May Ramble: Dark Rides

I can't imagine you're reading comments on this very old video, but I'm kind of obssessed with the Pirates of Speelunker Cave ride at Six Flags Over Texas. Went on it with my kids, just assuming it was going to be a poor man's Pirate's of the Carribean knockoff, but it's so much more than that and such a wild experience. I think of Jenny every time I ride it. My kids and I have a running joke that it's the best "pirate themed" ride we've ever been on.

Loved that Knotts berry farm dino ride. Cemented a love for dinos ever since.

Monster mansion is actually the only dark ride I’ve ever been on lol. I think you’d be horrified and disturbed by the amount of wet monster fur

The Knotts berry farm dinosaur ride was an amazing dark ride. 🦕 Also "Shark Hamilton " 🦈

In 2019 I was at Disneyland and it started pouring rain. It was the only time I could literally walk onto almost every ride in Fantasyland. Peter Pan was still 20 minutes.

I'm like three years late but Tokyo DisneySea has 20,000 leagues under the sea ride which is really cool. It's completely dry but it feels like you're actually deep underwater. Lots of cool animatronics too.

i've been going through your backlog the past few days to feel a bit better and felt compelled to say i knew who you were talking about at the knotts beary tales auction as soon as you brought it up- we're friends on facebook :3 i don't actually use facebook so i've never talked to him but i see his update posts about it occasionally when i check on the app. he seems nice. also, while i don't necessarily disagree about the submarines being a bad ride, i can't help but want to defend them!! they're one of my favorite rides in the park, but that's boosted quite a bit by my having worked on the attraction and loving it. i desperately wish i could have experienced the original, however!! it seems so incredibly interesting

Monster plantation was my favorite ride! I had to ride it no less than 3 times in one day at six flags over georgia. The line was unreasonably long for what it was, and it smelled like hot chlorine and an old musty house, but it was great. In the gift shop adjoining, there were little figures of the animatronics behind glass. I also thought it was funny that at the end of the ride there was a poster of the lyrics the monsters were singing about a monster picnic, right before you get screamed at by a big mean monster and the song is effectively over.

I found a youtube video of the tokyo winnie the pooh ride and it sent me on a rabbit hole of tokyo disney ride pov youtube videos

I went to tokyo disney when I was 15, went with all my familly (11 y/o brother, mom, dad and grandma) to the snow white ride and everyone agreed it was very scary. I dont know if its true and the tokyo disney snow white ride is diferent from the ride in other countries but it really felt like it. Everyone was shocked getting out of it and we still mention it to this day

New patron so getting through the Jenny backlog while I'm on plague lockdown (hope you're feeling well, haven't checked out your most recent video...) Did you love the NY world's fair site? I haven't been there in a long time but I know there's a lot of stuff still there. I hope you went inside the NY Hall of Science to be able to see a structure that's still in use!

I know this video is really old but I’m just now seeing it because I’m a new patron, but anyways i got SOO excited when you brought up monster mansion. I live in Atlanta, so before I ever went to Disney i grew up going to Six Flags Over Georgia. There are no other dark rides there so monster mansion just fascinated me as a kid(some might say the Sally corp Justice League one is a dark ride but idk it’s mostly screens) I’m so glad six flags decided to update this ride in i think it was 2009 instead of remove it because it’s pretty much the only good thing there. It’s just so weird, but I love it. I even have a plush Buzby, which is one of the animatronics in the ride.

I’m a new patron and I realise that this post is over a year old now but I couldn’t see anyone else name Luna Park that was the Theme Park in Sydney where the ghost town fire happened in 1979 that was allegedly mob arson. It’s also kind of a cursed theme park name because there’s like three other international Luna Parks that all failed horribly, one was in Egypt in like the 1920s too. Still I think grandiose failed theme parks are better than half-hearted functional theme parks like the only one we have here in New Zealand which is kind of sad and lacks any dark rides. I’m very glad that I became a patron because I especially love the theme park content!!

Fascinating stuff, and I’m glad that you’ve managed to see inside “Club 33” since this video was recorded (even if the bird cruelly blanked you). Your comments about old-timey theme-park history always remind me of an amusement park here in the UK that we used to go to as children called “Blackgang Chine” (on the Isle of Wight). It was built on a very crumbly (possibly cursed, according to local legend!) cliff-edge, so they have to keep moving and rebuilding it… and thankfully a lot of the attractions seem to be the same, but the place/layout that I remember so fondly has been lost to the sea. Even in its glory-days, it was nothing compared to the likes of Disneyland, of course, but it still seemed pretty magical to us... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackgang_Chine

If you want a great new one, Elitch Gardens in Colorado just opened a really trippy one called "Kaleidescape."

Ok, I don't usually comment on old posts, but it is a weird coincidence that I heard of the dead body found in a Laff in The Dark ride just yesterday in a murder podcast...

a ride that i would really recommend from disneyland paris is buzz lightyear laser blast! it's a shoot 'em up style dark ride with basic animatronics and lots of bright and fun colours. i was there when i was like 11 and, after being traumatised by the armageddon ride, we went on this ride at the end of the day and had a blast! really great for young nerdy kids who've already been on star tours like a billion times

Really enjoyed hearing you talk about the NYWF! I remember my first trip Flushing Meadows to see what remained of the Fair, and I can't wait to hear you talk about doing the same! Will there be a video?

I honestly would love all of the videos mentioned!! I also love longer ramble videos and I love listening to you talk about Star Wars Jenny! Honestly, just do what seems more fun to you :)

Yeeeees I really want a 13 Reasons Why video, I remember reading your 'Jacket Kid' tweet and being convinced they couldn't have possibly played that straight, but they did and it was glorious. I know they're probably trying to do something meaningful with this show, but this season is just putting on layers and layers of horrible things happening to the characters without any real, helpful commentary and it just starts feeling grotesque

I love the longer ramble videos!! Please keep doing them! Also, I would adore a story video about the people exploring Horizons if you get permission for it! This isn’t so much a underwater ride, but at the local theme park near me (Kennywood in Pittsburgh, PA) there’s this dark ride/walk through of Noah’s Arc and it used to have a scene where the arc was sinking and the room would fill up with water. It’s a super cheesy fun ride if you watch a walk through of it

I would love to hear you talk about 13 reasons. It’s handling of all that stuff is so...urgh

Mag-nificent video! Thank you.

Mag-nificent video! Thank you.

The best idea for a dark ride would be a "Trapped in a Island with Josh Hutcherson" ride. Josh Hutcherson would be animatronic (on occasion the Real JH would turn up to surprise the fans) & all the dialogue would be spoken "as written" from the book. Example: "There make be snakes!"

This video was sooooooo good! One of my favorites tbh. Ive only ever been to Disney World and this makes me hella wanna make a trip to California.

Jenny I could listen to you talk about anything for hours, so far I have seen 2 movies in theaters (Ready Player Six and San Holo) soley for the purpose of giving your videos context.

This honestly might be the happiest we’ve ever seen you Jenny. (Well except for the retrieval of the giant porg)

Shark Hamill?

I honestly love it when you talk about theme parks. I know so little about them!

This was great! The first dark ride I remember going on was Prof. Burp's Bubble Works at Chessington in the UK. I think the concept was cemented by someone saying 'Willy Wonka but even more overtly unsettling and don't even talk to me about chocolate'. It was an aggressively odd boat ride through the eponymous Professor Burp's factory where he made fizzy drinks. It's a bold choice because, unlike making sweets, putting drinks in bottles is a strikingly non-visual process, so most of the scenes were dominated by mad extra things that he built into the factory like the Cola Coaster. Cola. Coaster. Genius. The ending was pretty iconic. Triumphant music blasts as you go under a tunnel of fountains into a room that's like the Laughing Place if it were designed by someone who accidentally ordered 100x too many water features and had almost no plan about where they should go. Anyway, it was eventually rebranded to remove the drinks and instead be all about the classically entertaining concept of soap thanks to Imperial Leather sponsoring it. And then it closed for good. Here's a PoV if anyone's interested. It looks quite disjointed, but that's just the ride: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIoyp9BjiDA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIoyp9BjiDA</a> P.S. Please make a video about animatronics. I did the Behind the Magic tour at WDW a couple of weeks ago, and being 10 feet from the audio animatronics workshop and meeting a Tiki bird was <3 <3 <3

I have gone down the YouTube rabbit hole of dark rides several times, and my favorite WTH ride is “Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase” in Universal Studios Singapore. It’s like they spent a lot of money on licensing, voice work, music, and really lavish sets and figures, and then at the very last minute someone said, “Hey, do you think we should try to animate some of these characters, like at least the bare minimum?” Also, there is a really long hallway with nothing but star effects, that also looks like a place they ran out of money/time. BUT is also has the most mind-blowing thing I’ve ever seen on a dark ride, right at the beginning after Grover says, “Off to other things!” A super-simple perspective trick, but so effective! <a href="https://youtu.be/aKZyc1225jw" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/aKZyc1225jw</a>

I'm late to the party but to answer your question: yes, Disneyland Paris does have Peter Pan. It also has the most ridiculous lines.

Always love hearing someone go on about something they're clearly passionate about, even if it's not necessarily something I'm interested in from the start. this was really cool, and I'm glad it won the ramble video poll.

(excerpt from "When Jeff Met Hannah: A Murder/Suicide Romance") [...] She always looked healthier than her boyfriend, but never more so than when they touched. His bone-white knuckles made a striking contrast with the natural California suntan that still colored her graceful fingers, and it still puzzled her that the boy who showed her how to solve her problems at Liberty High felt cold to her touch, even though her body temperature tended to be room temperature. The paradox made her smile...how could she be warmer than he was, when *she* was the one who was dead? And more intriguingly, how could this pale boy (who concealed his lack of eyelids by burying himself in his white hoodie) make her feel so *alive*? Jeff and Hannah were holding hands, and in love. [...]

This is the second time animatronics have come up today. The Daily Zeitgeist posdcast was talking about Aaron Fechter who created Whack A Mole and the Chuck E Cheese characters.

I totally agree that animatronics trump screens every time. Nothing at a theme park will ever match my terror the first time I rode the Jurassic Park ride in Island’s of Adventure in Orlando. That T-Rex gets me!

i'm so excited for the jeff the killer sequel

I read the 13 reasons why book in high school and I liked the show as I was watching it, but i did have nightmares afterwards so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'd be interested in a video on that but I also do want the jeff the killer sequel

Re the Peter Pan ride: EXACTLY the same waiting time issue at Disneyland Paris. I was at the park from literally 9am to 1am one New Year and the waiting time was 55 minutes the WHOLE ENTIRE DAY.

We do have Peter Pan in DisneyLand Paris! I try to ride it whenever I visit, even though sadly they probably do very little maintenance on it...The puppets looked really run down last time I went :')

What do you think of the Shanghai version of Pirates? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vIchXwRw7U" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vIchXwRw7U</a>

Started reading about Monster Plantation and OF COURSE Gary Goddard (the creator) is a perverted creep. =____=

Also remembered that my cousin stood up in the boat and touched the monster tooth in exit and I was soooo panicky that we were going to get thrown out.

Just tweeted this at you, but realized it'd probably be better to post here. This was my first dark ride experience, Monster Plantation at Six Flags Over Georgia. We went in probably 1999 or 2000 and this was what we saw: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hsde6y3rPs" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hsde6y3rPs</a> It was Homeschool Day and the park was dead, but this was instantly my favorite and we rode it like six times. It's since been renamed to Monster Mansion (less, uh, problematic) and redone a bit: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX_mKUg0Y9g" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX_mKUg0Y9g</a> Always takes me back! I should try to go back this summer.

Thanks for this, very informative! Over the last month or so getting all into theme parks I never actually bothered to look up the proper definition of a dark ride and just assumed it meant...any indoor ride. But this has made me extra excited to return to my favourite childhood theme park soon and go on their haunted house dark ride. I think I only went on it once as a kid. Anyway, porg video!!! That sounds amazing! And the Jeff the Killer sequel will be worth the wait whenever you do it.

I don't mind fewer Star War videos for now. At least until the hype to Episode IX starts next year. Then again, doesn't the new Resistance cartoon start in the fall?

I think Kylo Ren has a question. ;) Love the long rambles, and it's great to watch and listen to you talk about something you care about and are so interested in, even though before this I had probably never had a single thought about this topic. Turns out it's very interesting! Thanks for sharing your knowledge and passion.

A 13rw video sounds amazing! Haven't watched the show but several of my friends have ranted at me about the finale, so it's gotta be good.

also, I've not been on Mr Toads wild ride since the mid 90s; dose he still go to Hell or has this been retconned?

there used to be an ancient Laff in the Dark ride at the PIke in Long Beach that had a 100% authentic 70 year old mummified corpse hidden in amongst it's props! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy</a>

Shark is having a hard time there next to port

I think sharks are probably violent racists in their youth.

Glad I joined your Patreon at this time! I found your channel because of Marvel, stayed for Star Wars and then found out that you love theme parks which is awesome! :D Great video! If you would ever be interested in recommending books about theme/amusement parks (non-fiction or fiction) I'd love that! I wrote one recently (unpublished, so I don't try to advertise) and couldn't find much when I tried to research parks in general. Also 12 years ago when I last went to Disneyland Paris there was no Peter Pan ride. But Pinocchio was there, and it really is cool!

I love a good long ramble video, I watch most of your videos podcast style while doing other things and the length just means I'm entertained for longer! I'm tier one and not fussed at all about a credits mention, the ramble videos are what I signed up for. I've never taken the time to watch star wars, so that content specifically isn't something that I get excited for, but I learnt a while back that I found the combination of your cadance, deadpan humor, wit, and timing to be funny enough that I'll watch whatever you put out regardless of how familiar I am with the subject matter. My favourite videos though are the ones where you are passionate about the subject and get really into it, the applejack problem is my favourite of your videos, though I've never watched my little pony

I for one am fine with the Star Wars movies, I actually found you through the Millennial Falcon so Star Wars is what brought me here. Long videos are fine too, for some of them you may want to look into releasing them as podcasts too if that's not too much more work. Stuff like this where you're not doing as much on screen I tend to treat more like a podcast. As always, great work and looking forward to the next video!

What I remember about Flushing Meadows Park: 1) You can climb inside the globe. 2) There's a gang of stray cats that lives near the globe. 3) Vendors there sell the most delicious sliced mango. Also: That part of Queens is great if you're looking for ethnic food. It's a real live World Showcase.

The bit about Peter Pan in Disneyland Paris made me laugh, omg. My family went to DLP around five years ago, and we rode Peter Pan as one of the first rides we went on cause I love the American versions for very sentimental childhood reasons. For whatever reason, maybe it was just that day, the Paris one just was like full speed through the whole thing, it was like someone hit the gas. It was very jerky and weirdly fast and we made jokes for the entire rest of the trip about Peter Pan being the best thrill ride in the park. I know the American ride totally isn't worth the wait but I still try to go when the line isn't absurdly long. The Paris one made me appreciate it even more honestly.

I'll throw my vote in for Porgs (because it's shorter and already done and can be ready before the flight), then Welcome to the Mansion, then maaaybe 13 Reasons Why Season 2 Feature if nothing more video-worthy emerges in the meanwhile. Of all the stuff out there, I'm least enthusiastic about 13 Reasons Why because I haven't seen it (and from what I've heard and seen of it, I wouldn't want to watch it), but then there is the argument that a decent takedown of the series would allow me to understand the story without ever having to see it, which would be neat for catching up on pop culture while also knowing that I won't need to burn my time on that. Like how I felt at the end of the videos on Escape from Tomorrow and The Greatest Showman. Also count me in with the group that super enjoys longer videos, and the group that does care about names in credits, and the group that doesn't really care about Star Wars but still doesn't mind a video every now and then and will definitely make exceptions for Porgs because they are fantastic.

In the ELA Teacher's world 13 Reasons Why is such a huge topic right now. No one can agree if it's good or bad or harmful or a good conversation starter or any other things.

If I am pledging $7 does that mean my name gets removed from the credits and replaced with "Randy Moore"?

Thanks for the long ramble! Can't wait for the Porg video!

Also, if you decide to rename Shark Wahlberg [whether someone thinks Wahlberg's apologies for abhorrent things he did in his past are genuine is none of my business], I think Ruffalo would be a really cute name for a shark.

Watching someone just enthuse about a topic, particularly a niche one, that they really love is super endearing; this is just an hour of pure /that/. It was great! I have a passing interest in the "guts" of rides and behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, so your at-hand knowledge of so much of this is very cool. Like a lot of the others, I didn't know what a "dark ride" was; I assumed the video was going to be about, you know--*tonally* dark rides, like the Tower of Terror and stuff. Which would've been interesting, but I learned a lot more in this video than I would've in a video about what I /thought/ the video was going to be about. I've never really liked visiting theme parks in person, but at the same time the behind-the-scenes aspects of them have always been fascinating to me.

please do a 13 reasons why video!

There is a really good documentary about the NY World's Fair pavilion and what remains of it today: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3759900/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3759900/</a>

oh jenny lmao i can’t wait to watch this now

Thanks Jenny. This was everything I hoped it would be. You are the best.

I'm one of your viewers who is not a Star Wars fan, but your videos on Star Wars are still fun to watch because yr so passionate about it. Im ​down for all the vid ideas you mentioned!

Yay for a full hour! And I am a huge theme park history buff. Would love to see you do more theme park focused videos either on your regular channel or a separate one. :) that Pacific ocean park book looks amazing for real and I think I might actually buy it. I went on horizons as a really little kid but can't remember it :(

I went on Horizons once as a child (summer of 1994 I think)... I remember really loving. Years later, when I returned to Epcot, I thought the scenes from Horizons were what was in Spaceship Earth, and was sorely disappointed. RIP Horizons :(

AFAIK, there are only a couple of things left in Corona Park, where the NY Worlds Fair took place. First is the globe, as you mentioned, but they also have the pavilion, made famous in Men in Black (Where there were flying saucers). I want to say that Tony Stark used that area in Iron Man 2 for his year long Stark Expo, but it looks nothing like that. They might have a couple of markers left too. Shea Stadium was torn down (Replaced by Citi Field). It's just a park where the USTA and the Mets are located nearby.

My local theme park (Kennywood in Pittsburgh) features a really cool "dark ride" indoor roller coaster (The Exterminator). It's almost always the longest line in the park, but the line features cool sets related to the theme of the ride, and it's air conditioned so I never mind. Kennywood also features some other cool stuff like a walk-through funhouse "dark ride" (Noah's Ark), and a couple vintage wood roller coasters (the Jackrabbit and the Racer). If you're ever in Pittsburgh (lol why) you should check it out.

Not quite sure if it counts as a dark ride, because it's got animatronics and screens, but I loved Ellen's Energy Adventure because it was so strange. When I describe it to people they think I'm making it up, and I don't blame them. "Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Nye take us through history, from dinosaurs to modern day, on this ride that takes like a half a hour full of bad puns, but it was before Ellen came out so there's, like, mildly flirty banter between them? And then at the end, Ellen wins a game of Jeopardy. It's amazing." PS- I'm a $1 patron and I don't mind the change at all! I just like seeing your ramble videos :)

I'm confused about what's happening to the credits. Are all $1 patrons going to be removed from them or just the ones who pledged after you changed the tiers?

I love long rambles - please keep it up! Also, am I the only one who really wants another vlog-style Jenny vid? The porgventure made me so happy! In the unlikely event Jenny sees this (or some high-rolling patron with pull) and cares what I think, a short video with a personal feel like the porgventure would be brilliant.

Before the Monster Plantation was The Tales of the Okefenokee <a href="http://www.dafe.org/articles/darkrides/okefenokee.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.dafe.org/articles/darkrides/okefenokee.html</a>

Yes, Monster Mansion is at Six Flags over Georgia. It is a boat ride. If you are ever in Atlanta, I can set you up with a deal on tickets. <a href="http://themeparkuniversity.com/theme-parks-101/behind-the-scenes-at-the-opening-of-monster-mansion-at-six-flags-over-georgia/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://themeparkuniversity.com/theme-parks-101/behind-the-scenes-at-the-opening-of-monster-mansion-at-six-flags-over-georgia/</a>

how dare you slander winnie the poohs drug trip ride! j/k Thanks for answering my question about peter pan :)

Jenny, you are the perfect woman!

OMG ITS AN HOUR

I’m wishing upon every damn star that you make a second channel all about theme park stuff. I’m trapped so deep in the world of Disneyland YouTube these days and I don’t wanna come back