It starts as the heavy car lurches forward, and the ride operator lifts the lap bar so you can enter it.

The car moves forward slowly, approaching a set of painted doors, known as “bang doors” in the industry. The car forces the bang doors open, and you find yourself plunged into the darkness.  From this point on, you are at the mercy of the ride designers who will place several “tricks” along the serpentine track for the riders to experience. These tricks can be as simple as a loud buzzer in the dark, generally the first trick, as it lets the operator know when the car has passed a certain point in the track, allowing them to send another car through, or complex tricks like the “Girl to Gorilla” illusion. I’ve always been fond of the super cheesy paper mache monsters that lean forward as the car approaches. This is a dark ride.

Collectively there are three types of dark rides. First is the hard top, which is in a permanent building at an amusement park, generally with more complex tricks. The second type is the trailer mount ride, which are commonly found at traveling carnivals, and have the ride inside a trailer. The last type is the walk through, also known as fun house attractions. As fun houses are a good topic for a column of their own, I’ll focus here on the hard top and trailer mount types.

Trailer mount rides are the lowest on the dark ride scale. Generally, the ride will travel an area no longer or wider than the average tractor trailer. 

They will often seem twice that size from the front, however, as the front panels, usually painted with lurid monsters drooling over screaming maidens, or bad air brush renditions of Frank Frazetta paintings, fold out to increase the frontage the ride takes up. This is for two reasons. One, it does make the ride seem much larger and imposing than it would without them, and two, the paintings on the front will promise much more than the ride can possibly deliver, acting as a tease to get you to pony up your hard earned ducats to ride. 

Trailer mount rides will often follow a simple back and forth S-curve design to allow the cars to approach the various tricks. In this type of dark ride the tricks are almost always very simple devices, like a hoary spider on a track that will slide towards your car as you approach, or a mechanical monster of some sort that is jointed at the waist, which uses air pressure to menacingly lean forward. Tricks that use air pressure will also allow you to hear the burst of air, acting as the simplest trick of all, a loud sound in the dark. All dark rides use a very simple mechanism for the tricks. Small trigger switches along the track are set off by the cars passing over them, which in turn, activate the trick. 

The hard top dark ride is a permanent installation, and can feature tricks as cheesy as those found in trailer mounts. Most hard tops, however, have more complex tricks and theming. The earliest hard top rides were made by the Pretzel Company, so named for the pretzel like configuration of the track inside the building.  

The company took this theme to the cars as well, as each had a 40 pound metal pretzel mounted on the side.  Just a few of the original Pretzel Company rides exist, and their numbers decrease each year. The reasons for this are legion, but it is primarily economic. Most patrons are no longer frightened by the tricks, and many an unruly youth has jumped out of the slow moving cars to deface or destroy the tricks. The Pretzel rides are slowly being replaced by more modern dark rides with more sophisticated tricks, and more restrictive, less easy to get out of seating. 

Almost every amusement park of note has some sort of dark ride, from the colorful and sugar shock coma inducing It’s a Small World ride at the Disney parks, to their own Haunted Mansions, still probably the most sophisticated dark rides ever built. Paul Frees is the voice you hear in the Haunted Mansion. He also voiced many Disney and Hanna Barbera cartoons in the 1960s and 70s. Disney has had a rich tradition of dark rides, a classification that would include such varied rides as the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as well as the long lamented (at Disney World anyway) Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. 

As great as the Haunted Mansion is, it is only my third favorite dark ride experience. The second favorite is a great little hard top ride in Canobie Lake Park in Salem New Hampshire called The Mine of Lost Souls. 

The Mine of Lost Souls has everything I want in a dark ride, great tricks, a pile of rocks that appears will drop onto you, stopping well before it gets near you, cheesy skeletons that move ever so slowly towards the cars, or pop up from behind tombstones, the old water pouring in front of the car that stops just before you get to it gag, and a girl to gorilla illusion. 

The girl to gorilla illusion is a very old trick that has been used in dark rides probably since they were invented. The trick works like this, the car approaches a figure (traditionally a girl) inside a glass box, a flash of light accompanied by maniacal laughter, and the girl is transformed into a gorilla. In the Mine of Lost Souls, the girl is replaced by a friendly miner, who transforms into the Grim Reaper himself!  This trick is accomplished by having a mirror that is backlit to show the first figure. The light is then switched to the front of the case showing the second figure. Cheap, easy, and effective, it’s the perfect dark ride trick.  

The other reason I love the Mine of Lost Souls so much is the last third. It was like the park bought every trick it could afford, even if it didn’t make sense. This would explain the Egyptian Mummy trick, and the wall of what is supposed to be wailing souls, where the same Grim Reaper pops up again.  The last trick has a mine explosion causing water to rush down a gully towards you, only to be channeled back into the ride before it ever reaches you. Eighty-five percent of the time I have ridden this ride, this last trick has never worked, but it is very effective when it does. 

My number one dark ride resides in one of my favorite amusement parks in the country, Knoebels Grove in Elysburg, PA. 

Called simply The Haunted House, this dark ride has it all. The initial trick, the one which tells the operator when to release the next car is the front end of a large truck set in the wall. When you are about three feet away from it, the headlights beam brightly and the horn blares full blast! This is quite a beginning to be sure. Most of the rest of the ride is an amalgamation of standard dark ride tricks, but the Knoebels Haunted House has one unique trick that astounds. The car approaches the bang doors, where a strong light can be seen seeping underneath. As your car crashes through them you have a half second of bright light, followed by total darkness. You slowly move straight forward down a hallway towards a giant glow in the dark skull. More impressive, however, are the glow in the dark life size skulls that bob on strings along either wall of the hallway. The hallway walls are mirrored, so that the bobbing skulls are multiplied ad infinitum. It appears you are in a never ending field of bobbing human skulls. The illusion is so very simple, yet very eloquent, and oddly beautiful. 

Dark rides have been with the amusement industry almost since its inception. From the early show type attractions where a historical event would be replayed on a giant diorama in front of a seated crowd, like The Jonestown Flood attractions that were popular at the turn of the century, to other seated attractions that featured more sinister fare, like the Hell Gate and Fatal Wedding attractions of Wonderland at Revere Beach MA.

More modern variations include a newer type of ride, where the riders have guns in the cars, to shoot at ghost targets during the ride. Each rider gets a score, and there are placards at the end of the rides that tell you how well you’ve done by your score. I was lucky enough to try two of these on my Midwest coaster trip this year, the Scooby Doo Ghost ride at Kings Island, Kings Island, OH, and a turkey themed ride at Holiday World in Santa Claus, IN.  

Other older types of dark rides include the Old Mill rides, which were slowly moving boats that cruised past either bucolic or horrific scenes. Like many amusement attractions of the early 20th century, these attractions allowed young couples to get close to one another in the dark, an activity that was frowned upon in almost any other purview.  Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, PA has an excellent antique Old Mill ride that dates back to the turn of the century. They once also had at least two hard top dark rides, one of which burned down in the 90’s. The popularity of dark rides has never waned, and as long as there are people going to amusement parks, there will be people who want to be scared, even if it’s a gentle one.  Hold onto your loved ones, keep your hands in the ride at all times, and I’ll see you next month in the queue line.