Chessington World Of Adventures - The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure

Gröna Lund: Blå Tåget

Souped up ghost train

Monster Mansion

Monster Mansion at Six Flags over Georgia is the finest dark ride outside of a Disney park.  The brief boat ride has 107 animatronic figures, each one with a distinct personality and gimmick and many with a backstory.  The ride began it's life in 1967 as The Tales of the Okefenokee, based on the tales of Uncle Remus.  It was worked over by the Krofft brothers and lasted until 1980.

Monster Plantation opened in 1981, designed by Gary Goddard, who directed Masters of the Universe and has been in the news lately.  It was also worked on by people who haven't been accused multiple times of child molestation.  All of the characters were designed by former Disney animator Phil Mendez.  The characters have a distinct 70s feel to them, a kind of cross between underground comics and Precious Moments.

The ride was updated in 2009 and the name changed to Monster Mansion, something about plantations having a certain connotation in Georgia.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Magic Mountain

Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Valhalla

It's probably unfair to constantly accuse other theme parks of ripping off Disney.  I'm sure there were a lot of Nordic themed flume rides with a backwards section before Maelstrom.  Again, I probably prefer this one.  Hard to see most of the ride in the video, but there's much more of a sense of water than Maelstrom - aside from the oil rig scene, you hardly felt like you were in a boat.  And 100% less Olaf.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach - Alice's Wonderland

Same layout as the Disney one, but I like this one better, as the design seems based more on the original book illustrations.  The soundtrack, weirdly, seems to be Golden Ticket from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which does sound a bit like Painting the Roses Red.

Blackpool Pleasure Beach - The New, Branded Stuff

Blackpool follows the international trend of taking the kiddie-ride area and randomly assigning branded names from whoever they have a licensing agreement with, in this case Nickelodeon.  The only one of worth is Dora, because it's a boat ride.




There's also a Wallace and Gromit dark ride - never could get into them

Night in White Satin The Trip

Dark ride from the short lived Hard Rock Park