Halloween Productions designs new dark ride
Kennywood, West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, will introduce a new state-of-the-art dark ride, Ghostwood Estate, for 2008. The $2 million project, expected to open in May, is an eight-room haunted house to replace the Gold Rusher, which was retired this past August.
A trackless conveyance system, over 200 interactive targets and numerous computer generated images will be included inside.
Designing all haunted effects is Halloween Productions. Kennywood bought three walk-through Halloween mazes fro the company for its now hugely successful Phantom Fright Nights in 2001. Kennywood’s Jeff Checcio says of Larry Kirchner from Halloween Productions: “He’s extremely talented and knowledgeable – certainly one of the founding fathers of today’s Halloween industries.”
In Ghostwood Estate, guests will be armed with blasters, developed by LaserStar. The blasters provide guests the opportunity to compete with others in the vehicle by targeting haunted characters throughout the estate. ETF Ride Systems created the ride’s trackless system. Each vehicle will be equipped with four individual scoreboards. Pittsburgh-based Design Alliance designed the massive four-sided haunted façade for Ghostwood Estate.
