Welcome aboard Pink Monorail. I'm your pilot, Michelle Viadolid, and next to me is my co-pilot, Noah Viadolid.

Hey, everybody.

Last time we talked about roller coasters in our series, Manufacturing the Magic, a history of the American theme park.

We're taking a stop along the way at the mechanics of magic and looking at how different rides are made.

This time we're going to talk about old mill rides, dark rides, and simulators.

The first dark rides were called Old Mill Rides after the first one was opened in

1895 at Sea Lion Park at Coney Island, which we discussed on our Coney Island episode.

In it, two passenger boats floated inside a flume or canal and passed through romantic

and idyllic scenes. Kenny would open their

old mill in 1901, later changing it to hard-headed Harold's horrendously humorous haunted

Idaho in 1974, according to Dark Ride Database. Then in 1992, became the old mill again,

then Garfield's Nightmare in 2003. Yes, the cartoon cat. Dragon heads

were added to the boats in 1921 and removed in 1974. This is an example of the tunnel

of love effect. Couples went on the boats and enjoyed romantic scenes at first, then dark

rides became scary, sending couples into each other's arms when society frowned upon public displays of affection.

In between the Old Mill and Herald, the ride was themed several times to the Panama Canal, a trip around the world, fairyland floats, and several versions of the Old Mill.

Darkride Database.com has an alphabetical listing of all dark rides and is searchable.

Many of the dark rides listed there have ride-through video, which on some of the older rides is fascinating.

Marvin Remfer and Leon Cassidy patented the first single rail dark ride in 1928. They were called pretzels and some still exist according to Laugh in the Dark.com,

a 90s site that has interesting articles and photos of pretzel-style dark rides and fun houses. So those are the ones that

a lot of people, if you don't live near a theme park or an amusement park, and you have like a

carnival that passes through town, the ones that set up the little two passenger cars that sort of

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