Spooky rides are a staple of America's amusement parks and have influenced everything from films to TV shows and video games. Think Disney's adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes or the grand finale of the Woody Harrelson starrer, Zombieland.
These experiences (also known as dark rides) are typically indoor attractions with detailed storytelling and immersive environments that feature a ride vehicle that follows a serpentine track through a series of narrated scenes populated by animatronic figures.
They have been around for more than a century, but they are disappearing, one by one. The advent of cinema halls, TV shows, gaming platforms, and streaming platforms has gradually weakened the ghoulish attraction people had for them.
A 'dark ride' has cars along zig-zag winding tracks (some known as 'pretzel tracks') inside an open room, with several spooky things jumping out at you in pitch darkness. They have a cult following all over the world, with websites and Reddit threads dedicated to their favourites. Now a rather unique project is documenting the rides (and trying to resurrect some) before they are gone.
The Dark Ride Project was started by Joel Zika, a professor of design who travels around the world with his 3-D camera rig capturing the rides. Zika's project doesn't just track these rides but also points out pretty interesting pop culture links such as their early influence on horror effects in movies.
You can get a rough feel of the rides around the world through the videos using VR. Along with shooting using VR tech, accelerometer data is used for the visuals to figure out a car's twists and hiccups to get as close to the actual experience as possible. Yes, you won't get the same feel as you would if you were actually experiencing the ride, but the Dark Ride Project is also like a documenting/conservation project for this ephemera that was once a part of popular culture, some of which date back a hundred years.
The project is also documenting rides outside the US. For instance, Blackpool Pleasure Beach in England where the team shot at one of the oldest dark rides in the world.
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