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Favourite kind of dark ride

Ian

Ian

From CoasterForce
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Dark rides tend to get overlooked on CoasterForce in favour of more thrilling coasters and flat rides. However, we do acknowledge good dark rides - namely shooters.

Anyway, what's your favourite type of dark ride? Is it a shooter where you have to get a high score? Perhaps it's a "experience" ride with pre shows and thrill ride at the end. What about a simulator?
 
Story based slow moving rides, particularly boat rides, are fantastic when executed properly.

For instance my favorite dark ride right now is Monster Mansion.
 
Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris is easily my favourite and I think the Spirit of London at Madame Tussauds London is also a brilliant ride.

I like immersive stories in my dark rides. I'm not into the shooting stuff. I often find myself on Duel, not actually shooting at anything and just trying to take in as much of the old Haunted House as possible.
 
rtotheizzo17 said:
For instance my favorite dark ride right now is Monster Mansion.
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I really like that one too, but I think I liked it better before the refurb.
I guess I really like dark boat rides, since my favorite shooter is Scooby-Doo Ghostblasters at Six Flags St. Louis and I also enjoyed El Rescate de Ulises at Terra Mitica. I have to admit that the park's Laberinto del Minotauro was also very good, but it's not a boat ride.
My all-time favorite was the amazing Nights In White Satin at Hard Rock Park. Too bad I only got to experience it once. Freestyle Music Park replaced it with Monstars of Rock - probably the worst dark ride ever.
 
I do like a good shooter but only when I win of course ;)

I completely agree with the boat dark ride. A slow, calming ride around some pretty cool things, like Bubble Works, are my favourite. I loved the river caves in Blackpool, I also thought the Pirate Adventure at Drayton Manor was reasonable.
 
ECG said:
rtotheizzo17 said:
For instance my favorite dark ride right now is Monster Mansion.
Click to expand...
I really like that one too, but I think I liked it better before the refurb.
My all-time favorite was the amazing Nights In White Satin at Hard Rock Park. Too bad I only got to experience it once.
Click to expand...

Yes, the Monster Plantation was a fine ride, unfortunately we live in a PC world where keeping slaves is frowned upon (Iknowrite?)

My only problem with Nights in White Satin was you needed to greenhouse your car in the parking lot to truly experience that attraction.
 
I really liked potter, from start to finish its brilliant. Transformers was also super awesome, generally I'm not a big simulator fan though. Those two just hit the right spots.

I'll always do a shooter at a park, but on an experience level they are nowhere near the two above.
 
Simulators. Star Tours, The Simpsons Ride and Spider-Man are my favourites.
I also like shooters, I like them more when I win. I like slow moving dark rides when they are good and have enough to keep me interested.
 
Dark rides that are thrilling and fast paced, like Potter and Spiderman, are the best in my opinion. Also those that blend newer 3D technologies with set pieces.

I also adore any kind of crap, half-arsed dark-ride, to massive weird European efforts to harrowing seaside ghost train affairs. I'm a bit of a dark ride goon and after coasters dark rides are the second type of die I will seek out at a park.
 
^Same with me. Coasters are first on the list because CREDZ, but if it comes down to re-riding a mediocre coaster over a good dark ride, I'll re-ride the dark ride every time.

I'm not sure I've really got a favourite type to be honest, other than I'm not a massive fan of shooters unless they offer something a bit more substantial in the way of theming as well.

My favourite at the moment is Mystic Manor, which is essentially a "traditional" style scene/story type, only using amazing sets, ridiculous special effects and high-tech vehicles. I probably wouldn't call that traditional type my favourite overall, but, as an individual ride, Mystic Manor takes the ride type to a completely different level.

I'd probably put those multi-motion tracked things very high up; I mean rides like Indiana Jones and Pharaoh's Fury (though the latter has been somewhat neutered as of late). While Spiderman and Transformers (and Huntik and Darkcastle to a lesser extent) are amazing, with the cars offering a better range of movement, I much prefer to be immersed in 100% physical sets rather than 3D screens.

I love a decent dark boat ride as well, with the best being Pirates of the Caribbean, Sindbad (Lotte World), Sindbad's Storybook Voyage (DisneySea - one of the most underrated rides out there; it's amazing) and Madagascar: A Crate Adventure.

The thing I like about dark rides in general is that you really don't know what you're going to get until you try it (unless you're a dreadful person who spoils it for yourself through POVs beforehand), and, with a decent one at least, re-rides will offer up different things that you might not have noticed before.
 
So far Harry potter and the forbidden journey is my favorite. The one thing I would've done differently was not included the real scene parts and make it all animation and screen. But that's just me. I thought it seemed out of place. But i'm really looking forward to wonder mountains guardian! I think that might end up being my favorite. It sounds really awesome.
 
I didn't like the Harry Potter ride too much but it might have been a bad experience - I was on the end seat so in some cases the screen wasn't quite wide enough and it make me nauseous. Kind of like when you're sitting in a car and trying to read a book feeling (If anybody else has had that?).

I really love Men in Black at Universal though, I don't know exactly why, but it's great. The physical sets (and not 3-D screens) are a lot more fun to shoot at.
 
To begin with, I don't see my self as a person that enjoy dark rides very much. But then I came up with a couple of ones that I really like, and then the list just grew.. :p I guess I kind of like dark rides anyway! ^^

The best ones according to me:

1) Reset - Mirabilandia. Cool shooter with nice effects and where you control the vehicles yorself (well, you all know how it works :wink:)

2) Piraten im Batavia - Europa Park. Old classic "just look at all the extremely detailed and beautiful theming" type of ride. Very atmospheric!

3) Haunted house - Knoebels. This probably should've been number one? Great classic scare attraction, much better then new "tech"-versions. Quite a few of the CF:ers where genuinely scared if I remember correctly back in the US live 2012! :p

An honorable mention goes to Vliegende Hollander at Efteling! It's a coaster, but it also incorporates one of the best dark ride sections ever!! A very underrested ride imo :)
 
Easily Maus au Chocolat, Phantasialand. I also enjoy the older style of dark rides like Piraten I'm Batavia & Geister Rikscha.
 
My fave dark ride ever is Nemesis Sub Terra, I know everyone else thinks it's crap, but I love how it uses several different elements to tell a story. It's a great example of how lighting, music and actors can make a Frog Hopper in a shipping container exciting. Overall, I find simulators the most..stimulating, like Spiderman and Potter at Universal, but the lower budget ones can be very sickly. Love a 'classic' Ghost Train too, especially the crazy one at Brean! Honourable mention to all the sudden, mysterious Vekoma Madhouses out there!
 
I don't really have a "favourite type", as there are fantastic versions of each.

Some of my 'stand-out' dark rides for things I could ride over and over again include the Towers of Terror, Mystery Castle, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter... So heavily themed rides that really tell a story, I guess.
 
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