Saturday, January 30, 2016

The Historical Development of Themed Space: The History of the Dark Ride

Author's note: This project was completed as a team assignment for DEA2510: History of Design Futures, a class taught by Chad Randl for the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. My partner, the talented and theme park-savvy Justin Horst, and I were given the prompt of tracing the full history of a design trend. We chose to examine the theme park dark ride, not just in its modern conception but through its most basic and fundamental characteristics. Our final piece features a video narrative of this history and an accompanying writeup. The Sketchup model includes both original work and material taken from the Google Warehouse, used here under fair use guidelines.





The Dark Ride: a Contemporary Definition
A dark ride possesses three core characteristics:
-       A narrative arc
-       Physical movement through a space
-       Sense of reality or immersion

This definition excludes some experiences that are recognizably not dark rides. Examples that are NOT dark rides:
-      Film experiences alone, including motion simulators (no physical movement)
-       Museum exhibits (no sense of reality or immersion)
-       Roller coasters (no narrative arc)


The strength of this definition is in its flexibility of scope and versatility as technologies evolve. This timeline traces examples back as far as the late nineteenth century that possess these characteristics and can be recognizable as dark rides to the general public.

Additionally, the experiences listed as NOT dark rides above can be amended to formally become a dark ride by adding the missing characteristic. Motion simulators have been put on moving tracks to create physical movement through a space; museums are increasingly hiring theme park designers to make exhibits more immersive; roller coasters often are themed to tell a story.

There is no reason to present a Stewartian “I know it when I see it” vagueness with the dark ride. Although the forms presented in this timeline will seem familiar and their relations to each other coherent, this definition provides a framework for academic analysis and discussion.


The Historical Development of the Dark Ride
Though the dark ride in its modern conception did not arise until the late nineteenth century, that first true dark ride was in no ways a historical anomaly.

The narrative roots of the dark ride can be seen as far back as the cave paintings of the Paleolithic Era 40,000 years ago. Filmmaker Werner Herzog, who’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams documents the Chauvet Cave paintings in France, describes a “new grammar of imagery” in which the cave paintings suggest a narrative and focus “on something we do not see” (Zorich, 2011). He describes how the cave paintings would seemingly come to life when animated by torchlight, suggesting that they may represent an early history of animation.

The relationship between spatiality and narrative can similarly be traced to early human histories. Zonan (1984) contends that oral storytelling was driven by an awareness of space extending beyond that of simply the setting on which the narrative takes place. He notes three levels of spatial structuring in narrative: the topographical (static space as a setting), the chronotopic (structure imposed on space by time), and the textual (how verbal text structures on space). This multi-dimensionality was implicitly understood by storytellers, who constructed their tales according to spatiality as much as chronology.

Despite these early interactions of story and space, it would be much longer before immersion was integrated with the two. Howard (2002) cites Euclid’s Optics from 300 B.C. as laying the foundation of the geometric basis of perception and Ptolemy as advancing to an analysis of binocular vision four hundred years later. Perspective would become a focus of art and architecture in the Italian Renaissance, and this focus on realism produced early examples of trompe l’oeil (optical illusions, literally “deceive the eye”). Just preceding the formal bounds of the Renaissance, the St. Francis fresco cycle at Assisi created a sense of narrated immersion via 28 panels depicting the life of St. Francis utilizing various techniques of forced perspective. Attributed to either Giotto or Cavallini in 1296, the experience of viewing the cycle was so realistic to its contemporaries that viewers would often reach out and touch the wall expecting it to recede in space (Wukitsch, n.d.).

Later thoughts on immersion would arise in conjunction with the Romantic sublime. Nature was seen as fully sensory enterprise, and the sublime was the experience of natural forces exceeding human abilities to frame and control (Berleant, 1993). The Romantic garden attempted to replicate the sublime through an artificial recreation of natural landscapes. Kent’s work is illustrative of immersion in Romantic landscapes, creating the illusion of greater, harmonious spaces via the “Concealment of Bounds”. This technique used limited viewlines and hidden features to create a spatial progression of experience and block sights that would break the intended emotional narrative (Munro, 2002).

These experiments with narrative, space, and immersion would be brought into a crucial context through the development of the industrial society. Commodity culture, defined by Marxist theory as the assignment of economic value to objects previously void of economic meaning, came to dominate western nations as industrial processes changed methods of production. One such object was leisure, which became commoditized through the privatization of public entertainment, as seen in the single-price English pleasure grounds and the proliferation of attractions within (Ingram, 2003a). Another object was theming, first used as a means of promoting the industrial order in world’s fairs and exhibitions and then later commoditized as a vehicle for promotion and profit (Ingram, 2003b).

Industrialization also played a role in redefining the relationship between human and machine. The earliest amusement rides of the industrial era explored the newly sparked fascination with mechanization, posited by Lukas (2008) as a reflection of curiosity in a new “social machine” projected onto the aesthetics of amusement parks, theming, and rides. The remnants of a pre-industrial world, the exotics of a non-industrialized Other, and the physical infrastructures of manufacturing became dominant refrains in popular culture, marketing, and leisure.

Under this new industrialized concept of leisure and theming, the stage was set for the intersection of narrative, space, and immersion to create the first modern dark ride. The race in the amusement industry to capture these technologies to create the “next big thing” resulted in the first Golden Age of the amusement park. The settings of these rides are familiar, located in the Coney Islands and Atlantic Beaches of the country where classes of urban citizens with new expendable income looked for new venues of entertainment. Under these conditions, the dark ride was born and flourished.


The History of the Dark Ride: A Timeline
The Scenic Railway (1887): Designed by LaMarcus Thompson with the help of James Griffiths and John Miller, this early roller coaster was installed at Atlantic Beach, New Jersey. It is described here as the first modern dark ride because, despite its long outdoor roller coaster sections, the ride used dark tunnels filled with special effects to tell short narrative vignettes. This technology was later patented by Thompson in 1890 (U.S. Patent No. 428,977), in which he describes how the cars would trigger successive mechanical switches, lighting scenes and playing music or sound effects. The Atlantic Beach railway would prove immensely successful, becoming, as Cartmell describes, “the most popular and famous amusement device in the world…[Thompson] created a world of illusions, thrills, and escape that looked forward to another empire of make believe, the magic of cinema” (1987, pp. 48-49). The themed scenic railways of the late nineteenth century would thus pave the way for the relationship between theater and the dark ride that would develop in the decades to come.

Old Mill flume rides (1891): This ride traces its roots to the Canals of Venice ride invented by Arthur Pickard, where a small two-person boat with motorized propellers would float through a serpentine channel. The first true iteration would be found in The Old Mill, designed by George W. Schofield for Sea Lion Park in 1902 (Samuelson and Yegoiants, 2001). Using the theme of a haunted Pennsylvania gristmill, boats would float along on a similar ride system as the Canals but here there were dark tunnels and scenery intended to startle riders. The Old Mill struck a chord with Americans fascinated by the degradation of a pre-industrial landscape, and this curiosity in the haunted past contributed to its popularity and proliferation in amusement parks across America. The ride’s dark sections made it particularly popular among young couples looking for romantic seclusion, and ride vendors quickly seized on this through rethemes into the now-quintessential “tunnels of love” (Samuelson and Yegoiants, 2001).

A Trip to the Moon (1901): First appearing at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, A Trip to the Moon was the first example of a “blockbuster”-style dark ride, backed by a budget and technology suggestive of Disney’s attractions that would come half a century later. Designed by Frederic Thompson (no relation to La Marcus), the attraction simulated a trip to the moon via airship, complete with a safety pre-show, simulator-style vehicle with projection and lighting effects, and a walk-through of the moon itself. The imagery was sensational for the time, including an aerial flight over Niagara Falls, an electrical storm, moon grottos complete with dancing midgets, and a mechanical moon-calf (Immerso, 2002). The ride was recommissioned for Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, but after a disappointing 1902 season Thompson would leave to co-found the now-legendary Luna Park in 1903. This new endeavor would embody the same commitment to detail and immersion seen in A Trip to the Moon, and the “park of a million lights” would become the poster child for Coney Island (Stanton, 1998). The wild success of A Trip to the Moon and Luna Park illustrate the power of technology as a tool for progress in the eyes of the public, a trend that would grow into midcentury futurism.

The Pretzel (1928): As the amusement park spread from the concepts pioneered at Coney Island, localized industries formed to provide services and devices at a price more suitable for parks across the country. The Pretzel ride was born out of this need for a more frugal dark ride: Leon Cassidy and Marvin Rempfer, the owners of the struggling Tumbling Dam Amusement Park in New Jersey, wanted to construct an Old Mill for their park but found the costs for the waterways prohibitively expensive (Luca, n.d.). Their solution, drawing on the technology of dodgem cars, was to create a “dry” version of the concept using a single electrified rail. The ride, named after a guest’s comment that he felt he had been bent into a pretzel by its twisting path, opened to 1928 to commercial success. Cassidy and Rempfer would patent the single electric track format in 1929 (Cassidy and Rempfer, 1929), and the standard model became a national best seller costing only $1,200 (approximately $16,400 today). The Pretzel’s flexible format and low costs made it a versatile option for park owners, and Willaim Cassidy would estimate that 1,200 to 1,500 were produced before his company ceased production in 1979 (Luca, n.d.).

First-Generation Disneyland (1955): The opening of Disneyland in 1955 in Anaheim, California was a turning point for the amusement park, integrating 1950s corporate paternalism with a nostalgia for futurism and exoticism into a scrubbed and polished package. The damage to America’s amusement parks from the Depression and the proliferation of television left them viewed as dirty, unsafe, and misaligned with the iconography of the new suburban middle-class (Avila, 2010). Disneyland created a securitized, clean space in which families could enjoy the Disney product they had previously consumed via television, and dark rides were an integral part of this transition.

Where previously dark rides held narratives only in the loosest, most thematic sense of the term, Disney’s dark rides told stories. Pugh writes how these rides, like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and Snow White’s Scary Adventures, took their animated forerunners served as spatial retellings of tales riders already knew. Focusing on the fundamental storytelling techniques of medieval fairytales, these rides not only presented a narrative but embodied Disneyland’s function as paternal social device, reinforcing contemporary social roles and themes of paternalism (Pugh and Aronstein, 2012). In this way, these dark rides are notable not only in their use of narrative but also in their role in the park’s greater mechanisms of control.

Disney’s World’s Fair (1964): Coordinated by Robert Moses, the 1964 New York World’s Fair was not an official World’s Fair as sanctioned by the Bureau International des Expositions, leading 40 of the BIE’s member nations to abstain from participating; instead, in a thematically telling move, Moses called upon corporations to lead the fair (Niles, 2014). Walt Disney shared a common vision of a paternal America with Moses, and Moses, impressed with Disney’s impact on the country’s cultural landscape, invited him to take a lead role in the fair’s development. In addition to heavy involvement in fundraising and planning, the Disney Company designed three major dark rides for the fair: Ford’s Magic Skyway, GE’s Progressland, and Pepsi’s It’s a Small World.

Moses is quoted as saying, “Michelangelo and Walt Disney are the stars of my show” (Tirella, 2014, pp. 48), and indeed the themes of conservatism displayed at Disneyland were visible and prominent in Disney’s contributions. These rides are notable because of their sponsorship, presenting a narrative steeped in ideology and slanted towards the sponsor’s industries. Ford’s ride took guests on a trip through history ending in a showroom with the company’s latest models; GE’s show focused on the wonders of technological progress as illustrated by the development of appliances; and Pepsi’s ride preached peace and goodwill, with the help, of course, of Pepsi-Cola products (Niles, 2014). In this way, the dark rides of the fair were used to blur the lines of entertainment and technology, progress and consumption, and state and industry. The fair is often seen as the death of midcentury American optimism, occurring right before Civil Rights, Vietnam, and Watergate challenged the country’s dominant paradigms of authority and control (Tirella, 2014).

The Universal Studio Tour (1968): Though Universal Studios had opened its lots to the public before, formal tram tours at the studio were started in 1964, consisting of a trip through the back lot with stops at costumes, dressing rooms, and the commissary (Niles, 2013). Faced with growing competition from Disneyland across town, the studio expanded its tours to include fixed attractions, starting with a flash flood element in 1968. As the disaster movie craze of the 1970s took off, Universal capitalized by expanding these fixed elements to include a collapsing bridge, rockslide, runaway train, and later the extremely popular Jaws, King Kong, and Earthquake scenes (Niles, 2013). These attractions along the tour route used top-notch audio animatronics, cinematic technology, and Universal brands to turn the studio tour into a sort of dark ride montage. This trend of action-oriented films and amusement attractions took the industry by storm, playing off broader societal fears of urban and international unrest and channeling them into alternative outlets. Universal’s dark rides would demonstrate the potential for dark rides that not only entertained or informed but truly thrilled riders.

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (1994): It is not a coincidence that Disney’s first successful reaction to the action-oriented dark ride created by Universal would come in its own movie park, MGM Studios. Pushed by CEO Michael Eisner’s call for more thrills in their parks, Disney’s design teams had to push away from the company’s roots in animation and move towards broader cinematic influences (CNBC, 2006). Intended to be the park’s new flagship ride, the Tower of Terror had to be physically dominating, thematically coherent with the park as a whole, and fantastically innovative. These demands were solved through a drop ride system, allowing the structure of the ride to rise 199 feet over its surroundings in the guise of an abandoned Hollywood hotel (Walt Disney Imagineering, 1996). The ride vehicles move seamlessly between showrooms, cable lifts, horizontal passages, and accelerated drop chambers.

The Tower of Terror reasserted Disney’s excellence in themed design, rising to Universal’s challenge with a masterful piece of gesamtkunstwerk on a scale unseen in dark rides before. The ride featured narrative told through not only the attraction but the environment in which it is located, mixed with innovative technology and an overwhelming dedication to realism and detail. Its excellence has stood as a model for dark rides to follow, particularly in its elevation of the ride system from a means of narrative to an element of the narrative itself.

Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (1998): Eisner declared the 1990s the “Disney decade”, foreshadowing the company’s aggressive expansion into the music, publishing, news, sports, and cruise industries, among others (Grainge, 2007). The company targeted “age compression”, the phenomenon of children increasingly trying to emulate older teenagers, through pursuing the integration of new digital technologies into the Disney brand (Funding Universe, n.d.). This pursuit was seen in the creation of Disney Regional Entertainment in 1996 and its DisneyQuest video arcade concept in Orlando in 1998. In conjunction with this brand-wide effort to capitalize on digital technology, Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin at Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando was opened in 1998 as the first interactive “shooting-style” dark ride. The ride reused the track and systems of an older traditional dark ride, adding a twist to the ride’s retheme by adding an interactive digital component. This literal repurposing also paralleled the ride’s metaphorical repurposing, in which the classical dark ride form was pushed to “evolve” to target the changing desires of park guests.

Pooh’s Hunny Hunt (2000): Another product of Disney’s technologies research of the 1990s, Pooh’s Hunny Hunt at Disneyland Tokyo was a first in its use of location positions systems  (LPS) to create a “trackless” dark ride. Sensors along the ride floor and vehicles relay information back to a central computer, which calculates paths for the cars to travel in real time (Gilulla, 2010). This allows the vehicles to seem to move on their own, crossing paths and passing each other in near misses. This technology allows riders to visit each of the ride’s scenes in different orders, creating a sense of spontaneity and opening up opportunities for non-linear narratives. Though Disney’s patenting of the LPS system has limited the spread of such rides, the more recent development of GPS systems in the 2010s by firms like Oceaneering and ETF have allowed for a recent proliferation of “intelligent” ride vehicles and non-linear narratives (Oceaneering, 2015 and ETF, n.d.).

The VR Coaster (2015): Virtual reality (VR) has been hailed as the future of everything from engineering to medicine to entertainment, its proponents foretelling the end of traditional uses of space since the 1980s (Dye, 1995). Despite these unfounded predictions, development of lightweight, mass-produced hardware like the Oculus Rift has opened the door for expanded uses of VR. Though “virtual roller coasters” have been frequently used in stationary motion simulators, VR Coaster is the first company to successfully incorporate VR into a physical roller coaster, providing a fantasy visual experience in coordination with the hills and turns of a real ride (VR Coaster, n.d.).

Partnering with ride manufacturer Mack, VR Coaster has tested their mobile headsets on three of Mack’s roller coasters in Europa Park, Germany (MacDonald, 2015). Their business plan repurposes existing roller coasters into definition dark rides, even allowing parks to charge riders an added fee for the dark ride component of a traditional roller coaster (VR Coaster, n.d.). Based on VR Coaster’s model, Mack has signed on to offer roller coasters specifically designed for VR by 2017, and major park operator Cedar Fair has expressed interest in the system (MacDonald, 2015). The addition of VR to the repertoire of amusement technologies opens even more opportunities for flexibility, interactivity, and renewal in the design of dark rides.

Discussion: The Future of the Dark Ride
This chronology of the modern dark ride has covered over 100 years of history, examining the social, economic, and technological forces that have steered its development. Drawing on influences from industrial-era phenomenon, early dark rides examined new conceptions of technology as it applied to pre-industrial, contemporary, and future life. This idea of dark ride as mediator to historical forces continued into the mid-twentieth century, where conservative American optimism was conveyed through Walt Disney’s parks and dark rides. This was perhaps best seen in the 1964 World’s Fair, where futurism, optimism, and commercialism intersected to portray corporate America as the harbinger of progress. The decline in American optimism through the 1960s and 1970s was seen in the rising trend of disaster films, which Universal Studios harnessed through the dark ride components of its tram tour in Hollywood. As digital technologies rose to prominence in the 1990s and individualization and interactivity became norms of consumer goods, the theme park paralleled these developments through the incorporation of such technologies into its dark rides.

Despite these changes, the dark ride of today looks very similar to the dark ride of the late 1800s. The core elements of the dark ride present in our definition have remained integral to its contemporary conception, with narrative, spatial progression, and immersion playing key roles in VR Coaster just as much as in the Old Mill. The timelessness of these elements illustrates the deep historical footprints of their influences, stretching back to cave paintings and oral storytelling. Indeed, it could be argued that the appeal of the dark ride is that in many ways it is a form of physical storytelling, just as valid as art or literature in expressing narrative and meaning to the public. Whatever the form it may take as the amusement park evolves to meet guest demands, it is clear that the dark ride will play a fundamental role in its future.


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