Who doesn’t love a dark ride? One of the longest-enduring and most beloved amusements on Earth, dark rides have existed since before the electric lightbulbs. From humble origins as darkened, waterwheel-powered “Tunnels of Love” and “River Caves,” dark rides have become some of the most technological storytelling tools in theme parks’ arsenals – from ghost blasting to soaring with superheroes…
But have you ever wondered who’s making the magic? Welcome to the Industry of Imagination, a new series in which we’ll peel back the curtains to explore some of the real organizations who design, develop, fabricate, and install the rides we know and love.
One of the more enduring, widespread, and successful design firms in the industry today is known by a single name: Sally Dark Rides. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, Sally has spent nearly five decades creating dozens of dark rides found across the globe. From boardwalk, blacklight ultra-classics to innovative, interactive, tech-driven trackless rides, chances are that you’ve seen a Sally creation firsthand… maybe without even knowing it.
Today, we’ll spotlight this time-tested firm and how it came to be, then highlight a few of our favorite Sally creations both well-known and niche… And whether you’ve heard of Sally Dark Rides before or not, we know your first question….
Who is Sally?
Given the firm’s name, you might understandably assume that Sally was a company founder. Well… kind of.
Rather, one of the company’s real founders – John Rob Holland – was in school to become dentist. There, according to the firm, a professor in a creative communications class tasked students with developing an unexpected teaching tool. Holland’s was Sally – a hand-made animatronic figure with pre-recorded audio and matching mouth movements.
Holland (who did officially become Dr. Holland) brought Sally home, where a neighbor named John Fox convinced him to use the figure as part of a Halloween display to great success. Suffice it to say that in the 1979, the pair officially launched Sally Unlimited, Inc.
Believing that a programmable, moving, speaking (and most importantly, tireless) model could be a boon to retailers tired of static mannequins and looking for a memorable campaign, a refined Sally was created and brought to the National Association of Display Industries.
At least in part, it worked, with Sallys becoming the spokespeople for a beauty supply company, a line of denim jeans, and even the Women’s Army Corp Museum in the late ’70s.
Soon after, Sally gained a new skill, with a “Sally at the Piano” (above) model that could play for department store audiences without interruption… and was used for exactly that purpose at stores in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, and beyond. But obviously, Sally’s expertise in moving, talking robotic figures would lend itself to more than just retail.
The Entertainment Factor
As co-founder John Wood recalled, it wasn’t until Sally sold an animatronic figure to the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex (which, in the ’70s, underwent a significant reinvestment in order to match the polish that visitors expected when traveling from the new Walt Disney World) that Sally found its niche: not retail, but entertainment.
That lined up perfectly with the boom of family entertainment centers that spread across the country in the late ’70s, each with animatronic-led musical revue shows. Sally was responsible for many of the animatronic figures that populated Showbiz Pizza Place.
In the early ’80s, Sally was chosen by designer Gary Goddard as a primary supplier for the legendary (and animatronic-heavy) Six Flags Power Plant – an ultra-ambitious, immersive family entertainment center mixed with experiential shows, retail, and dining located in a real turn-of-the-century power plant. A sort of story-centered DisneyQuest and a Meow Wolf progenitor, the Power Plant didn’t last long…
But when the market for family entertainment centers contracted soon after, “We looked around, and said, what do we do now? The obvious choice for Sally Corporation was to follow in Disney’s footsteps. We should attempt to rejuvenate dark rides and the regional theme park market.”
But Sally’s experience there did elevate the company’s standing. And in the mid-’90s, the firm took off running…
Ride Sally Ride
In 1995, Sally opened its first dark ride – The Great Pistolero Roundup, wedged into a former Mexican restaurant at Family Kingdom Amusement Park in Myrtle Beach. You have to imagine that Sally’s “interactive dark ride” was truly among the first of its type. Disney’s equivalent – Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin – wouldn’t open for three more years.
And really think about that: before Sally stepped up, dark rides were really a thing of the past for most parks; ultra-classic funhouses and ghost trains that flickered out of existence year after year. Only parks on the level of Disney’s and Universal’s invested in the genre, and by the ’90s, even that was in the form of cutting-edge, larger-than-life, “Ride the Movies” installations like the Modern Marvels: Indiana Jones Adventure, Star Tours, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
But Sally’s innovation suddenly made dark rides achievable for seasonal, regional parks again. Spurred on by the thrill of interactivity, Sally offered an all-in-one design-build service that could ripple across smaller parks, balancing the adrenaline-packed punch of the “Coaster Wars.”
John Wood told Blooloop, “After completing the first design-build, we were pretty much solidly a dark ride company.”
And in fact, Sally’s next big innovation set the course for the last 25 years of dark rides to come out of the company… On the next page, we’ll spotlight a few of Sally’s most well-known and groundbreaking rides right up until this 2022’s jaw-dropping adventure…
It’s pretty difficult to choose a favorite from Sally’s catalogue of sensational dark rides… Some are oft-duplicated landmarks well-known to regional park enthusiasts. Others are unique and even obscure rides found only in unexpected places… But each of the rides highlighted below speak to Sally’s role in reviving the dark ride and making the medium accessible and approachable for regional park operators and their guests!
1. Ghost Blasters
The first Sally Dark Ride to be highlighted has to be the Ghost Blasters line of attractions. Beginning in 1999 at Lake Compounce (as “Ghost Hunt”), the Ghost Blasters model established so many of the tried-and-true standards of Sally Dark Rides (and really, modern, regional dark rides altogether): glowing, blacklight interiors of ultraviolet cutouts, snappy effects triggered by laser blasts, and the old school hiss of pneumatics that send 2D ghost cutouts rising from behind tombstones.
In 2000, then-Paramount’s Canada’s Wonderland unveiled a unique twist on the Ghost Blasters formula with Scooby-Doo’s Haunted Mansion, with Sally liscensing the popular Hanna-Babera animated character and integrating Scooby and the Mystery Inc. gang into an IP-friendly, in-house reimagining of the Ghost Blasters model.
Similar Scoob-ified dark rides were subsequently opened at Paramount’s Carowinds (2001), Kings Island (2003), and Kings Dominion (2004), plus Six Flags Fiesta Texas (2002) and Parque Warner Madrid (2006), with a unique boat-based Scooby overlay at Six Flags St. Louis (2002).
In 2008, Sally returned to their Ghost Blasters installation in Denver’s Elitch Gardens and crafted a new model they deemed Ghost Blasters II. Inserting a clear ghost-hunting frame story and a new “Big Bad” – the elusive Boocifer (above) – the Ghost Blasters II model also introduced mist screens, lighting effects, and other upgrades, becoming Sally’s new de facto haunted house model.
Luckily, that timed up nicely with the Paramount Parks’ sale to Cedar Fair. At Canada’s Wonderland, Carowinds, Kings Island, and Kings Dominion, Sally returned to its existing Scooby-Doo dark rides, “de-dogging” the four over the 2009 off-season in favor of Ghost Blasters II scenes and effects. The resulting set of rides – the curiously named “Boo Blasters on Boo Hill” – remain the only dark rides at each of those parks, and staples of a family visit.
Between the original Ghost Blasters, Scooby Doo’s Haunted Mansion variants, and the Ghost Blasters II model, no less than a dozen of Sally’s go-to interactive blacklight haunted houses can be found at amusement parks, boardwalks, malls, midways, and even zoos across the United States, Canada, Spain, and Sweden.
2. Nights in White Satin: The Trip
One of the most legendary attractions of all time, Nights in White Satin: The Trip was truly a multi-sensory, multi-media dark ride that existed for the single summer season that Myrtle Beach’s infamous Hard Rock Park was open to the public.
A psychedelic, mind-melding dark ride set to the 1967 song by The Moody Blues and ostensibly meant to recreate the experience of tripping on acid, Nights in White Satin was actually constructed inside of an abandoned mall that abutting the Hard Rock Park space. Within, guests encountered scents, spinning psychedelic images, smoke rings swirling around their heads, and a “speed room” with guests passing through surreal projected imagery.
Abstract, otherworldly, and even emotional, this dark ride showed Sally’s unbelievable ability to disassociate from physical sets. Instead, it was an elevated, surreal, brain-expanding experiment of which unfortunately little evidence remains. (The point-of-view video above is one of the best glimpses of the ride.)
Unfortunately, Hard Rock Park lasted just a single season. After its 2008 opening and closing, the property was purchased and re-opened in 2009 as the de-branded “Freestyle Music Park.” Most of the differences between the two were trivial ride renamings as a result of lost licensing. But Nights in White Satin was obliterated with the ride completely redesigned as the laughably-bad (and to be fair, clearly budget-cut and rushed) Monstars of Rock. (Sally was not involved in the retheme.) Anyway, Freestyle Music Park also only lasted a single season. The property is still rotting in plain sight with its coasters removed. Which means this Sally treasure is long gone.
3. El Laberinto del Minotauro
Most Disney fans know that the trajectory of the Disney dark ride changed forever with Pooh’s Hunny Hunt – the Tokyo Disneyland attraction that opened in 2000 and debuted cutting edge trackless dark ride technology. Pooh’s Hunny Hunt famously allows multiple vehicles to “interact,” traveling forward and backward, criss-crossing, and even taking different paths through scenes. What you might not know is that Sally was dabbling in the same experience the same year.
Opened in 2000 in the southeast of Spain right on the Tyrrhenian Sea, Terra Mítica is an ambitious 21st century park with areas themed to legendary realms like Greece, Egypt, Oceania, Rome, and the Mediterranean Islands. In its Greek land resides El Laberinto del Minotauro – the Minotaur’s Labyrinth. Developed by Sally (and using ETF dark ride technology), this trackless dark ride sends guests on trackless “chariots” armed with magical “crossbows” to set off into a world of creatures drawn from Greek myth.
However, the coolest thing about this trackless dark ride is one of its other groundbreaking, innovative features… At two points along the ride’s course, chariots can be preemptively “ejected” and sent to the unload area. Only those who score high enough can proceed past these forks in the road to end up in a face-to-face encounter with the legendary Minotaur. Trust us, it’s a full dark ride even if you don’t score a point… but for many, getting to the “bonus scenes” that culimate in a mirrored Minotaur chamber is a whole lot of fun.
Incredibly cutting edge for its time (and still very impressive today), El Laberinto del Minotauro shows that – although many U.S. park operators opt for Sally’s simpler, classic, blacklight cutout dark rides – the firm is capable of incredible scenic design, animatronics, environmental spaces, and storytelling.
And that brings us to Sally’s spectacular new age creations…
4. Justice League: Battle for Metropolis
When you think of Six Flags, you probably don’t initially think of dark rides… But if anything could change that, it’s Justice League: Battle for Metropolis. Banking on Six Flags’ association with Warner Bros.’ catalogue of comic book heroes (which have previously mostly been relegated to the names of bare steel coasters), Battle for Metropolis has – to date – provided seven Six Flags parks with an E-Ticket level dark ride experience.
Basically, you can think of the attraction as a maturation of Sally’s Justice League: Alien Invasion dark ride (found at Warner Bros. Movie World in Australia). The Six Flags variant clearly banks on the formula begun by the Modern Marvel: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man.
“SCOOP-esque” ride vehicles carry guests through physical sets populated by Audio-Animatronics and tactile effects. There are also sections where – as on Spider-Man – screens act as “windows”. In other instances, screens act as “windshields,” used for brief motion-simulator-style chases, all maintained while riders try to focus on flying targets.
The result is an “all-that-plus-the-kitchen-sink” experience that – in its screen-based moments – can be dizzying and disorienting. But for bringing full-scale audio animatronics to Six Flags parks? Who could call that anything but a win? Basically, Justice League: Battle for Metropolis really set a new standard for a modern Sally Dark Ride. It’s big, bombastic, action-packed, and filled with the best tricks of the trade.
Maybe it was their successful translation of a very important IP into a dark ride format that got Sally their next big IP job…
5. Sesame Street: Street Mission
The idea of a Sesame Street-themed shooting dark ride may sound like the exclusive domain of a pop culture aside on Family Guy or Saturday Night Live. But to that point, the selection of Sally to translate this delicate and beloved series into a dark ride (where its Muppet performers will necessarily be brought to life by animatronics) really does speak volumes… and Sesame Street: Street Mission is a fantastic attraction.
Located at Spain’s PortAventura (which, at least for a brief time, was operated by Universal Parks), the ride is a spectacular anchoring attraction for the park’s Sesame Street themed land. In short, Street Mission positions guests as detectives-in-training alongside the esteemed Detective Grover. Riders take to the taxi cabs of Sesame Street armed with “Clue Collectors” to solve the great Cookie Day mystery…
Traveling through iconic locales from the long running PBS show, riders use their Clue Collectors to gather fallen cookie crumbs as they trace the thief who made away with the World’s Biggest Cookie… without which the Cookie Day Parade is sure to be cancelled. That means playing screen-based mini-games right alongside animatronics of Bert, Ernie, Grover, and even Big Bird himself.
A finale of wraparound screens offers an action-packed return to Sesame Street and a rare trip into Oscar the Grouch’s trash can abode. The whole thing is spectacularly fun.
Seeing how wonderfully Sesame Street can translate to an interactive, trackless, technological dark ride with animatronics at a seasonal park, it feels like a real shame that the Sesame Street themed lands at SeaWorld and Busch Gardens parks in the U.S. don’t really have an anchoring attraction like this – an E-Ticket for the whole family.
And it’s yet another example that – while Cedar Fair frequentors may equate Sally with simple, 2D, ultraviolet ghost blasters – this company has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. And to our thinking, they all coalesced into 2022’s landmark, award-winning dark ride…
6. Volkanu: Quest for the Golden Idol
The interactivity of Ghost Blasters; the atmosphere of White Satin; the mythology of the Labyrinth; the technology and showmanship of Justice League… To our thinking, it all coalesces in VOLAKNU: Quest for the Golden Idol.
Developed exclusively for Lost Island – the from-scratch theme park that opened in Waterloo, Iowa in 2022 – Sally’s Volkanu is a capstone experience in the park’s lineup, narratively connecting to everything else guests have encountered there. After all, the story of Lost Island is that of five elemental realms recovering from the cataclysmic emergence of a fire demon called Volkanu. Now, with the golden Ora Tika idol that keeps him confined having been stolen, Volkanu threatens to emerge again, destroying Lost Island forever…
Visitors climb aboard trackless Inferno Transports – in-universe, designed by the park’s mascot-ready Tamariki peacekeepers – and venture into the Temple of Fire to harness the power of the five elements, return the Ora Tika, and defeat Volkanu for good. Along the way, they encounter animatronics, special effects, screens, motion simulation, and more.
In fact, we recently dedicated an entire feature to exploring the lore of Lost Island and the attractions within, and a separate deep dive devoted to its starring dark ride, Volkanu: Quest for the Golden Idol. Make the jump to those features for all the details from this mysterious and exciting new theme park, including ride through videos of the experience inside the Fire Temple…
Here’s the thing: Volkanu isn’t just a great ride. It’s a sort of statement on Sally’s last twenty five years, and their quest to return dark rides to prominence even in seasonal, regional parks. Here – in the midst of Iowa’s soybean fields – is a completely original dark ride that uses the park’s baked-in original mythology and characters to create a sort of culminating narrative experience to a day at the park.
In Volkanu, Sally created a ride with memorable lore and characters. It’s even merchandisable, with the golden Ora Tika on sale in the ride’s exit shop. Seriously think about that: a seasonal park in Iowa has custom merchandise based on its own, in-house mythology thanks to a Sally dark ride. That speaks not just to the success of Sally’s accessible, approachable, regional dark ride model, but to the power of this medium of storytelling.
So Many More…
It won’t surprise you to learn that Sally is responsible for dozens of dark rides across the globe. Even reading this and getting a peek at their style, you may have recognized them as the firm behind LEGOLAND’s Lost Kingdom Adventure installations, Hersheypark’s Reese’s Cupfusion, PortAventura’s Sesame Street: Street Mission, or Holiday World’s Thanksgiving-themed Gobbler Getaway.
Sally’s also been involved with classics you may love and miss, like Alton Towers’ Around The World in 80 Days or Six Flags Over Texas’ Yosemite Sam and the Gold Rush Adventure. That’s on top of tons of projects they’ve built, and many concepts they haven’t yet – like a Walking Dead dark ride just waiting for someone to bite (pun intended).
So do yourself a favor – visit Sally Dark Ride’s portfolio. If a ride sounds interesting, look it up on YouTube! Even exploring the differences between Ghost Blasters or seeing a dark ride you never knew existed is a blast. And more to the point, remember as you do that Sally has done the unthinkable: they’ve made dark rides accessible and approachable for seasonal, regional parks. For millions and millions of guests who may never see the multi-million-dollar dark rides of Disney and Universal, Sally keeps the genre alive. And that’s the power of the folks behind the scenes in the industry of imagination…
