As guests slink through the darkness, they come upon a tomb, which is guarded by the Egyptian god Seth, lord of disaster and chaos. Throughout the journey they have faced attacks from all sides—monstrous cobras, eight-foot scorpions, and massive statues that came to life.

Guests boarding The Challenge of Tutankhamon at Six Flags Belgium for the first time probably don’t realize that they’re riding a revolution in dark rides. Yes, the scenery, the sets, and the animation are spectacular, but the ride has all the elements of a typical shoot-em-up dark ride—the animatronics, the surpises, and the slow-moving creepyness that follows visitors through the darkness.

Six-seat, battery-operated vehicles are equipped with laser blasters and digital target systems featuring not only individual onboard scoring system displays (by onboard consoles), but also tactile and audio feedback. And if they look down at the floor, they’ll see their cars are not on the usual track. In fact, there is no track. The cars basically guide themselves through the attraction. And the riders’ scores are not a matter of bragging rights. Those with high scores get to go through more scenes, while the shooting-impaired are whisked to the exit.

The Challenge of Tutankhamon is one of the first of a new generation of dark rides that is raising the bar for parks and ride creators. Designed by Sally Corporation in the U.S., this 17,200-square-foot interior dark ride features 54 animatronic characters, creatures, and props.

Right on King Tut’s heels is the webbed avenger. Spider-man The Ultimate Ride at Marvel Adventure City in Niagara Falls combines the latest in computer-generated imagery with new ways of painting backgrounds to let the riders see the action in three dimensions. There’s also the Ghost Train at Tykkimaki, outside Helsinki, Finland, where guests travel through a corridor of bats that appear to fly at them.

These rides capitalize on developments in technology that are putting a new generation of dark rides within the reach of many small and mid-size parks, even as they deliver a ride experience that until now has been reserved for mega-parks.

Better yet, these new dark rides hold the promise of becoming the kind of attraction that guests will line up to ride again and again, making them as desirable as a mega-coaster, but for millions less.

The Dark Ages

The timing couldn’t be better. Parks are looking for new experiences to offer their guests, and many are rediscovering the allure of a good dark ride—witness the popularity of The Pirates of the Caribbean, the hit movie based on the granddaddy of all dark rides at Disneyland. In short, says Eric Princz, the president of Creative Design & Engineering, “People are realizing that dark rides are a good thing.”

What’s particularly impressive about the renaissance in dark rides is the variety of methods used to create dark ride experiences.They are not being driven by a breakthrough in one particular technology, but many. They include advances in ride vehicles, painting, lighting, projection techniques, and control systems.

Consider the impact of ChromaDepth glasses, made by American Paper Optics. These glasses can turn flat scenery panels into 3D holographic images, as long as they are painted the right way, says Leonard Pickel, a partner in D.O.A., Inc. “For instance,” says James Hembrow, the attractions designer for Rex Studios, “we can do something that looks like a bottomless well, and we can do doors—painted on a flat surface—that look like they’re swinging open and closed, but it’s all a combination of the glasses and the scenic techniques we use.”

At Tykkimaki, Rex Studios painted a series of bats on a rotating frame to create a corridor of bats on the Ghost Train ride. “We combined that with strobe lighting and combinations of UV filters to give the illusion that the bats are flapping their wings and flying toward you over your head,” Hembrow says.

Such illusions are possible because the color pallette has expanded for ultra-violet paints, which are staple of dark rides. “We can mix our own paints,” Hembrow says, “which allows us to make any color, rather than just the five off-the-shelf colors that everybody uses.”

“The UV colors were really popular back in the ’60s,” Princz says, “and every dark ride, that’s what they used. Usually it was just sprayed on, and it was pretty campy. Now with companies like Wildfire, you can mix their UV paints to make any shade you want. You can do more subtle things. It’s kicked it up to the next level.”

Darkrider, the designers of Spider-man The Ultimate Ride, combined painted scenery with computer-generated imagery and ChromaDepth glasses to create a convincing 3D illusion that includes animated images, says Larry Kirchner, the company president.

In Full Swing

The ride vehicles themselves are much more advanced because they are no longer bound by tracks. The cars used in The Challenge of Tutankhamon look like they are free-wheeling across the floor, but in reality they are following a guide wire that is buried in the floor, says Ruud Koppens, the president of ETF Ride Systems, the company that supplied the Mystic Mover vehicle system the ride uses.

“It’s technology that has been used in the auto industry with robots that go through the factory floor delivering body parts,” Koppens says. “Each vehicle is an independent unit with its own mind and memory, and everything is controlled out of the vehicle. The nice thing about trackless systems is you can design track layouts that allow situations which you normally cannot do—splits, mergers, you can rotate in place 90 degrees or fully rotate on the spot.”

Koppens is a little disappointed that no designer has fully exploited the capabilities of the system. “We have not seen a lot of designers who want to do something other than the standard track, which is a basically a big circle,” he says. ETF has found a partner and developed what they call the IMMP (Interactive Mystic Mover Project), which will make its debut at the 2003 IAAPA trade show. “It is completely interactive,” he says. “And if you see the layout you see a lot of crossings and junctions, and it is the first ride where the full capabilities of the vehicle are used.”

Pooh’s Hunny Hunt at Tokyo Disney has an even more sophisticated trackless guidance system that uses wireless communications with the control system to create a “crazy room,” in the words of one fan, where three or four vehicles intermingle in a seemingly random frenzy.

With these new systems, says Adam Bezark of The Bezark Co., “all of a sudden, things are possible that were never possible before. Cars can cross in front of each other. In the Pooh ride, things vary; one time you will see this piece of the scenery and another time your car goes to another piece of the scenery, and every ride is different from the other. It really does throw the doors wide open.”

For years, parks with deep pockets have been dabbling with dark rides that vary the experience and use stunning 3D graphics. Two of the earliest were the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland, in Anaheim, Calif., and The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man at Universal Islands of Adventure, in Orlando.

The former uses clever illusions to give the riders the impression that there are three different routes into the ride, and the motion base is programmed to vary the ride experience. (For example, one time the ride car may blow out a tire, leaving the car to bump along for the rest of the ride.) And the Spider-Man ride combines a motion base with sophisticated projection systems to make it appear that the Green Goblin and Spider-Man actually land on the front of the ride vehicle.

But these rides cost many millions of dollars. The new genre of dark riders offer multiple experiences and 3D effects for far less. Koppens says the IMMP system will be available for about $2.5 million, not counting the cost of the building. Modern computers make prices like this possible. “Electronics and the computer power and computer memory are what’s sparking things,” Pickel says. “Things that only Universal or Disney could do five years ago, small parks can do now.”

Sally Corporation, which built the aforementioned Challenge of Tutankhamon, has a control system that allows riders to determine the course the ride takes. But that’s just the start of the tricks now available to designers, says Ray Dominey, Sally’s technical director.

“We can set up our system so if we have six targets on a character and you hit all six, you could create a new event in the next scene, or you can make the car advance to a different part of the ride or create a different ending. We can even program different reactions from characters based on how many targets you hit or which targets you hit. It is one large programmable system that will do just about anything you want it to do.”

Competing with Coasters

Through wireless communications between the targets and the ride cars, riders can receive
audio or tactile feedback through their guns.

And dark rides can offer 4D tricks. “We have sound technology where we can whisper in your ear so that you think someone is in the car with you,” Pickel says. “And there are a couple of companies that sell scents, so if you’re in a forest scene you smell rotting leaves. They even have rotting flesh scents and things that are more disgusting.” Then there are the tactile effects, such as ankle ticklers, that can be built into a ride vehicle and programmed to deploy at the right moment, such as a scene where the room is overrun by rats.

For parks, this variety makes the dark ride an attraction that can compel repeat ridership. “If you can give people two or three different endings and different things that happen, that drives return traffic to the dark rides and pulls people out of those long roller coaster lines,” Pickel says.

This alone would be enough to get parks interested in new dark rides. But they also retain their traditional strength, Kirchner says. “Dark rides appeal to families, because anybody can ride. That’s a huge demographic—parents and two young kids.” And, says Pickel, the new generation of dark rides can meet the rising expectations that families bring with them. “Movie technology is driving a hunger from people who are experiencing the ride for more and more ‘wow’ factor. They want more special effects, and they are expecting to experience things that are as good as what they see in the movies.”

Bezark, who wrote the script for The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, agrees. “Audiences want you to pull out all the stops to give them a great experience.” He predicts there are more surprises to come as designers and parks collaborate on new dark rides.

“I think the next wave you are going to see—and it’s already happening a little bit—are rides that are a combination of a true dark ride and thrill rides.” The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney-MGM Studios is a step in this direction. “The new model coming from one or more of the major theme park companies in the future could be an attraction where you go slowly through half the show and then it takes off for a big, exciting finale. You can have all the fun of going through different environments at a manageable speed, and then go rocketing through for the big ending.”