Galaxyland, the huge indoor amusement park in Alberta, Canada's ultra-huge West Edmonton Mall will be opening a new dark ride this season with the clever name...Dark Ride. (Let's hope that's just the working title.) According to the Calgary Herald, the subterranean attraction will take riders under the Palace Casino and the mall's parking lot for what sounds like an interactive shootout with "strange Smurf-like creatures." As if the newspaper needed the adjective, "strange" to modify the proper noun, "Smurf." I don't know about you, but if Galaxyland puts a zapper in my hand and surrounds me with Smurf-like creatures, I'm going to be plenty motivated to zap them into the next galaxy.
Garfield, the comic feline, gets around to a lot of theme parks and amusement parks. At one point, developers were planning an entire Garfield theme park. While those plans have apparently been shelved, the unflappable cat will get his own ride this season when Pennsylvania's Kennywood transforms its Old Mill flume ride into Garfield's Nightmare. Reportedly, the dark ride will include 3D effects.
The oldest continuously operating amusement park in the U.S., and one of the most charming, is Connecticut's Lake Compounce (and coincidentally, another one of Garfield's theme park homes). While the park does a wonderful job paying homage to its past, it also stays fresh with new attractions. A few years ago, it added Boulder Dash, which gets my vote for the top wooden roller coaster. This season, the park will introduce Downtime, a 185-foot Turbo Drop freefall ride.
The question: Scooby-Doo, where are you? The answer: Paramount's Kings Dominion. The Doswell, Virginia theme park will debut the dark ride, Scooby-Doo! and the Haunted Mansion this season. Riders will be issued Fright Light ghost blasters and board Mini-Mystery Machines to vaporize evil spirits. The dark ride will be similar to other Scooby-themed attractions at Paramount's Kings Island, Carowinds, and Canada's Wonderland parks.
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