New Dark Rides Opening At Cedar Point And All Cedar Fair Parks

Cedar Fair plans to debut a new dark ride concept throughout all of it’s parks including Cedar Point. The company owns and operates eleven amusement parks, three outdoor water parks, one indoor water park, and five hotels across the United States. Cedar Fair also manages Gilroy Gardens under contract with the city of Gilroy, California.

Cedar Fair president and CEO Matt Ouimet told a reporter for the Los Angeles Times the chain is interested in expanding the number of dark rides it offers.

Ouimet, a former Disney executive who served as Disneyland president said:

“I think ultimately you’ll see them at every Cedar Fair park,”

Canada’s Wonderland (owned by Cedar Fair Entertainment) opened it’s Guardian dark ride attraction inside the park’s famous mountain in 2014 and their Knott’s Berry Farm park will open “Voyage to the Iron Reef” along it’s boardwalk section this May.

Voyage Press Event:

The dark rides will be interactive attractions where guests will use ride guns to shoot at virtual things like monsters, dinosaurs, pirates, underwater creatures etc. Guests will shoot and interact using inferred devices when these creatures appear on giant screens within the ride. A ride vehicle will tell the back stories of the various parks.

Ouimet also said the plan is to make the dark ride attractions unique to each park and versatile so they can be adapted as new ride technology develops. The storylines could also be shared and moved from park to park. Each park will be able to alter the storyline for special events during Christmas, Halloween etc.

Disney and Universal have been the mecca for dark ride attractions for years. Ouimet said Cedar Fair will never create $100 million dollar dark attractions like Disney and Universal, settling instead for budgets at 10% to 15% of what they have. Cedar Fair will have to utilize their rides without expensive intellectual properties such as “Frozen” or “Harry Potter,” which Ouimet admits makes marketing the new attractions more difficult. Instead, the attractions will tell stories about the “world underneath our parks.” Which sounds very interesting!

Cedar Fair and Six Flags are both trying to capitalize on dark attraction style rides. Six Flags is opening two new dark attractions for their 2015 season from Sally Corp. The two rides will be opening this summer at Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags St. Louis.

Check out their debut!

Cedar Point has already started clearing a large portion of real estate just off it’s midway for an unannounced new attraction. Included in this demolition was the removal of the Good Times Theater that featured IMAX movies, a Snoopy-themed ice show, and as of recent, The Midnight Syndicate Live Music Show. The park has also relocated it’s Dodgem bumper cars ride to another area and closed the nearby Turnpike car attraction. This leaves the large footprint of empty space in the photo below for expansion.

Some enthusiasts seem to think Cedar Point will install a new Dive Coaster (theory here) while others say it’s a location for the new dark ride attraction. One thing is for certain, Cedar Point said they do have big plans in the coming years as they set the stage for the parks 150th anniversary in 2020! With this being the “Coaster Capital of the World” we expect nothing less than a new record breaking roller coaster.

One location that is very fitting for a new dark attraction is at Kings Island. The area of the defunct Tomb Raider / Crypt ride. It already houses a cool facade and a large building for an indoor attraction. With some minor additions and changes, this location could be an awesome new dark attraction!