haunted mansion lights on

a fiberglass nightmare defanged by halogen

Wow, I never even considered this a possibility. Not even a dream! Yet here we are in a future entirely unpromised to our child selves, moving through a haunted house with the lights on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD5rcbCUbWg

This is so beautiful... I love these kinds of amusement park "ghost train" haunted house rides, and it's such a joy to see it with the lights on, even though there's no real revelation. I mean I knew that the skeletons were fake already. I guess it's just nice to see how simple the tricks are. Like how it seems huge but it's actually just curving around a lot. Or mostly it's just "something is moving towards you". I don't need a fancy trick to be honest, and most of the time I don't even appreciate it. I saw Avatar 2, it was bad.

I love how excited the riders are for the lights to be on-- did they ride this a thousand times hoping this would happen? Did they bribe someone? There's other vids on YouTube in this genre (haunted house lights on) but it seems like those were filmed at special "lights on" events for roller coaster fans. It's so nice to catch a natural surprise, and hear the thrill in our riders' voices. You see them for a sec in the mirror, and they don't look like ghouls but they do look like people that prioritize doing stuff like this a lot. I mean they look cute :)

After watching this for the first time a few weeks ago I fell into a research hole on "dark rides"-- it seems like the format was pretty much invented by one guy, Bill Tracy, and you can still see traces of his work all over the place. He worked for Ringling Brothers and then the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade before setting out on his own with his company "Outdoor Dimensional Display", or "ODD". great career.

Shoutout to Tom Bubul for sending me this one. If you, dear reader, have a realm you think I might be interested in, please send an email or drop a comment!

And if you have a favorite dark ride in the New England area let me know, it's been too long since I've caught the vibe direct!

Peace everyone :)

If someone forwarded you this email because you like fake skeletons or extremely slow roller coasters, you may also like other things I've written. This is Pleasant Realms, an email newsletter for mostly unstressful YouTube videos.