Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? So recently, I've been watching a lot of
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube of theme park and amusement park rides. Man,
Speaker 1: there's so many on YouTube, and they're so good, like
Speaker 1: ultra high resolution ride throughs of various rides at parks
Speaker 1: that I'll probably never get a chance to visit myself.
Speaker 1: And that includes everything from thrill rides, of course, which
Speaker 1: I do love, though I'm now of an age where
Speaker 1: I can only do a couple per day or else
Speaker 1: I risk having motion sickness all day long. It's very
Speaker 1: frustrating because I used to be the kid who would
Speaker 1: just jump on a throw ride over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. Can't do that anymore. But one of my
Speaker 1: favorite types of ride actually is the thrill ride. It's
Speaker 1: the dark ride. Now, the definition of dark ride kind
Speaker 1: of depends upon the person who is defining it, so
Speaker 1: I'll give you my definition. To me, a dark ride
Speaker 1: is an indoor attraction in which you board some sort
Speaker 1: of vehicle. It could be a boat. It could actually
Speaker 1: float on a channel of water that winds its way
Speaker 1: through the attraction. It might be one of a series
Speaker 1: of vehicles mounted on a moving belt way, like the
Speaker 1: Omnimover system that you would find and say the Doom
Speaker 1: Buggies of Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction. It could be a
Speaker 1: suspended vehicle where the rail is actually above you, like
Speaker 1: Disney's Peter Pan attraction. In fact, I think I'll probably
Speaker 1: be referencing Disney a bit in this episode because a
Speaker 1: lot of my own personal experience on dark rides relates
Speaker 1: to Disney World. And you ride through the experience and
Speaker 1: along the way you see stuff that is interesting. That's
Speaker 1: like your basic dark ride, right. These rides have served
Speaker 1: different purposes throughout the years. Some of the early early
Speaker 1: dark rides gave young couples a chance to court one
Speaker 1: another during a time when public displays of affection were
Speaker 1: strictly taboo. We'll talk more about that in a moment,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, they are all intended to tell some
Speaker 1: sort of story. Now, sometimes it's not a full narrative,
Speaker 1: you know. There are plenty of dark rides that are
Speaker 1: in the haunted house genre that have no discernible, coherent
Speaker 1: story to speak about instead that just consist of a
Speaker 1: series of disconnected scenes of sometimes dubious terror inducing abilities,
Speaker 1: you know, like a skeleton leaning out at you or something.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you do get a full, although condensed story.
Speaker 1: And this should come as no surprise, because we humans,
Speaker 1: we love our stories. This podcast is, when you boil
Speaker 1: it down, just a way for me to tell stories
Speaker 1: to you. The story could be about how college drop
Speaker 1: out launched a company that served as a very efficient
Speaker 1: way of parting wealthy fools with their money allow you know, paronos.
Speaker 1: Or it might be about the most interesting products that
Speaker 1: never actually materialized. We framed things in terms of story,
Speaker 1: and dark rides are a physical manifestation of that, or
Speaker 1: at least they can be. And of course we make
Speaker 1: our own stories when we experience these rides. So I
Speaker 1: thought it might be fun to look back at the
Speaker 1: history of dark rides. Where did they come from? And
Speaker 1: how did they evolve over time? Well, let's start with
Speaker 1: the first question of where did they come from? And
Speaker 1: there's a simple answer for this, and then there's the
Speaker 1: more interesting, thorough and Jonathan style answer. At least it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me. But the simple answers. You could say
Speaker 1: they come from Kennyworth, Pennsylvania in the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: really the early twentieth century. But to really understand this,
Speaker 1: we have to go back a little bit further, all right,
Speaker 1: So way back in eighteen twenty five, the Stockton and
Speaker 1: Darlington Railway Company ordered a locomotive, a steam powered locomotive,
Speaker 1: from Robert Stevenson and Company. So Robert Stevenson, in turn
Speaker 1: was son of George Stevenson, sometimes known as the father
Speaker 1: of railways. These guys were in England where steam technology
Speaker 1: was really at the cornerstone of the Industrial Revolution. The
Speaker 1: purpose of this particular locomotive, called the Locomotion Number one,
Speaker 1: was to serve as a passenger train, which would be
Speaker 1: the first of its kind on a public railway. You know,
Speaker 1: they had had steam engines pulling carts that had people
Speaker 1: in them before, but this was the first time it
Speaker 1: was actually going to be on a public railway to
Speaker 1: become a conveyance of transportation. And this particular public railway
Speaker 1: was the Stockton and Darlington Railway. So the Locomotion Number
Speaker 1: one had its first official run on September twenty seventh,
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty five. It reportedly took about two hours to
Speaker 1: travel a grand total of eight point seven miles. That's
Speaker 1: not exactly burning up the track, but it's faster than walking. Now,
Speaker 1: the locomotive would become a utilitarian way of transporting people
Speaker 1: from one place to another, but it also could be
Speaker 1: a way to take in the sites of the surrounding countryside.
Speaker 1: It was a method of transport that could be both
Speaker 1: practical and leisurely, and eventually that thought would evolve into
Speaker 1: the philosophy behind various amusement rides. Some were more geared
Speaker 1: toward thrills, you know, having a locomotive pull you up
Speaker 1: a hill and then coast down the hill afterward, and
Speaker 1: some were meant to take riders past tableau of one
Speaker 1: sort or another. There were railways pleasure railways where they
Speaker 1: the people who operated the rail would even set up
Speaker 1: sort of a tableau for people to look at as
Speaker 1: they passed through different areas and you know, just give
Speaker 1: them something to look at. That kind of thing. That
Speaker 1: actually became an attraction at various places, particularly in the UK.
Speaker 1: All right, so there was that that was part of
Speaker 1: what was going on in the nineteenth century that would
Speaker 1: lead to the development of dark rides, but there was
Speaker 1: something else that would also be important that was happening
Speaker 1: across the pond. Here in the United States, let's talk
Speaker 1: about water powered saw mills. Now, maybe you've seen one
Speaker 1: of these in person, maybe you've seen, you know, footage
Speaker 1: of one, but if you haven't, just imagined. There's a
Speaker 1: wooden structure. Typically it's built alongside or even over a
Speaker 1: river or a significant stream. Often you're talking about a
Speaker 1: dammed waterway, so that there is a higher level of
Speaker 1: elevation where the water is being held back, and then
Speaker 1: you know the lower elevation beyond the dam, where water
Speaker 1: is at a much lower level. And then you have
Speaker 1: this wooden structure that's built right there that has a
Speaker 1: large water wheel on one side of it, and usually
Speaker 1: you have a trough that carries water from the elevated
Speaker 1: part of the water area and allows it to drop
Speaker 1: down over the top of the water wheel. You could
Speaker 1: have a water wheel that's just has the bottom making
Speaker 1: contact with the water itself, but the trough version was
Speaker 1: little more reliable, and so the water goes through the trough,
Speaker 1: it hits this water wheel, and you know, the water's
Speaker 1: just driven by gravity. You're not using like pumps or anything,
Speaker 1: and the water starts to turn this water wheel. It
Speaker 1: begins to rotate the water wheel. The water wheel is
Speaker 1: connected to an axle that connects via gears and cogs
Speaker 1: and a piston to power the up and down reciprocating
Speaker 1: motion of a large saw. So think of like a
Speaker 1: hand saw, but much much much bigger, and it's connected
Speaker 1: to wooden structures that themselves are connected to these cogs
Speaker 1: and gears, and so as the water wheel turns, it
Speaker 1: makes the saw go up and down. You would place
Speaker 1: lumber on a vice like platform that attached to a ratchet,
Speaker 1: so it could only go in one direction while the
Speaker 1: ratchet's engaged, and this platform, because it's also connected to
Speaker 1: this this system of gears and cogs, would push the
Speaker 1: lumber toward the saw, eventually making contact. The saw would
Speaker 1: start to cut through the lumber and it would go
Speaker 1: through most of the length of a log. It would usually,
Speaker 1: you know, it would stop like a couple of inches away,
Speaker 1: because otherwise your vice like platform would get sawn in
Speaker 1: half too, and that wouldn't make it very useful. But
Speaker 1: this ended up saving a lot of labor. You were
Speaker 1: making clever use of the natural elements of your area,
Speaker 1: and also things like gear ratios to create the right
Speaker 1: amount of force, and you didn't have to do all
Speaker 1: that backbreaking saw work yourself, just the last couple of
Speaker 1: inches per you know, board that you were making, So
Speaker 1: you're working smarter, not harder. You're letting the water take
Speaker 1: on the hard stuff. Really really clever, Like I recommend
Speaker 1: watching videos of it if you're interested in clever but
Speaker 1: relatively simple mechanical systems. It's fascinating stuff. But water powered sawmills,
Speaker 1: you know, they became really popular in the United States.
Speaker 1: The state of Pennsylvania had a ton of them. But
Speaker 1: then as steam engine technology reached a point where it
Speaker 1: was fairly reliable and not entirely dangerous. Early steam engines
Speaker 1: were known to be quite dangerous because the boilers had
Speaker 1: a tendency to explode if too much steam pressure was
Speaker 1: built up inside of them. While the steam powered sawmill
Speaker 1: began to make the water powered kind obsolete, and the
Speaker 1: steampowered versions could work even more efficiently than the water
Speaker 1: powered Once well, this meant that those water powered lumber
Speaker 1: mills became less useful, and many times they were just
Speaker 1: outright abandoned because you weren't going to get any business
Speaker 1: because of the steam powered lumber bills that were opening up.
Speaker 1: In fact, entire towns would be abandoned because the towns
Speaker 1: had grown up around the lumber industry, and without the
Speaker 1: water mill of the neighborhood and operation, there really wasn't
Speaker 1: enough industry to support the town, so folks would move away.
Speaker 1: The water powered mills just became known as old mills
Speaker 1: because you know, they were the steam mills were the
Speaker 1: new ones. And this would bring us back to storytelling,
Speaker 1: which I'll explain after we come back from this quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've got these old mills, these abandoned old saw mills. Well,
Speaker 1: when we encounter a mystery, such as a town filled
Speaker 1: with empty houses and shops that are just slowly going
Speaker 1: to decay, our imaginations begin to fill in the gaps
Speaker 1: of our knowledge and we start to ask ourselves questions
Speaker 1: could have led to this, to create this abandoned town?
Speaker 1: What stories are lingering in those empty buildings? And words
Speaker 1: like ghost or haunted start to pop up. The undeniably
Speaker 1: eerie environments inspire us to imagine specters and phantoms around
Speaker 1: every corner. Now, the truth is probably far more mundane.
Speaker 1: You know, people left because there was no more work
Speaker 1: at the lumbermill. But when all we have are the
Speaker 1: structures and whatever else was left behind, we start to
Speaker 1: create spooky stories to explain stuff. Now, if you're the
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial sort, you might think, huh, folks, sure are interested
Speaker 1: in abandoned places, but it's usually not safe to explore
Speaker 1: such abandoned spots on your own. What if we could
Speaker 1: simulate those types of spaces and tap into that curiosity,
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes imagine as run wild, and to
Speaker 1: do so in a controlled and relatively safe environment. I
Speaker 1: bet folks would hand over a nickel to experience that
Speaker 1: world's turn on such thoughts. Now, I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: when the very first Old Mill ride opened. I do
Speaker 1: not know for sure which ride was first. I do
Speaker 1: know that the one that is the oldest and is
Speaker 1: still in operation is actually called the Old Mill, and
Speaker 1: it opened all the way back in nineteen o one.
Speaker 1: It may not be the very first one, but it's
Speaker 1: the oldest one still in operation. It has had several
Speaker 1: different names over its history, including one that deals with
Speaker 1: a certain kitty cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna.
Speaker 1: Boy Howdy, did that ride get some terrible criticism, But
Speaker 1: these days it's back to what it used to be.
Speaker 1: It's known simply as the Old Mill's. Particular ride is
Speaker 1: located in Kennywood, Pennsylvania, not too far from Pittsburgh. Kennywood
Speaker 1: itself takes its name from a family who settled that
Speaker 1: part of Pennsylvania, the Kenney family. Anthony Herron Kinney, who
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen thirty five, made his money in
Speaker 1: coal or possibly farming, or maybe both. Historical records aren't
Speaker 1: in full agreement on this point. His family had what
Speaker 1: I must imagine was some picturesque land that Anthony repurposed
Speaker 1: into a picnic ground, So the area became associated with
Speaker 1: leisure since shortly after the American Civil War. During the
Speaker 1: Civil War it was associated with battle because one was
Speaker 1: fought near there. But skip to the late eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: Then this banker named Andrew Mellon, who came from a
Speaker 1: family of wealthy bankers, leased the picnic land on the
Speaker 1: Kenney estate to build what is called a trolley park.
Speaker 1: By the way, this Melon was one of the fellows
Speaker 1: who would eventually create what would become Carnegie Mellon University
Speaker 1: or Carnegie Mellon if you prefer I always pronounced it
Speaker 1: Carnegie because that's how Carnegie pronounced it. But Carnegie Melon.
Speaker 1: So you might say, what the heck is a trolley park?
Speaker 1: What is this thing this guy made? Well, Companies that
Speaker 1: ran trolley lines would sometimes construct a destination at the
Speaker 1: end of the lines themselves in order to entice folks
Speaker 1: to come out and use the street cars, even on
Speaker 1: days when people weren't heading into work. So this was
Speaker 1: a way to maximize fairs sales of tickets. You know,
Speaker 1: you build something interesting at the end of the line,
Speaker 1: and sure enough families are going to go and check
Speaker 1: it out, and you can still sell tickets even if
Speaker 1: it ain't a workday. In some ways, the famous Coney
Speaker 1: Island was a kind of trolley park, though Coney Island
Speaker 1: was also a seaside destination in its own right before
Speaker 1: all of that, but the amusements at Coney Island were
Speaker 1: built as kind of a trolley park. So Andrew Mellon
Speaker 1: was looking for a way to make even more money
Speaker 1: from the local population of Pittsburgh, so he got the
Speaker 1: idea to build a trolley park on Kenny's property. Before
Speaker 1: the turn of the century, he had built a few
Speaker 1: attractions there. There was a dance hall, there was a carousel,
Speaker 1: a couple of other things. He used electricity there. Electricity
Speaker 1: was a pretty new thing in the United States, and
Speaker 1: so it was all lit up. It was a fancy
Speaker 1: place to go. And the trolley park's name became kenney Wood.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen oh one we would get the dark
Speaker 1: Ride that is now the oldest one still in operation today.
Speaker 1: So the Old Mill Ride recreated those forbidden abandoned locations
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier. The folks around Pittsburgh really
Speaker 1: familiar with sawmills. There were lots of abandoned ones in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: According to Graham Stanley Baker, who a research paper about
Speaker 1: dark rides, there was an average of one sawmill every
Speaker 1: eighteen square kilometers in Pennsylvania. They were littering up the
Speaker 1: place and yet still mysterious. And so this ride would
Speaker 1: let folks get a taste of what it might be
Speaker 1: like to explore the ruins of an abandoned lumber town.
Speaker 1: This particular ride was a boat ride, one in which
Speaker 1: guests would take a seat on a small boat that
Speaker 1: would meander its way through a canal that took the
Speaker 1: riders past various scenes. By being clever with light sources,
Speaker 1: the ride creators could direct attention to specific sites and
Speaker 1: keep other things in the dark. This gave the ride
Speaker 1: builders the chance to construct the story they wanted to
Speaker 1: tell and make sure that riders are directing their attention
Speaker 1: to specific elements. Now, the Old Mill style of ride
Speaker 1: proved popular, and it also was relatively easy to maintain. Right,
Speaker 1: you didn't have that many moving parts. You didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about water quality and changing that out and
Speaker 1: filtering it out and cleaning it occasionally because otherwise, man
Speaker 1: could that get nasty. But typically the mechanical parts consisted
Speaker 1: of a paddle wheel that would create the gentle current
Speaker 1: that would carry boats through the pathway. So you didn't
Speaker 1: have to have motors on any of the boats or anything.
Speaker 1: The water itself just had a current to it that
Speaker 1: would naturally push the boats through the path And so
Speaker 1: other trolley parks and later amusement parks began to make
Speaker 1: their own version of the Old Mill ride, themed to
Speaker 1: various things. A lot of them were themed to the
Speaker 1: Old West. I've seen a ton of Old Mill ride footage,
Speaker 1: and it's a lot of stuff about drifting through like
Speaker 1: a Western landscape, like saloons and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Something else that would kind of merge with dark rides
Speaker 1: much much later on was called phantom rides. This one's
Speaker 1: interesting because the riders don't actually go anywhere. They're stationary.
Speaker 1: This type of attraction leveraged a new kind of art form,
Speaker 1: that of cinema. See back when folks were still experimenting
Speaker 1: with film, before we would get stuff like an actual story,
Speaker 1: we got footage of all kinds of things you've probably
Speaker 1: seen cliche examples of early snippets of film, like a
Speaker 1: train going into a tunnel, for example, or coming toward
Speaker 1: the screen, and reportedly people in the theater panicked and
Speaker 1: ran because they felt the train was going to burst
Speaker 1: through and crush them. Well, one thing that some early
Speaker 1: experimenters slash filmmakers did was they would strap a camera
Speaker 1: operator to the front of a vehicle like a train,
Speaker 1: and the camera operator would shoot footage as the vehicle
Speaker 1: moved through a landscape, so you kind of get this
Speaker 1: first person view of passing through an area. And it
Speaker 1: was a way to virtually visit places that you might
Speaker 1: not ever get to go and real life kind of
Speaker 1: like me watching these YouTube videos so you could watch
Speaker 1: as the vista of say Switzerland, passed around you, and
Speaker 1: crowds really liked it. And one feller had this idea
Speaker 1: of how to take this basic concept and make it
Speaker 1: even more immersive. That feller was William Keefe, who thought,
Speaker 1: if you built a fake railway car and you outfitted
Speaker 1: it with windows that looked out onto screens on all sides,
Speaker 1: you could project a panorama of images on those screens,
Speaker 1: they may look like the car was actually traveling through
Speaker 1: these landscapes. And if you know, you hired some folks
Speaker 1: who would stand on either side of the railway car
Speaker 1: out of sight, and then you rock the car a
Speaker 1: little bit, or maybe used a wind machine to blow
Speaker 1: air at the passengers. It would really boost the illusion
Speaker 1: that they were actually traveling through those locations. But Keith
Speaker 1: didn't have the cash to build his idea himself. Then
Speaker 1: he met an influential man in Kansas City, Missouri, named
Speaker 1: George C. Hale. Hale had served as the fire chief
Speaker 1: for Kansas City. He had even participated in international competitions
Speaker 1: between different firefighting companies that had traveled in Europe. As
Speaker 1: a result of that, and he had accumulated a decent
Speaker 1: amount of pocket change. So Keith tells Hale his idea
Speaker 1: and Hale agrees to back it, and they patented the
Speaker 1: idea in nineteen o four, and then a little bit
Speaker 1: later Hale would buy out Keith, and at the nineteen
Speaker 1: oh four Louisiana Purchase Exhibition or the Saint Louis Exhibition,
Speaker 1: Hale brought his idea and set it up and he
Speaker 1: called it Hale's Tours and Scenes of the World. A
Speaker 1: little subtitle on the poster informed you that trains would
Speaker 1: leave every ten minutes. Of course, these trains didn't go
Speaker 1: anywhere themselves. They were stationary. They would just appear to
Speaker 1: go because of the screens. It was a simulation and
Speaker 1: really a dressed up film of trains traveling through different places.
Speaker 1: But it was a big hit. It was big enough
Speaker 1: for Hailed to make a whole bunch of these, like
Speaker 1: hundreds of them, for the United States and beyond. Like
Speaker 1: they became a popular attraction, not just in the US
Speaker 1: but also in Europe. They were something of a novelty
Speaker 1: because after you experienced at once, you didn't have much
Speaker 1: reason to do it again. But you know, they generated
Speaker 1: a lot of first time foot traffic, virtually speaking early on,
Speaker 1: and elements of the experience would find their way into
Speaker 1: future dark rides. So while this particular example was short lived,
Speaker 1: elements of it would have ultimately come back and be
Speaker 1: reincorporated into the dark ride experience. Now around here is
Speaker 1: also when we got a variation of the old Mill
Speaker 1: ride known as the Tunnel of Love. It's actually pretty
Speaker 1: remarkable how this particular concept has outlived the real thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure there may be a few Tunnel
Speaker 1: of Love themed attractions out there, but I've never seen
Speaker 1: one in person, and I think it's a fairly safe
Speaker 1: bet that most of y'all I've never seen one either,
Speaker 1: let alone been on one. I'm not saying none of
Speaker 1: you have, so don't at me about this, but I
Speaker 1: bet most of you have not. And yet the Tunnel
Speaker 1: of Love is iconic, right, I mean, if I say
Speaker 1: Tunnel of Love, people immediately have an image of what
Speaker 1: that means. It's something that's found its way into countless films,
Speaker 1: TV shows, cartoons, lots more. In fact, I think, let's see,
Speaker 1: the most recent version I saw was in season one
Speaker 1: of Schmigadoon. There's a tunnel of love in that season,
Speaker 1: and the reason why it's iconic gets back to stories,
Speaker 1: all right. So what the heck was a Tunnel of Love? Generally,
Speaker 1: it was another boat ride, and it was one where
Speaker 1: boats had these little narrow benches, which meant that a
Speaker 1: pair of riders would need to be pretty snug with
Speaker 1: each other in order to fit. Moreover, it had lots
Speaker 1: of dark sections in the ride. In some cases, the
Speaker 1: ride was intended to play up to the more romantical
Speaker 1: of motivations, with pleasant scenes that you would pass by.
Speaker 1: Other versions of the ride were designed to be spooky,
Speaker 1: haunted experiences and thus encourage couples to huddle closer for safety,
Speaker 1: and they served an important social purpose. They gave couples
Speaker 1: a bit of privacy where they could express some physical
Speaker 1: affection to one another out of sight of all the
Speaker 1: lucky loose. In fact, this is a big deal. A
Speaker 1: guide on etiquette in America that was published in nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred declared that kissing in public was quote a reprehensible
Speaker 1: custom and should not be tolerated in good society end quote.
Speaker 1: And that would be the prevailing opinion in America for
Speaker 1: a few decades. So the Tunnel of love represented a
Speaker 1: safe space to avoid scandal and ignominy, and I'll still
Speaker 1: allow couples to mockingmit their smooch chums as it were,
Speaker 1: that is, to smooch up a storm. Of course, couples
Speaker 1: would sometimes seek opportunities to steal a kiss or three
Speaker 1: on other types of dark rides. The Tunnel of Love
Speaker 1: might have been the most overt version for this activity,
Speaker 1: but really, when opportunity comes a knock in your lips,
Speaker 1: best be a lock in. And importantly, these rides also
Speaker 1: gave opportunity to people who didn't conform to society's concepts
Speaker 1: of gender and gender rules and allow them to express
Speaker 1: affection without fear of putting themselves in harm's way. I'm
Speaker 1: sure their entire research papers about the role of dark
Speaker 1: rides with regard to the LGBTQ plus community. The Tunnel
Speaker 1: of Love type rides, the ones that were implicitly or
Speaker 1: explicitly for making out only enjoyed a brief moment in
Speaker 1: the sun or the dark attitudes in America about displays
Speaker 1: of public affection, at least between heterosexual couples with people
Speaker 1: who identified as male and female. They would slowly change
Speaker 1: over time, and they were helped in large part by
Speaker 1: the burgeoning film industry, which turned out romance films at
Speaker 1: an alarming pace, and suddenly a behavior that was once
Speaker 1: seen as something that must absolutely never happen in front
Speaker 1: of other people under any circumstances was now being displayed
Speaker 1: on enormous screens across the United States. Plus folks did
Speaker 1: all sorts of wacky things in the process, like the
Speaker 1: dainty lifting of a leg in mid smooch. Like the
Speaker 1: glamorization of kissing was a byproduct of this era as well,
Speaker 1: and so Hollywood really helped usher in an era in
Speaker 1: which folks could occasionally get away with giving a peck
Speaker 1: or two in public without immediately being labeled as the
Speaker 1: shame of the entire town, which was very progressive, but
Speaker 1: it did lead to the end of the tunnel of love,
Speaker 1: because if you didn't need a space to do this,
Speaker 1: and you could do it anywhere, why would you pay
Speaker 1: money to go in a rinky boat in a dark tunnel. Okay,
Speaker 1: we got more to talk about with dark rides in
Speaker 1: just a moment, but first, let's take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's get back to dark rides. In nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: Leon S. Cassidy, who got involved in the entertainment biz
Speaker 1: when he first took a job as a piano player
Speaker 1: for movie houses that were showing silent films. Ended up
Speaker 1: saving up his money and formed a partnership with Marvin Rempfer,
Speaker 1: and together they filed a patent for an invention called
Speaker 1: an amusement railway. This was a single rail system that
Speaker 1: many dark rides would use in the decades ahead and
Speaker 1: still in use today for a lot of dark rides.
Speaker 1: The patents summary includes the description quote The front portion
Speaker 1: of each car is guided by a wheel engaging a track,
Speaker 1: while the rear portion of said car is supported by
Speaker 1: wheels which run upon a floor which supports the track.
Speaker 1: The rear wheels being spaced from the track so that
Speaker 1: the rear end of the car may lash or otherwise
Speaker 1: move transversely of the track end quote. So one wheel
Speaker 1: in front, which would be on a rail, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like a train wheel. It's got the indentation, so
Speaker 1: it is snug to the rail, and then two wheels
Speaker 1: in the back that would run along the floor on
Speaker 1: either side of the rail. One of those rear wheels
Speaker 1: would be free to move of the axle so that
Speaker 1: it can make really sharp turns, and the other one
Speaker 1: would be connected to the axle so that it just
Speaker 1: moved in time with the axle itself. The amusement railway
Speaker 1: would conduct electricity, and this would provide the energy needed
Speaker 1: for an electric motor in the cars themselves to propel
Speaker 1: guests through the amusement. So rather than the old mill
Speaker 1: rides which used a current of water to push people through,
Speaker 1: and this one, the cars themselves would have a motor
Speaker 1: that would move them through the attraction. The motor would
Speaker 1: drive the rear wheel of the vehicle. The front wheel
Speaker 1: again is connected to the rail itself. And further, the
Speaker 1: inventors intended such a track to be used within a
Speaker 1: dark ride, in particular because the patent says, quote preferably
Speaker 1: the pleasure ride portion of the track is within a
Speaker 1: darkened building, and a further object of the invention is
Speaker 1: to provide entrances and exit vestibules for said building through
Speaker 1: which the track passes. Said vestibules being divided with car
Speaker 1: opened self closing doors so arranged that light is excluded
Speaker 1: from the building when a car is either entering or
Speaker 1: leaving end quote. So the dark ride part is important,
Speaker 1: so much so that. The patent even says the doors
Speaker 1: going in and now the building need to be self
Speaker 1: closing so that you don't let light into the dark room.
Speaker 1: The illustrations on this patent include a simple layout for
Speaker 1: such a ride, with the rail following a circuitous curving
Speaker 1: path through the inside of a building, and it will
Speaker 1: take the riders through various scenes. The type of ride
Speaker 1: became known as a pretzel ride because like a pretzel,
Speaker 1: the rail would appear to twist back on itself, though
Speaker 1: never crossing over itself because then you could have collisions
Speaker 1: and stuff, and Cassidy and Renfer created the Pretzel Amusement
Speaker 1: Ride Company, which would manufacture such rides for parks and
Speaker 1: traveling carnivals. This kind of ride had some obvious advantages
Speaker 1: over old mill style dark rides. Namely, it was much
Speaker 1: easier to put them together because you didn't have to
Speaker 1: dig out canals or put together water tight troughs to
Speaker 1: hold a boat, or manage thousands of gallons of water.
Speaker 1: So it served as an alternative ride model that was
Speaker 1: more accessible to would be amusement park owners, and particularly
Speaker 1: to traveling amusement parks or traveling carnivals. Another important invention
Speaker 1: in the dark ride history was the black light, which
Speaker 1: was not made specifically for dark rides, but it would
Speaker 1: become heavily used by dark rides. So a black light
Speaker 1: is a fluorescent bulb that emits ultraviolet light that when
Speaker 1: it hits fluorescent materials, causes them to emit visible light. So,
Speaker 1: in brief, a fluorescent lamp has a bulb that holds
Speaker 1: a low pressure gas inside it, and it's typically a
Speaker 1: mixture of one of the noble asses along with some
Speaker 1: mercury vapor. When you run a current through the bulb,
Speaker 1: you have these little emitters inside the bulb that heat up,
Speaker 1: and when they get hot enough, they start to release
Speaker 1: electrons into the gas inside the bulb and this ionizes
Speaker 1: the gas. It becomes a plasma. Plasma is an ionized gas,
Speaker 1: and the plasma begins to emit ultraviolet radiation, which we
Speaker 1: can't see directly, but we can see when it hits
Speaker 1: fluorescent material and makes it fluoresce light up. Now, you're
Speaker 1: typical fluorescent bulb used in places like offices has a
Speaker 1: coating along the inside of the bulb itself that actually
Speaker 1: absorbs this ultra violet radiation and then emits visible light.
Speaker 1: Because otherwise we would just have black lights in our offices,
Speaker 1: and while that might make posters look real groovy and stuff,
Speaker 1: it would not be conducive to getting stuff done. You
Speaker 1: could also just use this approach to make a bulb
Speaker 1: that just amidst UV radiation, which is really what a
Speaker 1: black light is, although you might have black lights that
Speaker 1: block specific bands of UV radiation because you know, if
Speaker 1: you're exposed to UV long enough, you get sunburnt. Pairing
Speaker 1: a black light with objects that are painted with fluorescent paint,
Speaker 1: you can create an effect where you have objects that
Speaker 1: are brightly lit in an otherwise pitch black environment. Because
Speaker 1: we cannot see ultra violet light, we don't see that
Speaker 1: the whole environment is lit up by that light, right,
Speaker 1: we can't see that, but we can see the stuff
Speaker 1: that is reacting to the ultra violet light. And so
Speaker 1: black lights can illuminate vibrant, colorful objects in an otherwise
Speaker 1: pitch black environment. It's perfect or spooky horror themed attractions.
Speaker 1: A lot of horror themed dark rides use black lights
Speaker 1: to illuminate the various scares that are along the way.
Speaker 1: It's also used in less sinister stuff. Some of the
Speaker 1: dark rides at Disney Parts still use this method. If
Speaker 1: you go in, you might notice that your socks, or
Speaker 1: your shirt, or your hat or whatever is glowing because
Speaker 1: there are black lights at play. William H. Biler got
Speaker 1: a patent for a black light invention back in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty five. I'm not exactly sure when the first amusement
Speaker 1: parks started using black lights, but it's definitely a popular
Speaker 1: technique in dark rights today. So I tried to find
Speaker 1: out what was one of the earliest or perhaps first
Speaker 1: dark right to use black lights, But turns out carneys
Speaker 1: are not the best historians. Another invention that would affect
Speaker 1: darkwright design was the chain lift. So Philip Hinkel gets
Speaker 1: the credit for using a chain lift to pull a
Speaker 1: roller coaster up the top of a lift hill, whereupon
Speaker 1: the roller coaster would then depend upon gravity to propel
Speaker 1: it to the end of its track. So a chain
Speaker 1: lift is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a
Speaker 1: chain belt, so it's a really, really really big loop
Speaker 1: of heavy duty chain. It engages with a drive motor,
Speaker 1: which will cause the chain to rotate around some otherwise
Speaker 1: inert pulleys, and the chain will end up going the
Speaker 1: length of the lift hill. The roller coaster cars have
Speaker 1: a hook like latch on the underside of the car.
Speaker 1: Thus latch is called a chain dog. So when the
Speaker 1: roller coaster car is moved up against the base of
Speaker 1: the lift hill, the chain dog catches on the chain itself,
Speaker 1: so the chain then pulls the roller coaster up along
Speaker 1: with it all the way to the top of the hill,
Speaker 1: whereupon the chain dog disengages with the chain and once
Speaker 1: the roller coaster is over the hill enough, then it
Speaker 1: goes the rest of the way through gravity. These days,
Speaker 1: also roller coasters have anti rollback devices. Essentially, these are
Speaker 1: linear hatchets. They catch on to the track so that
Speaker 1: if the chain were to fail, then the roller coaster
Speaker 1: would not roll backward. It would just stop in place
Speaker 1: because the ratchet would not allow for backwards motion. That's
Speaker 1: what actually makes the clackety clack clack sound as you
Speaker 1: are on a roller coaster that's going up a chain lift.
Speaker 1: If you're hearing like a clack clack, high clack clack,
Speaker 1: that's that linear ratchet, the anti rollback device. That's that's
Speaker 1: it's like a saw tooth and it's it's forward motion.
Speaker 1: It allows to click against the track itself, but it
Speaker 1: does not allow it to go backward. It's a basic
Speaker 1: ratchet operation there. Anyway, about half a century after Hinkle
Speaker 1: first used this for a roller coaster pretzel style ride,
Speaker 1: manufacturers began to make use of chain lifts themselves, which
Speaker 1: gave them the opportunity to make two story dark rides.
Speaker 1: They could, you know, end up creating a longer ride
Speaker 1: experience in a smaller footprint sized building, which was great
Speaker 1: for traveling carnivals. Right. You just have a little chain
Speaker 1: lift hill there that lifts the car up to the
Speaker 1: second floor, and then you can let them navigate through that.
Speaker 1: They eventually come down a hill, they navigate through the
Speaker 1: first floor, and then they come to the offloading onloading
Speaker 1: section of the ride. It became very popular with traveling carnivals.
Speaker 1: A lot of the haunted dark ride attractions I have
Speaker 1: seen at these carnivals are two story versions. Now, there's
Speaker 1: a ton more to say about dark rides, but I
Speaker 1: do want another piece to fall into place before I
Speaker 1: wrap this particular episode up, because I feel like I
Speaker 1: could do at least one more, probably a couple more
Speaker 1: episodes about dark rides, so we can kind of think
Speaker 1: of this as dark rides one on one. But the
Speaker 1: other piece I want to talk about it is actually
Speaker 1: not a technological piece. It's the story. So a lot
Speaker 1: of dark rides had you stuff to look at, but
Speaker 1: most of the time it was a fairly disjointed experience.
Speaker 1: In haunted House style attractions, it was some sort of
Speaker 1: monster or a ghost or gooley or a grizzly scene
Speaker 1: that you would see briefly, and then you would turn
Speaker 1: a corner and it would be a totally different one,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't really necessarily follow what you just saw, like,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be connected thematically necessarily other than generally gruesome
Speaker 1: or scary thing. But rarely did you have a full narrative.
Speaker 1: Walt Disney would change that with Disneyland. Now, some of
Speaker 1: the rides in Disneyland definitely fall into the general dark
Speaker 1: ride category, and unlike their counterparts, they would try to
Speaker 1: tell a story. When Disneyland first opened in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: it did so with a few such rides that were
Speaker 1: available to guests. Snow White's Enchanted Wish, Peter Pan's Flight,
Speaker 1: and Mister Toad's Wild Ride were all verys of dark rides,
Speaker 1: and all three told condensed stories, though I should add
Speaker 1: the Mister Toad Ride included a pretty amazing deviation from
Speaker 1: the story, not just of The Wind and the Willows,
Speaker 1: but even the Disney version of The Wind and the Willows, because,
Speaker 1: as I recall, you end up going to Hell in
Speaker 1: that ride, and that was not in the movie, or
Speaker 1: at least the Underworld. If not Hell, you go to
Speaker 1: the underworld at the end of Mister Toad's wild ride.
Speaker 1: That wasn't in the film, but it is in the ride,
Speaker 1: which makes it truly amazing. So really, I guess I
Speaker 1: should say Mister Toad was inspired by The Wind and
Speaker 1: the Willows, but not a condensed version of the Disney
Speaker 1: film adaptation, unlike Peter Pan and snow White. My point
Speaker 1: here is that Disneyland emphasized narrative in Dark Rides more
Speaker 1: than what had come before it. So Disney himself understood
Speaker 1: the power of stories, and he used technology to bring
Speaker 1: people into story in ways that they otherwise could never do.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just about thrills or delighting the audience. It
Speaker 1: was about enveloping people within the tale itself. It actually
Speaker 1: reminds me of how classic Disney fairytale movies would begin
Speaker 1: with a book that would open and then we the viewer,
Speaker 1: would be brought into the story through the book. Disney
Speaker 1: wanted to do the same thing with the park, but
Speaker 1: for real zies to a point anyway, some theme parks
Speaker 1: would attempt to mimic what Disney did, to varying degrees
Speaker 1: of success, one of which I got to experience. So
Speaker 1: here in Georgia at six Flags Over Georgia, once upon
Speaker 1: a time we had a ride called Tales of the Okefinoki.
Speaker 1: It was sort of based on the work of Joel
Speaker 1: Chandler Harris's the man who shared the Uncle Remus Stories,
Speaker 1: which Disney would actually use as the basis for the
Speaker 1: film Song of the South. But Six Flags Over Georgia
Speaker 1: didn't exactly have the rights to this, so it was
Speaker 1: all kind of a vague reference to the Uncle Remus
Speaker 1: stories without it being too overtly Disney light because that
Speaker 1: would have brought probably some pretty serious litigation against the company.
Speaker 1: And again the setting was the Okefinoki Swamps, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of a combo there. I have vague memories of
Speaker 1: this ride because I'm actually old enough to have gone
Speaker 1: on it when I was a kid, but it closed
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty for a few reasons, the big one
Speaker 1: being that there was a fire that affected that attraction,
Speaker 1: but also it was just generally not the best designed ride,
Speaker 1: so they closed it down. They used the same track
Speaker 1: in the same pathway. It's a boat ride, so use
Speaker 1: the exact same thing to house a second ride, which
Speaker 1: originally was called the Monster Plantation, but then after a
Speaker 1: refurbishment and some careful thought about how the word plantation
Speaker 1: has some pretty nasty connotations to it, it is now
Speaker 1: called the Monster Mansion. I mean, I'm still of the
Speaker 1: the rich opinion, so I still have issues with mansions,
Speaker 1: but not nearly the same as plantations. Well, today, dark
Speaker 1: rides can be augmented with more high tech features. For example,
Speaker 1: the Amazing Adventures of Spider Man at Universal's Islands of
Speaker 1: Adventure in Orlando uses motion simulation and three D projections
Speaker 1: and three D glasses to create an immersive experience along
Speaker 1: with practical effects that are happening in the actual environment,
Speaker 1: including fire effects. It's pretty darn neat so I will
Speaker 1: most likely revisit this particular topic and go more into
Speaker 1: the history and evolution of the dark ride, because I
Speaker 1: think there's so many cool stories like I think we
Speaker 1: can do almost an entire episode about the Omnimover, for example,
Speaker 1: technology that Disney developed that allows for a continuous operation
Speaker 1: of vehicles and greatly increases the ride capacity of an attraction,
Speaker 1: well at least if you really pack them in there,
Speaker 1: like the doom Buggies of Haunted Mansion. For things like
Speaker 1: Peter Pan's flight, you're looking at a really long wait
Speaker 1: unless you get there early in the morning. Folks who
Speaker 1: are familiar with Disney know that all too well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is just a little hint of it. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I could also talk about things like animatronics as well
Speaker 1: as other effects. There's some great effects that have been
Speaker 1: used to varying degrees of success in dark rides that
Speaker 1: involve creating walls of mist that you can project on
Speaker 1: and create almost like a holographic sort of experience, which
Speaker 1: is incredibly impressive when it works and really disappointing when
Speaker 1: it doesn't. So I will likely do more episodes in
Speaker 1: this range because I do really really love these kinds
Speaker 1: of rides. I love them for the technology, I love
Speaker 1: them for the storytelling. I love being able to just
Speaker 1: inhabit a different world for a short while I love
Speaker 1: sharing that experience with loved ones. I have two nieces
Speaker 1: who just their reactions to these things are priceless. So
Speaker 1: to me, this is one of those technologies that, when
Speaker 1: it's done well, really ends up being an incredibly fun time.
Speaker 1: Even if you were to be the cynical type and
Speaker 1: talk about how it's ultimately a way to sell tickets, Yes, sure,
Speaker 1: I get it, you have to have capitalism in there,
Speaker 1: otherwise who's going to pay for the upkeep of the
Speaker 1: attraction itself. But it doesn't take away from the enjoyment
Speaker 1: of the actual experience when you're in it, at least
Speaker 1: not in my opinion. So we'll come back to this.
Speaker 1: We'll do more episodes about dark rides in the future,
Speaker 1: and we'll dive into some of the other technologies being used,
Speaker 1: things like augmented reality, three D projection, the animatronics, like
Speaker 1: I said, and even things like trackless ride systems, because
Speaker 1: there are those as well being used in dark rides,
Speaker 1: and all of them are fascinating, But they're all built
Speaker 1: on top of this basic idea of having a controlled
Speaker 1: environment where people can enter a world they otherwise could
Speaker 1: not or should not go into, and how to really
Speaker 1: make those imaginations pop. Okay, that's it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed it. If you would like to reach
Speaker 1: out with suggestions for future episodes, please do so. You
Speaker 1: can do it on Twitter. The handle for the show
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