The Darkride Show Scene Simulation Experiment

About a year I had an idea to create a working miniature of some of Bill Tracy's classic darkride gags.  If you don't know who Bill Tracy is, well he's "the greatest designer and builder of dark attractions the amusement industry has ever seen." I got that quote from the home page of The Bill Tracy Project were you can learn more about Bill Tracy's career if you wish too. 

Anyway I toyed with this idea, and then dropped it.  I didn't think anything new would be learned about Tracy's legacy.  And frankly, I didn't know where to start, or what I'd do with what I created when finished. I mean, how big will this thing be, and where would I store it.  I've got enough clutter in the basement.

Then I had the idea of creating my own original darkride scene.  Obviously the appeal of this is doing something I designed, and not aping someones existing work.

I gave this some thought.  Sketched a few ideas.  Then I wondered how to do it, how much it would cost, and again, what to do with what I created when finished. 

There would certainly be a steep learning curve. I've never built anything like this before. The mechanics of getting my scene to work would take some serious R&D, and building miniature the sets and figures would take time with plenty of trial and error.  I eventually procrastinated long enough that I basically lost interest in doing it at all.

Wrapping up long winded intro, I finally came up with the idea to do something quickly, and on the cheap.  This "spooky darkride show scene simulation experiment" (it just rolls off the tongue) was built pretty much entirely with stuff I had in the house, and was constructed in about 8 hours total spread out over a few days.

Hopefully this looks like it came out of a small amusement park's haunted house...



Postmortem: Behind the Scenes...

The only real pre-planning I did for this scene was drawing one sketch for the Frankenstein Monster.

I liked the idea of doing a Son of Frankenstein costume mixed with a I Was a Teenage Frankenstein look.  I manged to get the Teenage Frankenstein, but didn't have the sewing skills or the fabric for a Son of Frankenstein costume.  I settled on the bandages look because that was something easily doable.    

I sculpted the head out some old air dry clay I bought years ago.  The clay had become pretty dry, and hard to work with but I managed.  I had some sculpting tools from a high school ceramics class that I wanted to use, but unfortunately I couldn't find them.  I ended up using toothpicks and my fingers to sculpt with.

The body is made of scrap wood, wire and duct tape.  If you notice I remade the legs. The originals were way too small. 

Once dry I gave the face a black base coat.  I thought the green florescent paint would really pop on the black, but the florescent spray paint was old and wasn't very opaque. 

I did spend about $13 on fluorescent paint.  I thought I was smart when I found this Puffy Paint Neon 12 Pack...

... but I didn't look very closely and notice that "& Bright" under the "Neon."  Only 5 of the 12 colors fluoresced under black light, and I had to pick up a separate bottle of blue florescent paint. Later, I saw this company makes a glow-in-the-dark color 12 pack that I really wish I had used instead.  I'm sure that set could have worked a lot better.

Also if anyone else reading this ever thought about using "Puffy Paint" like regular paint, well, it kinda works.  As you can see above the paint is streaky and isn't very opaque when brushed around.


Now with the "work lights" on...

Show Lights On

Work Lights On

 
You can see how extra crappy everything looks with regular lights on. The black light hides many, many sins, and for that I'm very, very grateful.  

  

The lab machine are various food boxes I raided from my pantry.  I spray painted them white, glued on some plastic junk, and then dry brushed them with the florescent paint.  I was thinking the dry brush technique would make them look like old corroded metal.  Mixed results on that idea.  I put night lights in two of the boxes hoping to achieve a  LITE-BRITE effect, but I don't think the tiny plastic "lights" I used really show up very well.

Another thing that didn't show up very well was the tree outside the window.  The tree needed its own black light, and the strobe I was using for lightning should be brighter.   

Here's a nice close-up of the Monster...

...and a side-view just for the heck of it.
 
Now since this thing basically didn't cost anything I can chuck the whole thing in the trash without any remorse.  Well I'll hang on to the Frankenstein Monster for now, but the rest goes.   

Magic World Brochure

(Updated 3-20-2017)

This 1979 brochure for the now defunct Magic World in Pigeon Forge Tennessee was not your typical tri-fold affair. Nope they spent some serious moola on this, and made it a 14 page booklet spectacular.

First, a very big thanks to everyone who has commented on this post so far. I never visited Magic World, but if anyone reading this has, please continue to leave a comment.  This post has became a Magic World internet hot spot, so if you're here because you're a Magic World fan you may wish to read the comments from other Magic World fans.

In fact, one of those comments was from Sonny Thrower.  Sonny was Magic World's General Manager from 1979 until it's close in 1996.  Sonny was much more than your typical GM, he was also a creative talent who worked on designing the attractions.  I've asked Sonny a few questions about Magic World's attractions, and was surprised to learn that many of the attraction were done in-house! 

Here's Magic World's "Land of Arabian Nights" with its Magic Carpet Ride pictured prominently. To me this ride looks like it wants to be Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean crossed with Peter Pan's Flight.

Here's what Anonymous had to say about the ride:

I visited Magic World once back in the mid 80's. The Magic Carpet Ride did suspend the ride vehicles from the ceiling like on Peter Pan, but you weren't that far off the ground. It was kind of like Peter Pan meets Pirates, but with an Arabian Nights theme. I remember the animatronics were seriously creepy. Their mouths would open and close but they didn't say anything and there was this freaky "woosh" wind blowing sound through the whole ride. It gave me serious heebie jeebies.

And here's Sonny Thrower's explanation of the flying effect:

"The Magic Carpet Ride" cars were suspended from a rail in the ceiling, with the scenes  getting smaller as the Carpet "flew" through the air (giving the illusion that the Carpet was going higher and higher).... Here again, all of this was done in-house. With Barbie dolls and Ken dolls toward the end!!!

I have no idea what's going on in the pictured show scene. I think it might be an interpretation of the Pirates of the Caribbean's "wench auction" scene without Marc Davis's clear staging, and a creepy edge. Check out the scary faces on those figures (especially the face of the woman who's being carried - it's the stuff of nightmares), and notice how the hands are not grasping the rope either. I'm assuming due to budget constraints they could only afford one style of hands.

The shot of the ride vehicle suggests the vehicles travel suspended high over the show scenes, but the shot is faked. This was a time before Photoshop, and if you look closely you can see cut marks at the bottom of the vehicle. Another clue is the same shot of the people in the vehicle is on the cover of the brochure, and in that photo it looks like the vehicle is only three inches off the ground.

Next is the Haunted Castle... I wish I could have ridden this, and in a way it feels like I have. Out of the four images on this page, only the executioner with the ax doesn't look like it came out of Disney's Haunted Mansion attraction. The largest picture shows a spooky organist (with a plastic looking hat) who looks very much like the phantom organist from the ballroom scene in the Haunted Mansion.

But it's the center picture of the coffin that wins the prize for looking most like Disney's Haunted Mansion. This scene is such a near perfect copy of the conservatory scene in the Haunted Mansion.

Now here's Jared's memory of the ride:

As I recall, the Haunted Castle was almost a beat for beat copy of Disney's Haunted Mansion. There was even a preshow area where you were gathered together in a room and menaced by a creature up in the rafters.

 And here's Sonny again:

The "Haunted Castle Ride" was completely done in-house, from the characters (made of chicken wire, cloth, hand carved stryofoam heads), to the recorded sound effects.   Some of the scenes were based on Disney's "Haunted Mansion"...

The "train" mechanism was actually a car used in factories which followed an electric wire embedded in the floor of the ride. It pulled 4 or 5 wooden carts for people to sit in. As the "Train" passed a group of scenes, there was a tripping bar that would activate and de-activate each set of scenes. Again ALL of this was done in-house.... Even the building itself....wood, foam and gunite!!

Merlin's Magic show featuring a costumed cartoon character with human hands. Moving along now...

Cartoon map overview of the park. Not a whole lot to do in 1979. If you click here, I found a 1991 cartoon map of Magic World which shows how they added a lot more amusement park style rides .

The Flying Saucer is another Disney-ish style attraction. Circle-Vision theater at the Disney parks featured 360 degree movies. Here it looks like they have a 180 degree theater. The fact the inside the theater picture is an artists rendering, and not a photograph makes me suspicious about what the actual attraction looked like.

Here's another of Jared's childhood memories :

I have fuzzy memories of the Flying Saucer attraction. Of course as a youngster I totally believed that we were flying around the Smokies in that crappy plastic and plaster disc! I also recall that it was surrounded by astro-turf. Weird the things that you'll remember.

I'm sure the Confederate Critter Show wanted to be like the Country Bears Jamboree, but probably ended up more like a Chuck E. Cheese show. Actually the figures here look like they came from a Showbiz Pizza (anyone remember those?), and according to an anonymous commenter they were manufactured by the same company who made the Showbiz Pizza characters - which is Creative Engineering, Inc. founded by Aaron Fechter.

Here's Sonny with more info on the creation of the show:

There was an international convention for amusement parks every year. One particular year (probably 1977) there was one guy at a table with an "animated" bear head. It was indeed Arron Fechter.  It was the FIRST of its type outside Disney. MAGIC WORLD bought it and created "THE CONFEDERATE CRITTER SHOW" with one bear, and the soundtrack recorded for a live person (a Yankee!! LOL) to interact with the bear.  Eventually, a Fox and a Hound dog were added to our show long before the pizza places.

These last pages of the brochure just throws a bunch of odds and ends at you. See our fiberglass dinos, see our fiberglass mountain, have your picture taken with our no-brand walk-around characters, eat our ice cream, buy stuff at our gift shop, etc...

Well this concludes my tour of the Magic World brochure. Magic World went out of business in 1996. I had a suspicion Magic World had been struggling for many years, and the growing popularity of nearby Dollywood was probably the final nail in the coffin for Magic World.  But according to Sonny this was not the case, it was because Magic World's 20 year lease was not renewed.  Why wasn't it  renewed you may ask? Here's Sonny with the sad story...

When MAGIC WORLD opened in 1976, there was very little in Pigeon Forge except fields and fields of corn, "Rebel Railroad", "Hillbilly Village" (which was mainly a big souvenir store and some Hillbilly artifacts).  So basically it was a huge empty area on the way from Knoxville to Gatlinburg. Property value at that time in Pigeon Forge was very cheap. The original lease was for $60,000.00 a year for 11 acres!!!

Well Pigeon Forge continued to grow and grow (with Rebel Railroad turning into Goldrush Junction, which turned into Silver Dollar City and eventually Dollywood.) We built the first Mini-Golf course in town, and with it's obvious success and MAGIC WORLD'S continued growth, naturally, property values sky rocketed.

When the "time" started to roll around to renew the lease, we knew the property would be high. I think our first offer was $350,000.00, but the land owner counter offered with a higher figure, which we accepted. BUT every time we would accept his offer, he would raise it again. The value of 11 acres (with FRONTAGE on the parkway) was pretty much out of our reach at any price. The owner's plan was to sub-divide the property into sections and have multiple lessee's. (There was a rumour for a while that SIX FLAGS was negotiating) I continued to re-work our operating costs and could still make it work at $650,000.00. But the reality was that no matter what we offered, he had his mind set on sub-dividing the property, so we stopped our offer at $650,000.00 hoping at the last minute, he would accept it. Likewise, he was assuming that we would raise it to One million at the last minute. (A restaurant down the road had made a deal for one million, and all of the land owners in Pigeon Forge got dollar signs in their eyes!)

Well, the deadline finally came.  With each of us thinking that some deal would be made since there had been no "hard" offers on the land, and (to both our surprise)....no deal was made......the lease was up. We closed.

One thing is for sure, from the comments I've been getting people who visited Magic World developed a strong emotional connection to the park.

Here's what Magic Butterfly had say:

When it closed, I cried. Gone was my fantasy park and my childhood.

I'm sorry I never got to see Magic World in person. I'm sure I would have loved it as a kid.

Please continue to leave comments folks. I love reading them.

VIDEO UPDATE 2017

Thanks to Jared who left a comment with a link to a Magic World YouTube video.  YouTuber Rance Garrison posted a video of a 1989 visit to Magic World.  It's almost 40 minutes long so here's some time markers for you:

Haunted Castle 7:22 (very dark and grainy)
Merlin's Magic Show 14:58
Magic Carpet Ride 23:13 (also very dark and grainy)
Confederate Critter Show 25:34
Dragon Train 30:00  (looks like by 1989 the trains were gone, and they just let people walk around to view the fiberglass dinos)