Why do people like interactive dark rides?

[Dr. M]

I love dark rides.

 

Allow me to describe for you my idea of the perfect dark ride:

 

It's a ride that teleports you to another place. It uses sight, sound, and physical sensation creatively to craft for you an experience like no other. A sense of mystery, of awe, of the unknown. Most importantly, you FEEL something as you ride it. Nostalgia, terror, laughter, SOMETHING.

 

Sound pretty reasonable? I'm sure anybody who's been to Disney World can agree with this, not that that's the only place you can find great dark rides.

 

Now I'll describe for you my idea of a terrible, hollow dark ride:

 

One that takes money away from scenery and effects and puts it into laser guns and targets. It isn't a ride, it's an elaborate arcade game. No awe, no mystery, just vacant stares and twitching index fingers. After the riders get off, instead of laughing or talking about the ride experience, they'll be bickering over whose gun didn't work or who hit targets that didn't register, if they're still thinking about the ride at all. It doesn't matter how good the atmosphere or sets are, because it's impossible to truly appreciate a dark ride and play a game at the same time. Video games can be artistic and a game because the content and gameplay aren't at odds with each other. Last I checked zombies don't have light-up targets on their foreheads. Would anyone list that Toy Story ride as one of their favorites at the Magic Kingdom? Anybody?

 

I bring this up because occasionally I've read people actually saying they hope their own park gets one of these rides.

 

WHY??? To me you might as well be saying you hope they raise the price of parking this year. Interactive dark rides are the enemy of the genre, they're the reality television of the amusement industry, the utter absence of creativity and artistic expression. They're the cheap and easy solution for parks that don't have the creative manpower to actually build a decent ride. They're a misguided attempt at interpreting the needs of the market, a market that doesn't even know what the f*** it wants, but hey they sure love tapping on those cell phones and ignoring the people around them, let's put a gun in their hands and maybe they'll be entertained.

 

That's enough ranting on my part. So, what's the story? Why does everybody not hate these rides as much as I do?

[Rollercoaster Rider]

I like interactive dark rides cause their air-conditioned, and the scoring makes you want to ride over and over again to better your score.

[robbalvey]

I would agree that dark rides and shooting dark rides are differnt categories, but I really like a good shooting dark ride... Quite a lot, actually...

 

I'm a big fan of the Sally rides, MiB, Buzz Lightyear, etc. and I actually really like Toy Story Mania.

 

Yes, there is a game element, but IMO that's part of what keeps you riding and playing.

 

I guess to each their own...

[Jew]

Because seeing static scenes gets boring (even if the set pieces are great).

[DaMarkSta]

If an interactive dark ride is done well I think its great ie. MiB, Toy Story Mania, etc.

 

If an interactive dark ride is done poorly like say the Boo Blasters on Boo Hill rides at Cedar Fair parks that were converted from Scooby Doo (which wasn't very good either) then I see your point, then yeah it's a cheap cash in. Here's hoping Cedar Fair gets in right with Guardian at CW this year. Trust in Ouimet haha

 

Also have to say I LOVE Ghostwood Estates at Kennywood. I think that is a great example of a dark ride/interactive done very very well.

[cfc]

^Exactly. Shooting dark rides have improved a lot over the years. Men in Black: Alien Attack is one of the best dark rides anywhere, and Disney has done a good job with Toy Story Mania, Buzz Lightyear, and Monsters Inc. (Japan version). You can still enjoy Monsters Inc. if you don't bother "playing the game."

 

Yes, there are poor shooting dark rides, just as there are poor "traditional" dark rides.

Edited March 18, 2014 by cfc

[soldier148]

My first dark ride was DarKastle at BGW, only because I don't remember Buzz Lightyear at WDW. I have Spider-Man as one of my favorite rides of all time, so naturally I'd rather have a dark ride that I can sit back and enjoy the show as opposed to an interactive one where I'm shooting at stuff. I hope I don't sound lazy.

[Dr. M]

I can see simply placing them in a separate category from traditional dark rides. My issue is I've never been on one I liked. Often times a park might get one dark ride, maybe two, and if they pick this kind of ride then it means the world gets one less traditional dark ride. That's why I say it's the "enemy of the genre", I want to see more and better dark rides, and I see this ride type as being detrimental to that. It's fine for Disney or Universal to have one, but just imagine what Reese's Xtreme Cup Whatever could have been if Hershey had applied just a little more imagination and a lot less laser guns.

 

One more thing, I'm no strict traditionalist here. I loved DarKastle. 3D video, new technologies, all that's great. It's the interactive element I see as being distracting and shallow.

[Nrthwnd]

I think that the original Disneyland "Indiana Jones" (1995) is the ultimate in a dark ride.

And then there's "Journey to The Center of the Earth" in Disney Sea. Another ultimate dark ride.

 

With the smaller dark rides now, it just seems to make more sense to outfit them with

targets and such, and make it a (traveling) set of carnival games in different themes.

 

Hey - I just went after Santa with a ray gun, in China. How cool is that?

[jzoole]

I can't agree more with the original poster. The shooting or interactive aspect of shooting/interactive dark rides does literally nothing for me. I'm not saying that parks shouldn't include them and I understand why others like them but they hold zero appeal for me and I vastly prefer a traditional dark ride.

[bbomser]

Hey - I just went after Santa with a ray gun, in China. How cool is that?

That's something from the SALLY Tour we did last year that I will NEVER forget. Possibly the strangest ride I've ever seen, and if I remember correctly the SALLY people thought the same thing!

[raptor6]

I enjoy the competitive aspect of the shooting dark rides. Many people like to compare their scores at the end of the ride.

 

With that said, the Spiderman and Transformers rides are my absolute favorite dark rides. From the dark rides that I have ridden, they are just in a league of their own.

[shivtim]

An immersive shooting dark ride is possible. Maus au Chocolat at Phantasialand is a good example. Yes, it's a shooter, but it also has an inventive story line and really good theming. Best of both worlds. Some of the Sally dark rides are actually pretty good. It's fun to ride once playing the shooting game, then ride again and just take in all the details.

[megametal]

They can be fun if hitting the target makes something happen, but a lot of times many targets are broken or, as with Gobbler Getaway when I rode it in 2012, the guns didn't work, so nothing moved!

[coasterbill]

I think they key to enjoying these rides (as others have suggested) is to resist the urge to compare the to standard dark rides. They're very different things, and generally high detail is passed over as people are usually too busy shooting targets to notice anyway.

 

I love these rides and I love traditional dark rides, I consider them completely different experiences.

[azza29]

While I'm not a huge fan of Toy Story (bunch of Wii minigames which doesn't justify the typically long queues), I can understand the appeal to families.

 

The best shooting dark ride I've seen is Justice League at Movie World. The combination of physical and digital targets, while the story plays out on 3D screens, works really well and adds to the re-rideability. Sally Corp did a great job with this one.

[A.J.]

Shooting dark rides give you control over your experience. When you go through a "normal" dark ride, say, Knoebels' Haunted Mansion, it's the exact same ride every time. You could go on a shooting dark ride like normal, and then the next time you could get creative and restrict yourself to certain targets.

 

Also, your shooting dark ride experience is also affected by the people ahead of and behind you. You could be gunning for the perfect target and lose it because the person behind you shot it first!

[YoshiFan]

I like interactive dark rides because they make me want to try it multiple times a trip to a park (if lines were short enough) to try to get a better score compared to a regular dark ride that I would probably ride maybe once a trip. If a local park that I get to multiple times a season were to add one, I'd probably ride a few extra times a season and not worry about the game play during those rides and just focus on the scenery and theming since I would have so many chances to go to the ride.

 

Of all the interactive dark rides I have tried, the only one I can say that I didn't like at all was the one at Gillian's Wonderland Pier in Ocean City, NJ but I don't know if it even counts considering it was in the old non enclosed kiddie bumper car ride area and the targets were just lights on monsters that didn't move. It was a Zamperla Alien Invasion ride.

[GigaG]

I don't have a ton of experience with interactive dark rides besides the relatively fun family Boo Blasters series. I like interactive rides in general such as the Brain Surge flat at Mall of America. Look it up, it's a unique and awesome ride. You control how your vehicle rolls upside down. Flying Scooters fit here too, although the newer ones seem a bit crappy and unsnappable. Still fun, of course. I also like rides where the experience is intense and varies considerably each ride. Not like Green Lantern, but more like the randomness of a Chance Chaos (I really wish Cedar Point would have kept theirs. That was one of my favorite flats.)

[Wes]

Variety is the spice of life.

[thrillrider]

Simple answer......Because they are fun.