of Iron Mountain at an elevation of 7,000 feet. A dark underground drop ride is an odd choice for
a new attraction, but one that was undertaken to protect the skyline of the city. “Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park is on top of Iron Mountain and very visible in Glenwood Springs, so we wanted to reduce our visual impact to the city. That meant taking it underground and this gave us the opportunity to be unique,” explains Steve Beckley, owner of Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. “Our team has been working on this for more than a year. We’re beyond excited to open the Haunted Mine Drop to the public.”
DARK RIDE ESSENTIALS
industry’. With no tracks and no power cables, the vehicles can be supplied with different motion systems, seating capacities and on-board 4D effects such as bubbles, low smoke, leg ticklers, wind, water spray, aroma and special effects lighting. When combined with a custom designed AV solution Simworx are confident that the AGV will create some of the most exciting and leading edge dark rides available. “We’ve been developing the AGV dark ride for some
S
time now,” said Simworx Managing Director Terry Monkton. “It offers us the opportunity to create some exciting and very entertaining attractions which will give operators a host of great options when it comes to dark rides, which are, after all, one of the most popular types of ride in a theme park. But the AGV can also be incorporated into other types of venue too and with the design flexibility it provides it is a great addition to the Simworx product range.”
48 AUGUST 2017
imworx's new range of recently introduced AGV vehicles (Advance Guidance Vehicle) feature an acceleration that they believe is ‘unrivalled in the
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